There’s no shortage of sectors that can reap huge rewards from the use of commercial solar panels to offset costs, and the industrial sector is no exception. We serve a broad range of industries here at Low Carbon Energy, and we’ve got decades of experience behind us in helping businesses save money, become more efficient, and reduce their carbon footprint in the process. But while some of the advantages that solar panels offer are applicable to a wide range of sectors, they can benefit the industrial sector in some quite specific ways. Here are just a few of the major ones!

1. They offer significant cost savings

This is one of the foremost advantages of commercial solar panels for any kind of business, and many business owners choose solar panels on the strength of this alone. However, the cost savings they offer can be particularly helpful to industrial and manufacturing businesses, given their especially high power requirements, and the ability of industrial solar panels to offer free, renewable electricity enables your industrial businesses to reduce your reliance on the National Grid. Even if you only save a moderate fraction of your power usage, this can often equate to saving hundreds or even thousands of pounds a year.

2. They’re affordable, low maintenance and low risk

Often, buying new business assets involves having to take calculated risks, as owners have to trust their judgement on whether the new assets will be able to bring value to the business. Happily, compared to most of these sorts of purchases, commercial solar panels are a very low risk investment, and one that’s guaranteed to bring a measurable return on investment. And although they’re great at bringing money into the business, they also helpfully don’t take that much out of it, with no running costs and minimal maintenance required.

3. Larger industrial prfemises provider greater capacity for savings

While larger industrial sites tend to require more power to run than those of smaller businesses, the flipside is that it gives you more roof space to work with, too – allowing you to fit more solar panels than a smaller business might be able to support. Once again, the potential for bigger costs means potential for bigger savings, and you may even choose to maximise your energy saving potential across the entire site by installing smaller installations on other buildings on your premises, too.

4. Profit from excess energy thanks to the Smart Export Guarantee

If you manage to generate excess energy for your requirements, you can even sell the excess supply back to the National Grid via your energy provider. This is facilitated by the Smart Export Guarantee, which the government recently brought in to replace the now-redundant Feed In Tariff. In case you’re not fully up to speed on it, we’ve gone into full details about how the scheme works in our previous post about the Smart Export Guarantee.

5. Improve your brand image and CSR

The relatively high power requirements and emissions output of the manufacturing sector can often put it under greater scrutiny compared to other industries – from pressure groups, the government, or even just potential customers and investors.

With climate change more of a concern now than ever, it makes good business sense to display a firm commitment to your Corporate Social Responsibility, or CSR. Industrial solar panels are a great demonstration of that commitment, providing a significant offset to carbon emissions, and giving your even more widespread appeal amongst an increasingly discerning public.

6. Futureproof your business and guard against price rises

Due to the higher power requirements and outputs involved, achieving complete self sufficiency is harder for larger industrial businesses than it is for smaller SMEs in other sectors – but it’s still a smart and viable goal. What’s more, making it a priority can help guard your business against growing energy prices, which are expected to rise sharply over the course of the next decade.

Rather than taking the brunt of those hikes through reliance on the National Grid, industrial solar panels allow you to effectively forward-buy your electricity at a set price, helping you to financially forecast more accurately, and maybe even identifying other areas for growth within the business.

If you’ve got any further questions about commercial solar panels and how they could benefit your business, our experts are only too happy to help. We’ve got over 30 years of combined experience behind us in helping your business to save on costs, and profit from cleaner, greener energy. To find out how we can help you, feel free to give us a call today on 01282 421 489!