Solar-powered Community Buildings in Northumberland
Project Partners: Community Action Northumberland (CAN) and the National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise (NICRE)
Developed through co-designing a co-operative model, the aim is to:
Reduce energy costs and the carbon footprint of community buildings in Northumberland.
Support resilience in response to long term climate change and extreme weather events.
Generate additional revenue for community groups.
Limit risk, reduce administration burden and maximise efficiencies of scale.
The project began in 2022 and in Sept 2023, the Co-op was formed as a Community Benefit Society – Northumberland Community Energy Ltd (NCEL)
How?
The project will install solar PV panels onto the roofs of community buildings across rural Northumberland (village halls, churches, community-owned sports facilities, etc) and integrate battery storage. The Community Energy Co-operative will:
Raise the capital funds for all installations and pre-development work (system design, planning etc) through a combination of grant and loan.
Lease the roof space and space for equipment from each building.
Put in place a power purchase agreement with each building to buy power from the batteries at a rate significantly discounted compared to market rates. When local generation is not available, each building will buy energy from the grid as usual.
Insure and manage all installations for the duration of the lease period, including grid connection, metering and grid feed in.
Progress:
Using funding secured through the North East and Yorkshire Net Zero Hub, the National Lottery Community Fund and the Rural Asset Multiplier Pilot of the North of Tyne Combined Authority, CAN has achieved the following:
Completed feasibility work (system design, costings and carbon appraisal) on 40 community buildings spread across rural Northumberland.
Secured planning permission for installations at 12 of these buildings.
Secured funding for the first four installations and a further 15 by March 2025.
Completed bat surveys at four listed building installations, a pre-requisite to formal planning and listed building consent applications in such locations.
Secured funding to progress planning and other necessary permissions at a range of buildings, building the pipeline of installations.
Procured legal services to enable leases to be prepared and agreed at each installation.
Secured funding to carry out initial feasibility at over 30 additional buildings.
Established a waiting list of additional community buildings keen to join the project.
The aim is to secure 100 installations over the next five years.
“Through working together we’ve been able to create an environment where we can access funding that’s not otherwise available to people …the big thing is that we can access resources in terms of expertise that’s not available to individual places.”
