Nord Group / Combinations / Air conditioning and solar
The hotter it gets, the harder both of them work.
Air conditioning draws most power on hot, bright afternoons. Solar generates most on hot, bright afternoons. Of everything we fit, this is the pairing where the timing genuinely lines up, and it is the one we get asked about least.
Air conditioning
Solar & battery
Both are trading names of Qualis Energy Limited, so this is one contract with one company whichever way you buy it.
The whole argument, in one picture
Same hours. Same days.
Illustrative shape, not your house. The point is not the exact heights, it is that the two peaks sit on top of each other. Cooling lags the sun by an hour or two because a building takes time to warm up, which is why the blue peak sits slightly to the right of the green one.
Cooling demand is driven by sunshine
The thing making your house too hot is the same thing landing on your roof. Cooling load rises with solar gain through glazing, so demand tracks the weather that also drives generation.
So the electricity is made and used in the same hour
No export at a low rate, no import at a high one. This is self-consumption in its purest form, which is the most valuable thing a solar array can do.
A battery covers the evening
A building holds heat for hours after the sun drops. Storage carries midday generation into the evening, which is when people are home and most want the bedrooms cool.
And the same units heat in winter
Air conditioning is a heat pump running the other way. The equipment ArcticNord fits will heat a room as well as cool it, so it is not sitting idle for nine months of the year.
Do not buy solar just to run the air conditioning
The timing argument above is real, and it is the best alignment of any pairing we fit. But Britain is not Andalusia. The number of days a year you will genuinely lean on cooling is limited, and the saving from those days alone will not pay for an array.
What actually happens is that the panels earn their keep across the whole year on everything else in the house, and the cooling season is the period where they earn it hardest. That is a good argument. It is a different argument from the one that would be easier to make.
If you want the pairing where cooling is the deciding factor, it is usually a room that has become unusable in summer: a loft conversion, a south-facing office, a bedroom nobody can sleep in. Fix that, and let the solar do its job the other eleven months.
One visit
What a combined survey covers
Two engineers, one appointment, and an array sized against the cooling rather than against your bill as it stands today.
ArcticNord
The cooling side
- Which rooms are the problem, and why: glazing, orientation, insulation, loft conversions
- Cooling load per room, so the system is not oversized and short-cycling
- Indoor unit positions, pipe routes and condensate
- Outdoor unit siting, noise and access
- F-Gas certified, and the same units provide heating in winter
ZenithNord
The solar and battery side
- System size calculated in design software against the real roof: pitch, orientation and shading
- Twelve months of consumption, with the summer cooling load added on top
- Battery sized for the evening tail, when the building is still warm and the sun has gone
- Inverter and consumer unit capacity, and the DNO application
- MCS certified for solar PV
Why the order matters here too. Cooling is one of the few loads that reliably coincides with generation, so an array sized before the air conditioning exists will usually be too small once it does. Doing both from one survey is the difference between a system that covers the cooling and one that nearly does.
What you get
One job, not two
One survey, one visit
Both specialists attend together, so neither is designing around a guess about the other.
Nobody to pass the buck to
Two trades on one job usually means two firms and an argument about whose fault it is. Here it is one company either way, so there is nobody for us to point at.
One set of records afterwards
Both systems on the same file, held by the same office. The people who come back to service it are the people who fitted it.
Where we do this
Across six counties
We install air conditioning and solar together for homes across Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire. Our engineers are based in Bilsthorpe, Nottinghamshire, so most of the patch is inside an hour's drive, including Mansfield, Newark, Nottingham, Chesterfield, Lincoln, Worksop, Doncaster, Sheffield, Leeds and Wakefield.
Two things at once
The other combinations
Not sure this is what you need?
Answer six questions instead
Six questions about your house, and we will advise you what to do first, second and third. It takes about a minute, and it includes the jobs we do not sell.
Or call 0333 090 7546 · Mon–Thu 9:00–17:00, Fri 9:00–13:00