Ian Charles

Financial Director

My wife, Erica, is the entrepreneur in the family. She started an online garden company primrose.co.uk, on just about the same day that I met her in 2002. 3 years later, we had 2 sons, Erica was pregnant with our third and she wanted to go back to Oxford to her first love - Mathematics - to do an MSc. She wrote a thesis on how to maximise photon capture in solar panels, which led to her starting Spirit Solar Ltd - driven mainly by her belief that the planet might need her help. Meanwhile, Primrose had grown to £40m sales and 150 staff, and in 2018 we sold the company, putting Erica and I in the ridiculously lucky position that we have never needed to take a salary or dividend from Spirit. 

Erica has taken a step back from the business to look after her mother, leaving me nominally in charge. Conveniently for me, the people that are really in charge are the ones that know what they're doing - Vishal, Operations Director, and Justin, Head of Installations have been with us for more than 10 years. Our technical / design team includes Mark, Henry, Tok and Caius - most are engineering graduates - who have each spent at least 4 years at Spirit getting deeper and deeper into the highly technical world of solar and batteries.

If you want to get in touch with me, I'd love to hear from you. Especially if you'd like a game of tennis - I'm a member at Caversham Lawn Tennis Club. Just email me using my first name @spiritenergy.co.uk. But don't expect me to answer any technical questions - that's a job for one of my colleagues. 

Ian 17.7 Photo 1
Ian Charles at Bozedown
Ian Photo 3