PUPILS have good reason to be welcoming the summer after their schools were fitted out with solar panels.

A renewable energy company which opened the Woolbridge solar farm near Wool last month made the gesture to three schools in the area as way of saying ‘thank you’ for hosting it in the community.

A total of 48 panels have been installed on the roofs at Wool primary, Bovington primary and St Mary and St Joseph’s school in Wool.

Panels were also installed at the D’Urberville community hall in Wool.

Good Energy funded the installation projects.

The firm’s new solar farm at Tout Hill started generating electricity for the first time in mid-June.

The 5MW site is the company’s first solar farm and will generate enough electricity to power around 1,300 homes.

Hugo House from the firm said: “Wherever we’re involved in building green energy projects like this, we always look for ways to deliver meaningful benefits to the local community and encourage it to be part of our renewable energy journey. So it’s great that we’ve been able to work with three schools and the local community centre to install solar panels.

“These will not only help provide power for each organisation, they’ll also provide an additional income as they will be paid for every unit of electricity they generate.”

The panels will save several hundred pounds in energy costs and the equivalent of around 2,000kg of CO2.

Headteacher at Wool Primary School Lesley Paxton-Khanal said: “We are thrilled to have been supplied solar panels.

“Our school recently became a primary school as part of the Purbeck reorganisation and as a result, we had a year of building works to make our school more ‘fit for purpose’.

“As a small village school there is never any money spare, so we jumped at the chance to have solar panels fitted.

“Having solar panels is totally in keeping with our school’s ‘green’ approach and as an Eco School, this adds a new dimension to our teaching of renewable energy.”