PLANS to install 39 solar panels on the roof of a church in central Chester have been submitted to Cheshire West and Chester Council’s planning department.

The Wesley Church Centre on St John Street hopes the move will reduce the church’s external electricity costs whilst also demonstrating its commitment to net zero.

In the submitted documents, managing trustee Brian Heald says the panels will make a “major contribution” to supplying “the baseload usages of the Wesley premises throughout the week.”

The church says the benefits to the grade II listed building would be:

  • to reduce electricity import costs to the church/church centre/café by about 39% and thereby underpin Wesley’s financial viability for the medium to long term and help sustain its Mission in the City Centre.
  • to demonstrate Wesley’s commitment to its Eco Church journey towards ‘net zero’.
  • to contribute to reducing the UK’s dependence on fossil fuels
     

The panels will provide a peak solar generation capacity of about 17kW, and 9,800kWh/yr for the church and its café. For context, a 100-watt light bulb would take ten hours to use 1kWh of energy.

The panels will be mounted to the south facing section of the roof and will not be visible from street level, but will be visible for a short stretch of the City Walls. All-black panels will be selected to minimise any visual impact.