Community Energy • What is a community scheme ?

• Various options • How our generation will change • The community opportunity

• The Gwent Energy way • Some of our schemes

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Variations on community • Not every community organisation wants the responsibility• Community centres want to concentrate on its core services

• 4 main community models to choose from ?

• Owned by one of the big six standard £1k per MW to parish council

• Part or all of scheme owned by local group from their own funds

• This is the Gwent Energy CIC model

• Community builds its own takes on risk, work and expense

• Community building has a rent a roof gets free power

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Brighton Power Station in 1882

3 kW output

Powered 16 street lamps

One hours light bulb cost a weeks wage

Efficiency > 0.1%

Coal / wood fired steam engine “State of the art”Owned by the council

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Brighton Power Station today

420 MW output

High reliability

One hours lighting costs

1/40,000 weekly wage

Efficiency @ 50%

Combined cycle gas turbine “state of the art”

Depends on cheap gas powers for 1.5 million homes

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Brighton Power Station @2020

Wind for bulk generation PV for daytime peak load

AD for intermittencyDomestic CHP Storage need

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The Gwent Energy Way• Many community organisations don’t want the responsibility

• Gwent Energy can fund, install and operate for them• They get free electricity plus a surplus share

• We take on the responsibility of admin, loans and maintenance

• We fund these from our investors club• Our investors are :

• People who use the facility we install on• People in a Transition Town organisation

• People who support the resilient community ethos

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Solar farms have a lot of open space between the panels Huge scope to develop habitats for local wildlife

major improvement over the usual “green desert”

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A sustainable future ?

Nuclear 30%

Wind Commercial 30%

Fossil (gas & coal) 20%

Home / community 20%

Fossil fuel will be with us for some time due to cost and versatility

All onshore renewables should be owned by the community

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Shares or loans

• Shares more “ownership” than a loan• Shares more expensive to issue then loans

• Loans more suited to small schemes• Shares have less security for the borrower

• Dividends are at discretion of directors• Loan repayment is a contractual requirement

• In a winding up shares are unsecured creditors• With loans you are a secured creditor

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Community energy projects

• Some examples of Gwent Energy Projects• 3 different community models

• St Arvans Hall 4 kW solar • Bridges community centre 10 kW solar

• Ty Castle community solar farm

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St Arvans village hall

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4 kW PV system for village hall funded by hall usersGwent Energy helped on raise funds

System administered by hall committee

Bridges Community centre

Bridges owns the system but we handle the loans In return for a portion of the FIT income

http://solarshow.net/solarfox/show/?bridges

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Ty Castle Community Solar Farm

• 32 kW on a chicken farm

• Cost £30,000 generates 29,000 kWh per year• Transition Monmouth members loaned the money to Gwent Energy

• Gwent Energy owns and administers the installation• Surplus income funds events like Eco Open Doors

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Next months community project

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Its goodbye from Daisy

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