Salix visits Hull NHS Trust’s ‘Field of Dreams’

Hull NHS Trust hosted Salix Finance staff to show them the decarbonisation works on their site on Tuesday 26 April, after providing £12.6 million from the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme.

The money has enabled Hull NHS Trust to invest in solar farms consisting of over 11,000 solar photovoltaic panels, 22,000 LED lights, 6.5 kilometres of HV cabling and upgraded building management systems.

The team demonstrated how their on-site combined heat and power and boiler scheme operated, producing co-generated heat and electricity in a single process. Combining heat and power allows the site to fully utilise waste heat, generating the equivalent power to supply 6,363 homes per year and heat 1,511 homes per year.

Whilst showing Salix Finance staff around the solar arrays, Alex Best, Head of Capital for Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, noted: “This is phase one of our decarbonisation approach, which has been our ‘big bang’ moment to kickstart becoming sustainable and we looked at how we bring our larger buildings off gas supplies and onto an electrical system. This solar field will enable us to do that and cater to our future electrical demands.”

The team at Hull NHS Trust are thinking long term on how to eliminate energy waste and achieve net zero by 2030 under their Zero Thirty plan, which would see all NHS sites in Hull becoming carbon neutral by the end of the decade. They are also looking into ways to achieve hydrogen production which could be refined to create oxygen for patient use on intensive care wards.

Georgie Murray, Salix Finance’s Communications & PR manager, said: “The team have utilised their grant exceptionally well, it is great to see the technology in operation and hear that the Trust is already reaping the benefits. We look forward to seeing Hull NHS Trust progress in its mission to reduce emissions and become carbon neutral by 2030.”

To find out more about this project, read the case study here.