Solar Panel Installation – Residential Care Home, Stoke-on-Trent

The Project

This commercial solar PV and battery storage installation was carried out at a residential care home in Stoke-on-Trent – a facility providing full-time accommodation for elderly residents. The brief was straightforward: reduce the building’s reliance on grid electricity, cut running costs, and make the most of a large south-facing roof that had been generating nothing.

Care homes run high electrical loads around the clock – heating, lighting, kitchen equipment, laundry, medical devices – which makes them ideal candidates for solar with battery storage. The system we designed and installed is now capable of powering the entire building during daylight hours, charging a large battery bank for overnight use, and exporting surplus electricity back to the grid via the Smart Export Guarantee.

What We Installed

The installation covered a large roof section fitted with a full array of black-frame monocrystalline solar panels – chosen for their efficiency and clean appearance on a commercial building. The panels feed into a SunSynk hybrid inverter, which manages the flow of power between the solar array, the battery bank, the building’s electrical system, and the grid.

Battery storage was provided by a Duracell Energy Wall system – three units installed in a dedicated plant room. This gives the building substantial stored capacity, meaning solar energy generated during the day continues to power the building well into the evening and overnight, rather than being lost or exported at low rates.

The full system was designed so that on a good generation day, the building can:

• Power all electrical loads across the care home throughout the day
• Fully charge the battery bank for overnight use
• Export surplus electricity to the grid and earn via the Smart Export Guarantee

The Installation Process

Given the nature of the building and its residents, the installation was carefully planned to minimise disruption throughout. Scaffolding was erected to give the team safe access to the full roof area. Mounting rails were fixed to the roof structure with all penetrations properly sealed, before panels were lifted, positioned, and secured.

DC cabling was then run from the array down to the plant room, where the SunSynk inverter and Duracell battery units were wall-mounted and commissioned. All AC connections to the building’s distribution system were made, and the full system was tested, balanced, and configured before handover.

The plant room installation is clean and compact – the SunSynk inverter sits alongside the battery stack with full cabling managed neatly to allow easy access for monitoring and maintenance.

Installation in Action

The videos below show key stages of the installation – panels going in on the roof and the completed battery and inverter setup in the plant room.

Why Battery Storage Makes Sense for Care Homes

A care home without battery storage can still benefit from solar – but the gains are limited to daylight hours when generation and consumption happen to overlap. Add a battery bank and the picture changes completely. Power generated at midday is stored and used at 2am. The grid becomes a last resort rather than the default supply.

For a building that never switches off, this is the difference between a modest bill reduction and a genuinely transformative change to operating costs. The Duracell Energy Wall units we specified here are designed for exactly this kind of demanding, continuous-use application – robust, well-warranted, and built to handle daily charge and discharge cycles over many years.

The Result

The care home now operates with a fully independent solar and storage system running alongside its grid connection. On strong generation days the building is effectively self-sufficient – covering all electrical loads, charging the full battery bank, and exporting surplus power. On lower generation days the batteries bridge the gap and the grid provides top-up only.

All certification and documentation was provided at handover, including everything required to register for the Smart Export Guarantee through the building’s energy supplier.

Thinking About Solar for a Commercial Property?

This project is a good example of what a properly designed commercial solar and battery system can achieve. If you manage a care home, business premises, or any commercial building with significant electricity consumption, the economics of solar plus storage are worth examining closely.

We cover Stoke-on-Trent, Cheshire, and the wider North West for commercial and domestic solar installations. Our Solar Panels and Battery Storage page covers everything we offer, and we are happy to arrange a free site survey and no-obligation quote.