Banter 104: 28Jan26 Local Energy Management with Darran Ford

A presentation on community energy projects by Darran, who outlined two main approaches for renewable energy development and introduced the concept of "Community Energy as a Service."

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Presentation:

52MB

Community_Energy_As_A_Service_for_Parish_Councils.pptx

Open

Please note that this is a sizeable file (52MB). If you simply wish to get the contact information from the last slide, here it is:

Simcott Renewables, Darran Ford [email protected] 07762 771187

If you would like to help Darran as either Pioneer, Early Adopter, or Community Anchor, please scan:

A markdown copy of the file (to get all its text) is at the bottom of this page

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Meeting Summary:

Jan 28, 2026 11:50 AM London ID: 834 5460 8536

Quick recap

The meeting began with a presentation on community energy projects by Darran, who outlined two main approaches for renewable energy development and introduced the concept of "Community Energy as a Service." The presentation covered various aspects including local energy markets, community energy clubs, and successful case studies, while addressing questions about costs and implementation processes. The conversation ended with discussions about EV charger payments, energy tariffs, and the potential for community energy initiatives in new developments, with participants exploring various funding options and legal structures for these projects.

Next steps

• Darran: Send the presentation to Graham for distribution/sharing as appropriate.

• Peter Bates: Contact Darran after the meeting to discuss potential collaboration and invite Darran to the East Cambridgeshire event in March.

• Sue (and/or Battle Solar Town group): Consider arranging a free Teams meeting with Darran for their parish meeting to help explain community energy concepts.

• Graham: Fill the gap for next week's speaker/session and inform attendees of the new topic.

Summary

Early moments

Graham requested attendees to add their locations to their Zoom names for better identification during the meeting. The meeting was awaiting a presentation from an absent speaker, with Graham encouraging attendees to use the chat for questions and to mute themselves when not speaking.

Community Energy Project Challenges

Darran presented on community energy projects, explaining two main approaches: forming an organization to develop and sell renewable energy directly to a single off-taker, or creating local energy markets where excess energy is sold between community members and businesses. He highlighted that while parish councils often have the resources and community support needed for such projects, only a small number of community energy schemes are currently operational in the UK. The main barriers to implementation include the learning curve involved in setting up the scheme, time constraints, financial risk concerns, and the need for sufficient energy production scale.

Community Energy Acceleration Plan

Darran discussed creating a simple, repeatable plan for community groups to accelerate their learning and deliver renewable energy projects within 3-6 months, instead of the usual 3-5 years. He introduced the concept of "Community Energy as a Service" and outlined its key elements, including feasibility studies with clear actions, project delivery processes, and the establishment of local energy markets. Darran also explained how local energy markets function at the primary substation level, allowing communities to buy and sell energy within their geographical region.

Community Energy Club Implementation

Darran explained the structure of community energy clubs, noting that members must be part of the same primary substation and outlined training and capacity-building support available. He detailed a successful case study of White Cone Village Hall, which installed solar panels, a heat pump, a car charger, and battery storage, reducing energy costs and generating revenue. Darran also mentioned potential future opportunities for the hall through aggregation services.

Community Energy Club Setup Guide

Darran explained the process of setting up a community energy club, emphasizing the need for an anchor site generating at least 10,000 kilowatt hours annually. He discussed various legal structures, funding options, and partnerships needed to establish and manage the club. Darran highlighted the importance of transparency, governance, and community trust in the club's success. He also mentioned the potential for government support and grants to fund feasibility studies. The discussion concluded with a roadmap for implementing community energy projects within 3-6 months, aiming to establish pilot projects and scale the initiative over time.

Essex Community Energy Plan Initiative

Darran presented an opportunity for pioneers to join 8 existing groups in Essex to finalize a community energy plan. He explained that while some participants might prefer to wait 6 months or a year, interested individuals should scan a QR code to provide their details. Jon inquired about the cost of energy from these projects, to which Darran replied that the average cost is around 15p, with the cheapest being 6.67p. Jon suggested that community benefit funds from solar developers could be used to fund these projects. Graham managed the chat and questions, switching to address a question from Dave about the structure of Simcott Renewables, which Darran did not directly answer.

EV Charger Payment and Tariffs

The meeting discussed the setup of EV charger payments through a third-party card provider, with Darran explaining that WorldPay was used to connect the card payment system to the charger's app. The discussion then focused on energy tariffs, where Dave noted that 100 Green's tariffs were more expensive than competitors, leading to concerns about the viability of community energy clubs. Darran advised that such clubs need to carefully manage expectations about savings, as personal energy usage patterns significantly impact cost savings, and emphasized that the clubs serve as a catalyst for community engagement rather than just financial benefits.

Community Solar Project Planning

The discussion focused on community energy projects and solar panel installations. Darran explained that a 10kW solar system requires approximately 20 panels and can power about 5 club members, emphasizing the importance of matching generation capacity with off-takers. Peter shared his experience with setting up community energy projects in East Cambridgeshire, where 11 projects were successfully established. Darran outlined the services offered by Simco Renewables, including feasibility studies, legal assistance, and construction services, with pricing details provided for different services.

Community Energy Initiatives Discussion

The meeting discussed community energy initiatives, with Pete West sharing details about Energy Local Britport, which has successfully supplied 60 households with electricity at 15p from a farmer-owned wind turbine. Darran explained that SEG payments, currently offering high rates for renewable energy, are likely to decrease as more energy enters the grid, but emphasized the long-term benefits of community energy projects for guaranteed income and community engagement. Jon raised concerns about the viability of community energy projects compared to selling energy back to providers at high SEG rates, but Darran clarified that while SEG payments are currently attractive, they are not sustainable in the long term.

Community Energy Projects Overview

Darran presented on community energy projects, explaining how they can generate revenue through virtual power plants and aggregation services. He discussed the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) payment system and the potential for battery storage to help communities access renewable energy. Stuart inquired about an app that helps track renewable energy generation, which Darran explained is currently available. The group also discussed VAT concessions for different types of organizations and the potential for community energy projects in new developments.

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Chat:

00:09:13 Ian Cray: Hello All, I'm a newcomer, introduced via Chris Pointon in Cambridge 00:14:23 Peter Bates - SSECAM - Cambridgeshire: Scroll over your image and you will get 3 dots appearing in the top right corner and there you can rename your name!!

00:29:05 Gordon Coppock,Big Solar and Pomona Solar CoOps: This also might be of help : https://communityenergyengland.org/energy-learning-network/

00:35:45 Jon Bitterley Parish: that is not a very good payback- have they reduced their precept

00:36:24 Dave Faulkner The Green Group Almeley: At Colne was the EV charger already there and how is it administered?

00:37:39 Stuart Bacon (Huncote PC): How big does a community building need to be to generate 10,000kW?

00:37:53 Mike E - HayResilience.org Hay-on-Wye: On the subject of VAT & a ‘Charity’ Does that only apply to CIOs and Charities controlled by the Charities Commission OR are we also talking about non-profits - CIC, Co.Ltd by Guarantee?

00:46:50 Gordon Coppock,Big Solar and Pomona Solar CoOps: I would recommend to clarify that the Energy Club is a different organisation that needs to be maintained to deal with the sale and support for its members consuming the locally available energy. This normally is different to the community organisation that is dealing with the build and running of the community energy generation site.

00:46:58 Mike E - HayResilience.org Hay-on-Wye: Do Co-ops get a VAT concession?

00:47:55 Stuart Bacon (Huncote PC): Any Council borrowing money NEED to obtain permission to do so from the Secretary of State before they can borrow anything. Applications have to be submitted through your County Association.

00:50:47 Pete West - Dorset: Is getting support from an existing electricity supply company for metering and billing and back-up supply a major barrier? Octopus Energy has stopped supporting local community energy markets

00:57:57 Sue Burton Battle TC East Sussex: What are the costs for a PC using Simcott ?

00:59:44 Gordon Coppock,Big Solar and Pomona Solar CoOps: What is the structure of Simcott Renewables ? Eg not for profit company ? This is not a show stopper just trying to be clear.

01:01:32 Stuart Bacon (Huncote PC): Does this scheme only work on existing buildings, or does it apply for buildings which haven't yet been built? A developer has received planning permission for a site where they're building new homes and a new village hall for us. Can we use the scheme for our new village hall?

01:02:03 Carol Kambites, Stonehouse Town Council: Sorry have to go but thanks for an interesting presentation

01:04:19 Gordon Coppock,Big Solar and Pomona Solar CoOps: It would be useful if parish councils can convince their county councils to supply solar pv or other renewable loans (at low or even 0% interest) to enable them and these sort of projects.Then the project could possibly pay this back to allow it to be used elsewhere. 01:05:37 Stuart Bacon (Huncote PC): Replying to "It would be useful i..."

Research Public Works Loan Board loans for the cheapest loans available. Any Council borrowing money NEED to obtain permission to do so from the Secretary of State before they can borrow anything. Applications have to be submitted through your County Association. 01:09:11 Sue Burton Battle TC East Sussex: Replying to "It would be useful i..."

I have 13 panels at home but not all south facing and I can get 5 Kw. However I do generate at different times of day because they are not all south-facing

01:09:27 Cllr Gary Nuttall - Marlow TC: Really interesting presentation, thanks. Need to drop. 01:12:37 Peter Bates - SSECAM - Cambridgeshire: So I need to go

01:17:19 Sue Burton Battle TC East Sussex: WHAT IS A SEG RATE ? 01:19:31 Allan Wilson Edgmond Shropshire: “SEG rate” refers to the Smart Export Guarantee payment rate — the amount (in pence per kWh) that your energy supplier pays you for each unit of surplus electricity you export back to the National Grid. It applies mainly to homes or sites with solar PV, small wind, hydro, micro‑CHP, or anaerobic digestion systems.

01:19:49 frank deas, Killearn: need to go but many thanks very interesting and well explained 0

1:20:09 Gordon Coppock,Big Solar and Pomona Solar CoOps: SEG = Smart Export Guarantee, a variable payment paid for energy generated from smaller systems eg domestic system

01:23:22 David Morgan-Jones - Ewshot PC: Thanks everyone - great talk & extremely useful 01:24:20 Sue Burton Battle TC East Sussex: Replying to "SEG = Smart Export G..."

THANKS 01:24:43 Mike E - HayResilience.org Hay-on-Wye: Reacted to "Thanks everyone - gr..." with 👍

01:24:44 Gordon Coppock,Big Solar and Pomona Solar CoOps: There has been a gov consultation (P441) to the UK's balancing and settlement code designed to make it easier for this Energy Local model and to encourage Energy suppliers to join up to it. So that we don't have to just rely only on 100GREEN.

01:29:58 Andrew Clegg, Martock (island), Somerset: Darran - excellent. This evening we have a Parish Meeting to discuss a panel application. Your advice is just what I needed

01:30:18 Gordon Coppock,Big Solar and Pomona Solar CoOps: Maybe we should point out that at present the Energy Local approach for energy distribution can only be used with generators with up to an 11kV connection to the grid. So it can inhibit the chance to use /join with very large local generators. It still leaves loads of opportunities though and probably with more cooperative generators !

01:30:21 Dave Faulkner The Green Group Almeley: Great topic and presentation thanks. Need to go now. 01:30:37 Pete West - Dorset: I have to leave now but thanks for organising a really interesting meeting 01:31:46 Gordon Coppock,Big Solar and Pomona Solar CoOps: Thanks All , interesting to have others working on this elsewhere ! 01:31:46 Belinda Bawden: Thanks everyone 01:31:53 Mike E - HayResilience.org Hay-on-Wye: Thanks Graham

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Audi-transcript (for AI index):

138 00:15:44.580 --> 00:15:55.940 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So, hi everybody, my name's Darren, I run a company called Simcoe Renewables, and I've got a few slides to share with you today. Hopefully you can all see that on the screen.

139 00:15:56.300 --> 00:16:02.720 Todays Speaker Community Energy: To do with community energy and, and sort of how to set up your, your own product, or project.

140 00:16:03.160 --> 00:16:21.310 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So a little bit of background about us. We've, got involved in a number of community energy projects in Essex, and we've kind of, developed a little bit of expertise, and obviously we're… we're here today to try and share that expertise with you guys about how to… how to do this.

141 00:16:22.290 --> 00:16:23.280 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So…

142 00:16:23.650 --> 00:16:30.049 Todays Speaker Community Energy: first of all, let's sort of talk about community energy in terms of what is it. There are…

143 00:16:30.140 --> 00:16:47.560 Todays Speaker Community Energy: hundreds of community energy groups and organisations across the country. And one of the things that you will find when you talk to these groups is they've all got a slightly different version of what they think, community energy is, and they will all

144 00:16:47.900 --> 00:16:55.090 Todays Speaker Community Energy: they will all tell you that their version of the community energy is… is what community energy is. But the short answer is…

145 00:16:55.320 --> 00:17:13.879 Todays Speaker Community Energy: it can pretty much be whatever you want it to be. There's no legal definition around what a community energy project has to be, there's no legal definition around what it has to achieve, how it should be set up, how it has to be run, but they're basically, you can best sell it up and run it any way that you see fit.

146 00:17:14.220 --> 00:17:24.130 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So, there are two general, ways that, community energy groups get formed.

147 00:17:24.910 --> 00:17:26.119 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Oh, I think it was a sec.

148 00:17:29.140 --> 00:17:32.440 Todays Speaker Community Energy: The first is,

149 00:17:32.500 --> 00:17:42.960 Todays Speaker Community Energy: you get a group that basically, creates an organization, whether that's a co-op, or a community interest company, or something along those lines. They raise money from

150 00:17:42.960 --> 00:17:55.270 Todays Speaker Community Energy: their local community, and they use that to buy or build a renewable energy asset. So, solar panels, anaerobic digester, wind turbine, water, hydro scheme, something along those lines.

151 00:17:55.530 --> 00:18:00.030 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And what these schemes generally do is they have one producer.

152 00:18:00.180 --> 00:18:13.890 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And what we call one-off takers. So, it might be, say, the local village school. They raise some money, they put solar panels on the local village school, and then they sell that energy to that school, okay? There are lots of…

153 00:18:14.080 --> 00:18:22.330 Todays Speaker Community Energy: examples of this type of stuff. Bristol, Bristol Community Energy, Brighton Community Energy, they all work on this, this, sort of format.

154 00:18:22.330 --> 00:18:33.799 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And then what they tend to do is they will use some of the profits that are made by selling that energy to the off-taker to reinvest in either other community projects.

155 00:18:33.800 --> 00:18:57.600 Todays Speaker Community Energy: That doesn't have to be back in the, the renewable side. It could be about increasing biodiversity, or running clubs to engage with your local community. We've even had… I've seen people where they've done, sort of, like, a tea and cake club, and they've used it to fund it so that they can get their local residents together in their village hall, or wherever it is. So, that… that's the first sort of theme that you will generally come across when you start talking about community energy.

156 00:18:57.600 --> 00:19:07.050 Todays Speaker Community Energy: That's a group of people that get together, form an organization, raise some money, buy an asset, and then sell the energy from that asset to a single off-taker.

157 00:19:07.350 --> 00:19:18.519 Todays Speaker Community Energy: The other type of community energy scheme that is out there, slightly different. So here, it's about selling energy to the local people. So…

158 00:19:18.550 --> 00:19:32.879 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Energy Local is a company that, have predominantly championed this, and the idea is that, normally through a co-op, you have a number of, energy assets that could be owned

159 00:19:32.880 --> 00:19:48.750 Todays Speaker Community Energy: By your community energy group, or could be owned by a private individual, or a local farmer, or the village pub, or whatever it is. And they get together, and they form a local energy market, and what they then do is they sell their excess energy to their friends and neighbours.

160 00:19:49.090 --> 00:19:52.019 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Also to potentially local businesses.

161 00:19:52.280 --> 00:19:58.659 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And the ones that we're involved in are… tend to be around these local energy markets.

162 00:19:58.680 --> 00:20:16.679 Todays Speaker Community Energy: We get a lot of people who… who, when they start getting into community energy, the real… the real thing is that, you know, they might live in a… in a nice, you know, 1980s built house with a lovely big south-facing roof, and they can put solar panels on their roof, but their friend down the road lives in a Grade 2 listed thatch cottage.

163 00:20:16.680 --> 00:20:28.729 Todays Speaker Community Energy: with absolutely no hope of having any kind of renewable energy installed to it. You know, they're not going to be good enough, or they're not well insulated enough for heat pumps, they've got no roof space for solar panels and such like.

164 00:20:28.730 --> 00:20:37.109 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And then, like, in this scheme, they can get together, and Person A can sell their energy to Person B, and they can keep it all

165 00:20:37.240 --> 00:20:44.460 Todays Speaker Community Energy: all nice and local. And those are the schemes that, as I say, we're involved in, and that's what we're sort of going to talk through today for you.

166 00:20:49.560 --> 00:20:54.170 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So, what's the reality in terms of…

167 00:20:54.500 --> 00:20:58.110 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Where parishes and community groups are… are today.

168 00:20:59.220 --> 00:21:04.259 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Parishes, and we, you know, we deal with a lot of different parishes, parish councils and such, like.

169 00:21:04.480 --> 00:21:07.350 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Seemed to have a real… sort of…

170 00:21:07.840 --> 00:21:16.210 Todays Speaker Community Energy: feel for what's going on in their community. They seem to attract the most vibrant and sort of dynamic people who want to do something in their community.

171 00:21:16.280 --> 00:21:35.250 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And a lot of them care deeply about climate change and, how the, you know, that is affecting their community. And it could be something like if you're a coastal parish, you're worried about sea level rise, and if you're, maybe more rural, you're worried about the change to the environment and the climate and stuff.

172 00:21:35.450 --> 00:21:37.060 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Sue, yes, you have a question?

173 00:21:41.690 --> 00:21:43.059 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Actually, I think you followed it.

174 00:21:43.060 --> 00:21:49.819 Sue Burton Battle TC East Sussex: I was giving you applause that you said that the parishes attracted dynamic, hard-working people, sorry.

175 00:21:49.820 --> 00:21:52.640 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Alright, fair enough. Fair enough.

176 00:21:53.520 --> 00:22:07.060 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Okay, so the other thing, we find with parish councils is many of them already have, working groups to look at, how they can improve their environments and, combat climate change.

177 00:22:07.100 --> 00:22:26.249 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And a lot of them have the support of their local communities. What we do find is, when you start going up the tiers of government, like you get to a borough council or a county council, that's… everything becomes a lot more politicized. And there's nothing wrong with that, that's the nature of our governance system, but certainly at parish level.

178 00:22:26.250 --> 00:22:34.990 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Those sorts of concerns seem to be much more dissipated, and people are much more focused on just getting on and doing something good for their community.

179 00:22:35.360 --> 00:22:49.200 Todays Speaker Community Energy: The other thing we find with the parish councils is they do have access to quite a large pool of resources. So, they have access to potentially some land, they have access to buildings, they have access to rooftops.

180 00:22:49.200 --> 00:23:03.579 Todays Speaker Community Energy: But not only that, that, you know, that might be directly owned by the parish, but they also have access to their community who have these resources. So, in a more rural location, it may be, you've got a network of local farmers that you can engage with.

181 00:23:03.580 --> 00:23:17.890 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Or you know the person that owns the small trade in the state down the road, or you've got a village pub, or a village shop. So you have access to all these assets that potentially could be put into a pool of assets to create your renewable energy project.

182 00:23:19.660 --> 00:23:35.279 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And yet, we only find a handful of community energy schemes, sort of, up and running. Whilst there's probably a couple hundred across the UK, there's, you know, there's 8,500 parish councils in the UK, so proportionally, there's quite a small, small number of community energy projects

183 00:23:35.390 --> 00:23:37.490 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Running around the UK.

184 00:23:39.880 --> 00:23:44.039 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So what… what's… what's causing this? Okay, so…

185 00:23:44.060 --> 00:24:02.020 Todays Speaker Community Energy: the projects that we've been dealing with, we find that, you normally have a lead, so somebody hears about community energy, becomes engaged with community energy, maybe has, you know, heard something from a neighbouring parish or something like that, and they decide they want to do something, and they tend to go

186 00:24:02.090 --> 00:24:21.200 Todays Speaker Community Energy: on a journey, and this journey can take 3 to 5 years, and it's about, sort of, an exploration of understanding what community energy looks like, and then sort of looking, try, how do you create a community energy club, and sort of go for this. So the things that are sort of blockers is, you know.

187 00:24:21.750 --> 00:24:35.039 Todays Speaker Community Energy: what do I do? How do I create a community energy scheme, club, co-op, whatever version it is that you want to do? So once you've… once you've done that, it's then, how do you do this? So how do you,

188 00:24:35.720 --> 00:24:47.199 Todays Speaker Community Energy: set it up legally, how do you create funding, and where do you go and find that funding, and stuff like that. So there's the blockers in, kind of, the learning that you have to do.

189 00:24:47.200 --> 00:24:57.849 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Time is another blocker, so, you know, these things don't happen quickly, and that individual or that group that set themselves up have to be engaged for a long period of time.

190 00:24:58.420 --> 00:25:04.759 Todays Speaker Community Energy: There's a degree of risk, so it's like, oh, well, maybe we can't do it because it's going to expose the…

191 00:25:05.020 --> 00:25:10.819 Todays Speaker Community Energy: The group to too much financial risk, or we're not gonna get enough people to join our club, and stuff like that.

192 00:25:11.030 --> 00:25:26.389 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And finally, scale. If you're going to set up a community energy group, you need a certain amount of energy to be able to sell to somebody else. You can't do this with one house. You're going to need something a bit chunkier than that to be able to proceed.

193 00:25:27.410 --> 00:25:36.969 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And so what this session is, is to try and take you through the blockers, and help you unblock them, so that you can move forward with… with your projects.

194 00:25:38.680 --> 00:25:45.240 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So… what we're trying to do here at Simcot is get you a plan, okay?

195 00:25:46.310 --> 00:26:01.600 Todays Speaker Community Energy: every community energy group pretty much goes through the same learning and has to go through the same steps. And as I say, what we find at the moment, that can take between 3 to 5 years for the individuals in that group to go through those learnings and unblock those stages.

196 00:26:01.950 --> 00:26:12.659 Todays Speaker Community Energy: What we're open to do with, and hopefully with some of you guys, is create a simple, repeatable plan that is off the shelf, so that if any

197 00:26:12.660 --> 00:26:22.370 Todays Speaker Community Energy: community group decide they want to do this, we can go, here are your steps. This is… these are the things you need to do, and we can accelerate your learning. So instead of this taking…

198 00:26:22.690 --> 00:26:29.549 Todays Speaker Community Energy: 3 to 5 years, hopefully you can deliver this in 3 to 6 months. Because at the end of the day, we've got

199 00:26:29.630 --> 00:26:47.220 Todays Speaker Community Energy: you know, a climate emergency going on here, we need to get to net zero, and engaging with parishes and local communities is one of the best ways for us… us to achieve this. So, we want to keep it simple, we want to make it repeatable, and we really, really, really want to help you speed this up.

200 00:26:50.810 --> 00:27:02.799 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So, what does that look like? So, what we've titled is Community Energy as a Service. There's, there's a energy as a Service is a well-established market out there, so this is Community Energy as a Service.

201 00:27:02.880 --> 00:27:07.780 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So, what are the elements here? So, the first one is…

202 00:27:07.780 --> 00:27:17.129 Todays Speaker Community Energy: feasibility studies. What have you got in your locality that has the potential to be used as a renewable energy asset? Now.

203 00:27:17.130 --> 00:27:31.129 Todays Speaker Community Energy: I have seen some shockers on this. I got a feasibility study from one community group the other day. They had had £40,000 given to them. They'd raised grant funding of £40,000 for a feasibility study to look at this

204 00:27:31.300 --> 00:27:32.910 Todays Speaker Community Energy: particular locality.

205 00:27:33.060 --> 00:27:37.970 Todays Speaker Community Energy: The report that came back, very nice report, 120 pages long.

206 00:27:38.330 --> 00:27:41.509 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And at the end of it, there were no actions.

207 00:27:41.630 --> 00:27:56.590 Todays Speaker Community Energy: it merely said, you might want to do some solar panels, you might want to do some wind turbines, you might want to do… turn the old water mill into a… into a hydro project. But there was no actions at the end of it.

208 00:27:56.590 --> 00:28:07.420 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And the thing we need to do is, you know, if we're going to do feasibility studies, they need to have actions, they need to have things that can be done at the end of it.

209 00:28:07.910 --> 00:28:10.710 Todays Speaker Community Energy: In terms of project delivery.

210 00:28:11.390 --> 00:28:24.660 Todays Speaker Community Energy: it's not that complicated. You know, if we're going to do solar panels, if it's going on a building, then generally it's covered under permitted development. If it's going to be going into a field or on some land, then generally you're going to need a planning permission for it.

211 00:28:24.970 --> 00:28:42.279 Todays Speaker Community Energy: it's not that, you know, it's literally that simple. In terms of any renewable energy project you're putting in, you're going to have to connect that to the local energy grid, and to do that, you need to get in contact with the distribution network operator, and you need to ask permission.

212 00:28:42.330 --> 00:28:58.400 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Again, as long… if you know how to do it, it's not that complicated. You simply prepare your proposal, you submit it to them, four to six weeks later, they will come back and say yes or no. If they say no, they come back and say, it's no for this reason, and this is how you solve the problem, do you want to fund?

213 00:28:58.400 --> 00:29:11.549 Todays Speaker Community Energy: solving the problem. But, you know, there's really… I've seen projects get 3 years down the road before anybody's spoken to the DNO, and they go and speak to the DNO, and the DNO says, oh no, sorry, we can't… we don't have capacity in your area to deliver it.

214 00:29:11.590 --> 00:29:22.130 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So, you know, project management and delivery is something we can help with. Local energy market, facilitation. So.

215 00:29:22.400 --> 00:29:26.049 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Let's talk a little bit about what a local energy market is.

216 00:29:26.560 --> 00:29:38.899 Todays Speaker Community Energy: In every area, you have substations. They're generally the thing that you can see at the end of your road or in somebody's back garden, okay? And then you have, something bigger called a primary substation.

217 00:29:39.470 --> 00:29:41.510 Todays Speaker Community Energy: A local energy market

218 00:29:41.600 --> 00:29:51.400 Todays Speaker Community Energy: functions at a primary substation level. So, all the dwellings and all the businesses that are supplied by one single primary substation

219 00:29:51.490 --> 00:30:06.709 Todays Speaker Community Energy: can sell and trade their energy to each other in that locality, okay? You are typically looking at about 10,000 dwellings, okay? You… your…

220 00:30:07.010 --> 00:30:24.110 Todays Speaker Community Energy: you get businesses on top of that as well. In rural areas, you might have a few less. In, built-up areas, you might have a few more. You may well find, that, like, a larger town may have a couple of primary substations covering that larger town.

221 00:30:24.540 --> 00:30:42.459 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And the way the regulations work is that you can… you can use a particular piece of legislation with… with an energy company, and you can set up this local energy market, and then everybody that's in that geographical region can buy… can buy and sell their energy to each other.

222 00:30:42.660 --> 00:30:43.790 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Okay, so…

223 00:30:44.330 --> 00:30:50.120 Todays Speaker Community Energy: There's a lot more to it than that, but that's… that's basically the premise for it, and that's the definition.

224 00:30:50.340 --> 00:30:59.799 Todays Speaker Community Energy: what we have found is there's a couple of community energy groups. We've got one near, Stansted Airport, and there's a couple of primary substations that's covering the area that they want to function in.

225 00:31:00.370 --> 00:31:15.849 Todays Speaker Community Energy: You can have more than one primary substation, but what you have to have is a club for one, and a club for the other. So you might have it branded as one organization, but in terms of the people that are actually going to be buying and selling their energy to each other, they all have to be in the same primary substation.

226 00:31:16.620 --> 00:31:28.889 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And then the other thing that… that, sort of, we can help with is… is training, so we can, you know, teach people how to do this themselves. We've got some toolkits that we can share, so sort of standard,

227 00:31:29.040 --> 00:31:48.339 Todays Speaker Community Energy: processes in terms of how to do things, and also we can help you build capacity, and that comes in two forms. Sometimes it's about, you know, training the people to do this themselves, and sometimes it's people saying, we would like to outsource this part of the process to you to go and do it for us.

228 00:31:48.450 --> 00:31:53.540 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And we can help with… with both of those, sorts of… choices.

229 00:31:54.020 --> 00:31:57.250 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So let's… let's talk about one that we've… we've done.

230 00:31:57.900 --> 00:32:11.050 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So this is White Cone Village Hall, which is in Essex. We had, a very nice, leader of the parish council there, Jane Taylor, who, engaged with us and basically came to us and said.

231 00:32:11.250 --> 00:32:21.989 Todays Speaker Community Energy: we want to go completely green on our Village Hall. So, we went along and did a feasibility study for her, turned out we could get about 30 solar panels onto the village hall.

232 00:32:22.100 --> 00:32:26.959 Todays Speaker Community Energy: They also wanted to decarbonize their heating, so we looked to install a heat pump for them.

233 00:32:27.060 --> 00:32:36.720 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And then they wanted a car charger. That's just a standard residential car charger, because there was no car charging facilities within the village.

234 00:32:36.790 --> 00:32:55.959 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And then we also did some battery storage for them so that they could store their solar energy, because the halls used, intermittently. What they wanted to do is, when the hall wasn't in use, they wanted to store the energy so that then when people turned up in the hall, they could then take advantage of their energy. So what we've got there is a 20 kilowatt,

235 00:32:55.980 --> 00:32:58.280 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Battery storage system for them.

236 00:32:58.600 --> 00:33:08.960 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So we went along, we did all the site surveys for them and such like, and then we, we recruited prices, and then we went and installed, this for them. So how's this worked out for them?

237 00:33:09.380 --> 00:33:22.990 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Okay, so the solar panels was about £12,000 to install, the battery was around £8,000 to install, and the air source heat pump, including the plumbing upgrades, was about £12,500 to install.

238 00:33:23.230 --> 00:33:33.769 Todays Speaker Community Energy: We were able to get them the bus grant for the air source heat pump, so straight away, we were able to get them a £7,500 grant towards the cost, of the heat pump.

239 00:33:33.870 --> 00:33:53.189 Todays Speaker Community Energy: VAT is payable depending on the, who owns the building. So, if the building is owned by a charity, then there is no VAT to be payable upon, upon the installation. Obviously, if it's owned by, another organization, then VAT is potentially chargeable, but hopefully you would be able to claim.

240 00:33:53.210 --> 00:33:55.049 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Claim the pat… that back.

241 00:33:55.390 --> 00:33:59.939 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So, the other thing that we look to do is, how else could we minimize the cost

242 00:34:00.440 --> 00:34:11.429 Todays Speaker Community Energy: In this particular instance, the Village Hall was due for a roof replacement, and they'd been raising funds for about 5 years for a new roof on the Village Hall.

243 00:34:11.429 --> 00:34:26.049 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So what we did is we said, well, let's do the two projects together, because there are cost savings that could be had here. So we shared the scaffolding cost in terms of the roof replacement, and also, we looked to put the solar panels in the roof, rather than on the roof.

244 00:34:26.050 --> 00:34:42.909 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So there was a significant reduction in cost, in terms of the re-roofing, because instead of having to re-roof the whole roof, they just went round the edge of our solar panels. So that made it a big cost saving, and part of the cost savings that they made on their roof then helped cover the cost of doing… doing the solar panel job.

245 00:34:43.830 --> 00:34:56.579 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So they've had this now for about 18 months, and how they're doing. So, in the first year, they went from having a £2,000 a year gas and electricity bill, so that's what the parish was spending.

246 00:34:56.929 --> 00:35:11.599 Todays Speaker Community Energy: To now having no energy bill, and generating £1,000 a year worth of revenue from the solar, as it stands at the moment. And that's coming from a mixture of selling the energy back to the grid.

247 00:35:11.700 --> 00:35:29.039 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And it turns out there was one or two, people in the village that, had electric vehicles and was struggling with charging, and basically popped round and charged their vehicle up. They… I think they charge about 40p a kilowatt hour for… for somebody to charge up on their car charger, and it's all automated, you go along.

248 00:35:29.040 --> 00:35:32.750 Todays Speaker Community Energy: You tap your credit card on the little device, you plug it in.

249 00:35:32.750 --> 00:35:36.900 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And it bills you for the amount of energy that you're… you're using it, and then it sends the…

250 00:35:37.260 --> 00:35:45.680 Todays Speaker Community Energy: the value of that transaction to the community… to the parish council, less a commission fee for them running the service for you.

251 00:35:45.700 --> 00:35:57.829 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So, as I say, they had a £2,000 a year energy bill, that's gone, and now they've got a £1,000 a year surplus. We are also looking at some other opportunities that are potentially coming along.

252 00:35:57.830 --> 00:36:06.890 Todays Speaker Community Energy: They're a little bit more complicated, probably won't go into too much detail here. There's things called, aggregation services that are potentially there to help with that.

253 00:36:06.980 --> 00:36:22.870 Todays Speaker Community Energy: It's about buying and selling your energy at different times a day. But we hope that, you know, if we can get that set up for them, there may be another £500 a year they can earn out of the system. So, that's a £3,000 a year saving as it stands, at the moment.

254 00:36:25.180 --> 00:36:28.580 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So, how does this… how does a community energy system

255 00:36:29.010 --> 00:36:41.570 Todays Speaker Community Energy: club work. So, first of all, you need… you need an anchor site, okay? So, this will be, maybe a council office, a school, some sort of, maybe,

256 00:36:41.680 --> 00:36:57.000 Todays Speaker Community Energy: community housing situation, any community buildings, farms, a landowner, something like that. So you need one site that can create a minimum of, 10,000 kilowatt hours a year, so that's roughly a 10 kilowatt solar panel site.

257 00:36:57.020 --> 00:37:12.109 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Okay? And that's your anchor site. Once you've got one of those, then you can look to start to create your club, and then you… it will kind of snowball. It can kind of… as people get interested in what's going on, and the fact that they're buying and selling their energy to their friends, it can… it can escalate.

258 00:37:12.890 --> 00:37:18.060 Todays Speaker Community Energy: But to set a club up, you don't necessarily need to build the asset yourself.

259 00:37:18.660 --> 00:37:33.019 Todays Speaker Community Energy: you know, what we normally suggest is, let's start by having a look at what's in your catchment area, okay? So, have you got anybody with a large solar array? Is there a warehouse down the road that's just put a 50kW system in?

260 00:37:33.020 --> 00:37:39.239 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And, you know, do you know the owner? Do you know the people in it? Is there any farmers with an anaerobic digestion system?

261 00:37:39.240 --> 00:37:44.530 Todays Speaker Community Energy: around. Is there anybody that's built a wind farm or a wind, a solar array?

262 00:37:44.530 --> 00:38:03.179 Todays Speaker Community Energy: you know, on the ground near you. So, to get going, it's not necessarily about, it's not necessarily about having to raise lots of money and build something. You may just be able to, find a partner that's already in your area, and again, get everything, up and running that way.

263 00:38:05.030 --> 00:38:27.829 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So then we need to talk about the relationships you're going to need to have with other organizations. So at the moment, the only company, organization that can set up an Energy Local market is a company called Energy Local. A lovely lady called Mary has come up with this idea. She's a very clever lady, I think she's got degrees in physics and stuff like that, and she figured this out, how to do this.

264 00:38:28.290 --> 00:38:35.769 Todays Speaker Community Energy: about 4 or 5 years ago. If you look at Energy Local, you can see all their clubs that they've got set up, and kind of the business model that they work.

265 00:38:36.010 --> 00:38:50.040 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And you need an energy company, okay? So, the way that you buy and sell the energy, with your neighbors is you set up something called a power purchase agreement, okay? PPA. You'll hear this quite a lot.

266 00:38:50.650 --> 00:39:04.330 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And what that PPA does, it says, to the generators, it says how much they're going to sell their energy for, and then to the off-takers, the people buying the energy, it says how much they're going to buy that energy for, okay?

267 00:39:04.450 --> 00:39:13.739 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And you set up this PPA, and the club, the energy, your co-op, or whatever club you've set up, are the ones that decide the prices.

268 00:39:14.010 --> 00:39:30.970 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And then you engage with an energy provider. 100 Green is the company that Local, Energy Local are using at the moment, but Octopus have done this in the past, and we've got a couple of other energy suppliers that are interested in doing with this… with us.

269 00:39:31.210 --> 00:39:41.119 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And they basically then do the billing for you. So, the people selling the energy, and the people buying the energy, both have to belong to the same energy company.

270 00:39:41.240 --> 00:39:50.360 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And they both have to have smart meters, because that's how they track the amount of energy that's produced, and that's how they track the amount of energy that's consumed.

271 00:39:50.640 --> 00:40:09.160 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And that's basically how you do it. It's a fully automatic system. Once you've got it up and running, the energy company knows what's being produced, knows what people are consuming, and will just send your bill out. And when you get your bill, it will say, this is what you've bought from your community energy club, and this is what you've bought from the grid.

272 00:40:09.440 --> 00:40:19.940 Todays Speaker Community Energy: you are never going to get 100% consumption from your community energy group. It's… it's not designed to do that. It's designed to…

273 00:40:20.050 --> 00:40:30.060 Todays Speaker Community Energy: encourage people down the, the sort of net zero, route, and help people get renewable energy assets installed and, and, and such, like…

274 00:40:31.830 --> 00:40:51.469 Todays Speaker Community Energy: The other thing that we need to talk about is how you structure your club and the ownership of it. Most of them are done through co-ops. A co-op is a legal entity, and it basically says that, you get… if you're a member, you get, like, one vote in the club. So all members, whether you're… you know, you could be a generator generating

275 00:40:51.900 --> 00:41:02.699 Todays Speaker Community Energy: 150,000 kilowatt hours a year, and you could be the off-takers, each taking 1,000 kilowatt hours a year, but everybody in the club gets one vote. So it's a very democratic way to do it, and it has to have

276 00:41:03.000 --> 00:41:14.010 Todays Speaker Community Energy: annual meetings, and the minutes have to be published, and all this sort of stuff, so it's a very clear and transparent way to do it. There are other versions that are out there as well, community interest companies, community land trusts.

277 00:41:14.160 --> 00:41:24.839 Todays Speaker Community Energy: have both been used. There are also some people that choose to run it through private limited companies, just from the point of view of the structure and how it's run.

278 00:41:24.990 --> 00:41:28.070 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So there's lots of, different ways of setting this up.

279 00:41:28.350 --> 00:41:34.660 Todays Speaker Community Energy: When you do set one of these community companies up, then very often you need to figure out what you're going to do if there's any

280 00:41:34.790 --> 00:41:37.760 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Profit from it, if there's any excess revenue.

281 00:41:37.850 --> 00:41:57.220 Todays Speaker Community Energy: As I say, some companies will choose to, or some communities will choose to reinvest that in doing more projects, and others will choose to pull it into other things that the community decide is important. So it could be, you know, biodiversity is very common these days, so they might buy a couple of acres of land.

282 00:41:57.220 --> 00:42:13.909 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And maybe set up a community allotment, program, or they might buy the land and say they want to, you know, rewild it, or however… however it goes. So, but that… that's for the club to decide what it wants to do with… with the revenue and the earnings that it can have from this.

283 00:42:14.460 --> 00:42:25.160 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And then the last thing that we probably need to talk about is how you face this. So what we tend to find is that there's a lot of excitement around the first initial project.

284 00:42:25.650 --> 00:42:29.359 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And once that's up and running, then,

285 00:42:29.460 --> 00:42:34.859 Todays Speaker Community Energy: it tends to tail off a little bit. The excitement is kind of over, the newness is kind of over.

286 00:42:34.900 --> 00:42:52.040 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And one of the things that we're working with a number of clubs is how to keep that sort of fresh, but also scale. So, an example would be, can… is there some way of putting an offering out to the… the village to say, those people that are interested in having the

287 00:42:52.040 --> 00:42:57.720 Todays Speaker Community Energy: renewable energy installed on their own homes, whether or not they can join the club as both a generator.

288 00:42:57.940 --> 00:43:12.670 Todays Speaker Community Energy: and as an off-taker. So you may find a situation where there is no community building or no community land in a particular village. That doesn't preclude you from having a community energy club, it just means you've got to think about it in a different way, and you might have to scale it in a different way.

289 00:43:16.750 --> 00:43:17.510 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Right.

290 00:43:17.810 --> 00:43:28.689 Todays Speaker Community Energy: how do you fund this? Because that's… that's the first question that everybody comes… comes back and says, okay, well, we don't have any money in our… in our community to be able to do this, so how… how are we going to do it?

291 00:43:29.210 --> 00:43:30.350 Todays Speaker Community Energy: the…

292 00:43:30.710 --> 00:43:37.779 Todays Speaker Community Energy: There are grants, okay, but grants aren't going to be for capital works. Grants are going to be for feasibility works.

293 00:43:38.200 --> 00:43:40.940 Todays Speaker Community Energy: It is generally considered more risky.

294 00:43:41.020 --> 00:43:58.310 Todays Speaker Community Energy: to do, a feasibility study than it is to actually look at producing a plan and start trying to build an asset. So there are some… there are some grants out there. Community entities moving rapidly up the, political agenda. There's… there's a lot of interest in it.

295 00:43:58.690 --> 00:44:05.909 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So the Great British Energy, the bank that the government has set up to help fund this, has just recruited a new director.

296 00:44:06.100 --> 00:44:16.919 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And this director has a background in community energy projects, and he's been tasked with the delivery of 1,000 community energy projects in the UK by 2030.

297 00:44:17.290 --> 00:44:22.399 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Now, the bank's going to lend money, it's not going to give money away.

298 00:44:22.620 --> 00:44:29.140 Todays Speaker Community Energy: But, you know, he's been tasked with delivering a thousand projects, so there's a big opportunity at the moment to be, sort of.

299 00:44:29.440 --> 00:44:37.899 Todays Speaker Community Energy: first in that queue to see how, you know, working with great opportunities to see how they're potentially going to help this. But you should be able to…

300 00:44:37.950 --> 00:44:53.020 Todays Speaker Community Energy: get some small volume of grant to help, you know, fund your feasibility of the study at the start. Essex County Council, at the moment are funding about 8 projects. They're giving away about £3,000 to 5,000 pounds per project.

301 00:44:53.360 --> 00:44:56.969 Todays Speaker Community Energy: To help the groups get set up, get the legal structures set up.

302 00:44:57.030 --> 00:45:15.240 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And get some feasibility study going on. So you don't need a vast amount of money, and you know, the lottery fund apparently is now looking at community energy projects and stuff, so there are some grants, but it's not going to cover building things. It's only ever really going to cover, feasibility studies and that sort of stuff.

303 00:45:15.910 --> 00:45:35.160 Todays Speaker Community Energy: In terms of actually finding some money to build something, then there's a couple of, different ways you can do that. So, the one that seems to be coming very popular at the moment is something called asset finance. You would probably know this as a higher purchase contract, or a lease asset finance agreement.

304 00:45:35.170 --> 00:45:38.909 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And essentially what you do is,

305 00:45:39.180 --> 00:45:53.979 Todays Speaker Community Energy: You borrow some money over a very long period of time, and the idea is that the amount of money that you are paying for the asset, is less than the amount of money that you can make by having the asset in play.

306 00:45:53.980 --> 00:46:05.340 Todays Speaker Community Energy: A lot of this will be driven by how you construct your PPA, okay? So, you might construct a PPA that says, for the first 5 years, we're going to be charging

307 00:46:05.530 --> 00:46:13.090 Todays Speaker Community Energy: 20p per kilowatt hour for our energy, okay? And we're gonna gen… and we're gonna generate all this… this extra money.

308 00:46:13.250 --> 00:46:18.550 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And we're going to use that to cover our asset finance. And once we've paid off our asset finance.

309 00:46:18.850 --> 00:46:30.539 Todays Speaker Community Energy: then what we're gonna do, we're gonna… we're gonna decide as our community that now we're gonna drop our price to 15p, or 10p, or 12p, or whatever the number is that your community decides that it wants to do.

310 00:46:30.870 --> 00:46:43.600 Todays Speaker Community Energy: If you look at the Energy Local website, they've… all their clubs are listed, and if you go into… you can go into each club, and in each club, it will tell you what their PPA is, so you can see all the different versions that… that are out there.

311 00:46:43.600 --> 00:46:57.980 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Some clubs work on a fuel poverty mindset, so they do it as cheaply as they can. Some clubs, work on it differently in terms of looking to generate revenue so they can do other projects, but that's up to the club to decide.

312 00:46:59.080 --> 00:47:12.860 Todays Speaker Community Energy: The other way that you can potentially raise, finance is through community shares and bonds, okay? A lot of the big projects out there, this is… this is the business model that they use to raise their money.

313 00:47:12.860 --> 00:47:28.310 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So what they do is they create their club, they go out to the community, they say, we want to raise 100,000, we want to raise a quarter of a million pounds, and we're going to do that by issuing bonds and shares, alright? And then those bonds, people buy them, it's like in any investment.

314 00:47:28.430 --> 00:47:40.390 Todays Speaker Community Energy: you get the money to go away and do your capital project, and then, you basically have to give a return to your investors on that. But again, that's a very, very popular way to do it.

315 00:47:40.500 --> 00:47:59.890 Todays Speaker Community Energy: There are also, ethical banks out there that are very keen to get involved in, community energy projects. Trudos and Ecology are, are both, very keen. There's another one called Lendology. We've, we've only come across them recently, but again, they're very keen to… to get involved in, in community energy.

316 00:47:59.960 --> 00:48:01.130 Todays Speaker Community Energy: projects.

317 00:48:01.340 --> 00:48:11.060 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And then you… one of the other things you need to think about when setting up your clubs is how you're going to do the ongoing management of it, and… and…

318 00:48:11.160 --> 00:48:23.950 Todays Speaker Community Energy: manage your revenue. So, you know, you're going to need to submit books, you're going to need to potentially maybe have some insurance on it, particularly if you've got assets that you own and stuff like that. So you just need to be mindful that when you're thinking about

319 00:48:24.000 --> 00:48:33.769 Todays Speaker Community Energy: your business model, that you're taking into account. It's not just a case of building these things, you've got… you're going to have running costs associated with them, as well.

320 00:48:34.910 --> 00:48:39.220 Todays Speaker Community Energy: If you want help with funding, then,

321 00:48:39.330 --> 00:48:57.940 Todays Speaker Community Energy: this group, Community Climate Action, and this gentleman, Jules, Julian, he's actually, was part of the great collaboration. I believe, Graeme was one of your directors until not so long ago. He is very, very good at helping community groups, find funding.

322 00:48:58.030 --> 00:49:17.270 Todays Speaker Community Energy: We don't claim to know everything here at SimCOT. Our focus is very much about feasibility, about construction, about building things, and helping you run them. When we find people that know more than us, and Jules does know more than us when it comes to funding and these sorts of structures, we are more than happy to recommend

323 00:49:18.500 --> 00:49:36.279 Todays Speaker Community Energy: recommend these organizations. So, if this is something you'd want to go down the route of, and you talk to us about, you know, maybe helping you with your feasibility study, we are going to be signposting you back to Jules when it comes to helping you find finance and stuff like that, because he is an expert on that and knows far more

324 00:49:36.310 --> 00:49:40.649 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Than we do about how to do this, so he's a very, very good contact in this.

325 00:49:43.450 --> 00:49:44.679 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So, what are the…

326 00:49:44.780 --> 00:49:56.249 Todays Speaker Community Energy: what are your risks when you're thinking about setting up a club, and how do you… and how do you mitigate that? So, the first risk is… is low liquidity. We don't have any money, is the short version of that.

327 00:49:56.510 --> 00:50:09.139 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So how do you mitigate against that? Well, it's all about these anchor loads. If you can get these sites, and as I say, they don't have to be sites that you build, they could be existing sites out there.

328 00:50:09.240 --> 00:50:21.650 Todays Speaker Community Energy: to agree to be part of the club, you've got generation. If you've got generation, you've got something that can be sold, that can be bought by your community. So that… that generates you

329 00:50:21.710 --> 00:50:26.340 Todays Speaker Community Energy: a revenue. Once you have and can demonstrate what your revenues are going to be.

330 00:50:26.360 --> 00:50:40.649 Todays Speaker Community Energy: then you can talk to, lenders in… whether that's asset finance or one of these ethical banks, or you can put your business case together to go back to your community to do a share or bonds offering. So, you know.

331 00:50:40.670 --> 00:50:58.150 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Your business plan and finding your existing local suppliers can be very important, and if you haven't got existing local suppliers, then doing a thorough feasibility study and knowing what your generation's going to be and knowing what your off-takers are going to be, will allow you to basically find money.

332 00:50:59.080 --> 00:51:06.210 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Regularity, compliance, or complexity, sorry, This is not rocket science.

333 00:51:06.460 --> 00:51:10.460 Todays Speaker Community Energy: But it's also not the most straightforward thing in the world. You know, if you Google

334 00:51:10.580 --> 00:51:13.500 Todays Speaker Community Energy: community energy at the moment. Like I say, you'll find

335 00:51:13.760 --> 00:51:21.399 Todays Speaker Community Energy: 20 different versions of this, and they will all tell you their version is the right version. And, as I said before, there's no real right version.

336 00:51:21.630 --> 00:51:26.339 Todays Speaker Community Energy: But having the right partners to work with can massively,

337 00:51:27.330 --> 00:51:37.920 Todays Speaker Community Energy: resolve this for you in terms of the complexity. So, people like us, people like Jules, people like Energy Local, we're all people that can, you know, smooth this out and make this much, much smoother for you.

338 00:51:38.440 --> 00:51:40.870 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Grid constraints, so…

339 00:51:41.000 --> 00:51:56.509 Todays Speaker Community Energy: as I said before, the number of projects where they spent so much time and effort doing feasibility studies, and figuring out what they can do, and how much solar they can put here, and how much wind they can put there, without talking to the distribution network operators, the DNOs, to figure out if they can actually connect it to the grid.

340 00:51:56.530 --> 00:52:08.359 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So, early engagement with your DNOs is vital. It's not difficult, it's not complicated, you just need to know the right forms to fill out and how to fill them out. Again, people like us are…

341 00:52:08.360 --> 00:52:17.590 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Experts at this, so we can help you, help you with this, and make sure that if you do have a project, it's scaled to what the grid capacity can actually take in the locality.

342 00:52:18.280 --> 00:52:31.549 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And finally, trust. So this is… this is trust with your community. How does your community trust you, particularly when you start talking about changing energy suppliers and buying and selling energy from… from other people in your community?

343 00:52:31.550 --> 00:52:41.279 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Well, that's going to be your governance, and your transparency on that governance. This is why a lot of the clubs end up as co-ops. You know, co-ops are one member, one vote.

344 00:52:41.530 --> 00:52:45.279 Todays Speaker Community Energy: That can, at scale, be a more tricky

345 00:52:45.400 --> 00:53:00.050 Todays Speaker Community Energy: structured to manage and run, which is why also there's community interest companies and community land trusts that are getting involved in this. But your annual general meeting, the publishing of your accounts, a clear

346 00:53:01.510 --> 00:53:19.679 Todays Speaker Community Energy: diagram of who's… who's in charge of this, who's running this, and understanding how, when you join your community energy club, your… your voice is going to count. That transparency and that governance is key to building that trust in your community. If you've got that, then these things can scale very, very quickly.

347 00:53:22.150 --> 00:53:27.870 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So, this is the roadmap we would like to work with, in terms of working with you guys. As I say.

348 00:53:28.590 --> 00:53:36.259 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Typically, 3 to 5 years, from the time somebody gets this idea to the kind of something… something happens in their community.

349 00:53:36.360 --> 00:53:53.970 Todays Speaker Community Energy: What we'd like to do is bring this down to 3 to 6 months. So, we would like to help you do your feasibility study and, get set up, and… and engage with people like Jules and Energy Local and all the other partners we're going to need to engage with, so you've actually got a viable business proposition.

350 00:53:54.120 --> 00:54:06.289 Todays Speaker Community Energy: At the end of… end of that 6 months. 6 to 18 months, then, we'd like to help you establish your pilot projects, so hopefully we'll help you find some funding, and actually get your local energy market up and running.

351 00:54:06.350 --> 00:54:18.779 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And then key here is… is… is scale. How do we… how do we keep this going? How do we expand it, to… to cover as many of the people in your community as wish to be part of it?

352 00:54:19.050 --> 00:54:32.629 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And then finally, how… how can we create, sort of, centres of excellence for community energy, and how can we then use those to share the learnings out to the other communities, around there? As I say, this is a very…

353 00:54:33.920 --> 00:54:45.390 Todays Speaker Community Energy: political hot potato at the moment, from the point of view that the government really wants to get a lot of these community energy groups, up and running, because they've… they've figured out that basically

354 00:54:45.420 --> 00:55:04.750 Todays Speaker Community Energy: This is how you get people to… to engage with and move towards net zero. There's a lot of blockers in people's mind about climate change and net zero, and the cost of it, and how to transition, and stuff like that. And if your friends and neighbors have done it, and your friends and neighbors are talking to you about it, then you… you have a real chance to

355 00:55:04.830 --> 00:55:05.999 Todays Speaker Community Energy: To progress this.

356 00:55:07.160 --> 00:55:21.570 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So what we're looking for today, if you're interested, we're looking for some pioneers. So we've got, as I say, 8 groups currently, progressing through, Essex, but we are looking for some other… some other

357 00:55:21.710 --> 00:55:28.480 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Willing volunteers, pioneers, to help join this, to help us get this plan fully finalized and sorted out.

358 00:55:28.660 --> 00:55:34.580 Todays Speaker Community Energy: That QR code goes to a landing page where you can put your details in if you're interested.

359 00:55:34.930 --> 00:55:40.530 Todays Speaker Community Energy: The thing to bear in mind, if you're going to join us now, then,

360 00:55:40.720 --> 00:55:48.619 Todays Speaker Community Energy: this is not… this is not a finished article. We're looking for people who are prepared to put the extra time and effort in to help us get the plan

361 00:55:48.690 --> 00:56:06.199 Todays Speaker Community Energy: To where it needs to be. If you're… if you're thinking that perhaps you're… you're not ready to… to be a pioneer on this, and you'd like to be, an early adopter, or… or even, you know, you're thinking maybe we would do this in a year, 18 months, you'd like to be one of, sort of, our community anchors in terms of the scale.

362 00:56:06.200 --> 00:56:19.570 Todays Speaker Community Energy: please still scan the QR code, please still fill in your details, and just, you know, just say where you sit in this scale. If you're up for it, and you want to have a go, and work with these other new communities that are all trying to pioneer this, that's fine.

363 00:56:19.570 --> 00:56:26.930 Todays Speaker Community Energy: If you think you'd rather wait 6 months or a year, then, as I say, we're more than happy to sort of work with you and keep you in the loop in terms of what's going on.

364 00:56:27.010 --> 00:56:33.289 Todays Speaker Community Energy: But, as I say, if you scan that QR code, it will take you to a landing page, and you can put your details in, and then we can have a little chat.

365 00:56:34.720 --> 00:56:40.410 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And that's it, ladies and gentlemen. So, that's me, that's my company, there's my details.

366 00:56:40.620 --> 00:56:48.689 Todays Speaker Community Energy: that's what we're planning to do for you. I'll get this presentation over to Graham, so he can put it out as he see fits.

367 00:56:49.300 --> 00:56:51.799 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Yeah, so, do we have any questions?

368 00:56:53.520 --> 00:57:16.120 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Darren, thank you so much for that. I think it was a very clear explanation. I suspect it's going to generate a lot of questions. Anyone who wants to raise their hand to ask a question, I've got one so far for John Bitterly, and there are others. I think, given the number of questions in the chat session as well, I'll probably alternate from one to the next.

369 00:57:16.140 --> 00:57:22.789 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: So, if we'd like to start first with John Bitterly, if you could let us know your question, please?

370 00:57:22.790 --> 00:57:39.040 Jon Bitterley Parish: Yeah, typically, in your experience, what is the sort of cost to the consumer of energy that comes out of one of these projects? I mean, electricity's, what, 23 to 30 pence a unit at the moment? What are the co-ops, sort of.

371 00:57:39.800 --> 00:57:41.380 Jon Bitterley Parish: Rough figures selling.

372 00:57:41.970 --> 00:57:46.269 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Average, I would say, is about 15p.

373 00:57:46.520 --> 00:57:55.280 Todays Speaker Community Energy: The cheapest, I've seen on Energy Local at the moment, I think, is 6.67 pence that they've decided to…

374 00:57:55.460 --> 00:58:11.529 Todays Speaker Community Energy: to do it for, and I've seen them, up at the 18-19p sort of kilowatt hour rate. It all depends on what the group decides is its function. Is it there to help mitigate fuel poverty?

375 00:58:11.730 --> 00:58:27.630 Todays Speaker Community Energy: In which case you go low? Or is it there to… to do other… provide other services, in which case you would potentially go a little bit higher, because you're looking to generate revenues that can generate profits, so that you can invest that profit back into other activities?

376 00:58:28.340 --> 00:58:33.780 Jon Bitterley Parish: Yeah, one sort of thing I'd just like to float out there. For…

377 00:58:34.670 --> 00:58:40.590 Jon Bitterley Parish: Communities that get fixed community benefit funds from solar developers.

378 00:58:40.810 --> 00:58:58.750 Jon Bitterley Parish: which are not particularly useful, because they're usually not enough money to do anything major. Yes. That could be… this may be a good source… a community benefit fund may be a good source of funding, something like this, to get… turn it from a not very useful amount of money into an ongoing benefit to a community.

379 00:58:59.030 --> 00:59:03.890 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Yeah, it can be a false… it can be a false multiplier, particularly,

380 00:59:04.830 --> 00:59:17.169 Todays Speaker Community Energy: It does depend on the geographical location in terms of where it is. So, you know, you might find… like in Essex, we've got some beautiful old villages, which literally every other house is a listed building in it.

381 00:59:17.170 --> 00:59:22.140 Jon Bitterley Parish: And it's really tricky to do anything for there. So these sorts of groups can work very well when.

382 00:59:22.140 --> 00:59:29.529 Todays Speaker Community Energy: It's the school, sports hall that's had all the solar panels put on, but the schools don't use that much.

383 00:59:29.530 --> 00:59:29.910 Jon Bitterley Parish: Yeah.

384 00:59:29.910 --> 00:59:37.040 Todays Speaker Community Energy: that much energy, so it can be a real false multiplier. But yeah, if you've got those sorts of funds, they can be good seed funding to get these sort of projects up and running.

385 00:59:37.270 --> 00:59:38.310 Jon Bitterley Parish: Okay, thank you.

386 00:59:39.550 --> 00:59:53.880 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Let me just switch to the chat for the next question, which I happen to see. The first question came from Dave Faulkner, and he's also one of the people with his hands raised, so maybe, Dave, you could ask your question from the chat, and then ask any other question you've got, please.

387 00:59:55.440 --> 00:59:57.680 Dave Faulkner The Green Group Almeley: Okay, thank you. Yeah,

388 00:59:57.940 --> 01:00:06.900 Dave Faulkner The Green Group Almeley: Thanks, Darren. Good presentation. The question in the chat, I think it was just to do with the con… the example you

389 01:00:07.550 --> 01:00:12.540 Dave Faulkner The Green Group Almeley: Used there, and it was just about… you mentioned selling the EV power.

390 01:00:13.520 --> 01:00:18.460 Dave Faulkner The Green Group Almeley: Presumably, that's done through a third party, that was just the question there.

391 01:00:18.740 --> 01:00:30.530 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Yes, so, the parish already had a card provider. I think WorldPay was their card provider, which they used to take card payments for, like, booking the hall and that sort of stuff.

392 01:00:30.680 --> 01:00:42.789 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And then the, the brand of EV charger we got had an app system, and they basically just… we just dotted the I's for them, so we connected their card payer to their app system.

393 01:00:42.790 --> 01:00:52.920 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And then I think we just stuck, like, a little label on it saying how much it was, and when the user turned up, there's a QR code on the side of the car charger. They scan the QR code, and they…

394 01:00:53.230 --> 01:01:04.050 Todays Speaker Community Energy: I think they pay online, and then the, basically, WorldPay and the provider of the car charger, they take a commission, and the rest of the money then goes back to the parish.

395 01:01:04.640 --> 01:01:11.180 Dave Faulkner The Green Group Almeley: Good. Just about did it themselves, then. Very good. Anyway, the main question was to do with…

396 01:01:11.930 --> 01:01:16.239 Dave Faulkner The Green Group Almeley: As I understand it, you have to have the same supplier

397 01:01:17.970 --> 01:01:21.330 Dave Faulkner The Green Group Almeley: For the… all the sites, the generators, and the offtakes.

398 01:01:21.330 --> 01:01:21.860 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Correct.

399 01:01:21.890 --> 01:01:24.209 Dave Faulkner The Green Group Almeley: And currently that's 100 green.

400 01:01:24.610 --> 01:01:27.439 Todays Speaker Community Energy: That's the one that, Local Energy is currently working.

401 01:01:27.440 --> 01:01:29.030 Dave Faulkner The Green Group Almeley: through Energy Local.

402 01:01:29.030 --> 01:01:29.630 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Yeah.

403 01:01:29.860 --> 01:01:30.750 Dave Faulkner The Green Group Almeley: And…

404 01:01:31.360 --> 01:01:47.989 Dave Faulkner The Green Group Almeley: Do they do anything different on tariffs? Because I've looked at the 100 green tariffs, and they are generally more expensive than anybody else, so you're immediately on the back foot of moving from what could be your cheapest tariff as a potential off-taker.

405 01:01:47.990 --> 01:01:48.959 Jon Bitterley Parish: I'm fine, thanks.

406 01:01:48.960 --> 01:01:51.250 Dave Faulkner The Green Group Almeley: Having to have a more expensive.

407 01:01:51.660 --> 01:01:52.350 Jon Bitterley Parish: No, but I…

408 01:01:52.350 --> 01:01:53.690 Dave Faulkner The Green Group Almeley: basic tariff.

409 01:01:54.070 --> 01:02:00.619 Dave Faulkner The Green Group Almeley: That you've then got to start clawing back the difference through the match tariff that you get from the generator.

410 01:02:01.270 --> 01:02:02.960 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Okay, so…

411 01:02:03.930 --> 01:02:18.919 Todays Speaker Community Energy: you need to be… you need to be very careful about, if you're setting up a community energy club, that you think, everybody is going to be better off as a result of… of… of doing this. If that's your aim, you're going to need to set a very low

412 01:02:19.050 --> 01:02:23.529 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Selling price and a very low buying price.

413 01:02:24.030 --> 01:02:24.800 Todays Speaker Community Energy: the…

414 01:02:25.480 --> 01:02:33.860 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: the way that, 100 Green or any energy supplier, is going to make money, and therefore want to be involved in these schemes.

415 01:02:33.900 --> 01:02:39.769 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Is they want to sell you the other energy that you're not going to be able to buy from

416 01:02:39.920 --> 01:02:41.409 Todays Speaker Community Energy: your community group.

417 01:02:41.510 --> 01:02:47.139 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And typically, the way that 100 Green have done it is they do a 3-tier,

418 01:02:47.450 --> 01:02:53.659 Todays Speaker Community Energy: a three-tier tariff, so there's an overnight rate, a standard rate, and a peak rate, okay?

419 01:02:53.670 --> 01:02:55.180 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And…

420 01:02:55.190 --> 01:03:09.490 Todays Speaker Community Energy: the issue that you have around that, in terms of engaging with your community and telling people they're going to save money, it all comes down to personal choice. It's when do you do certain tasks. If you're going to come in from work at 5 o'clock in the evening.

421 01:03:09.490 --> 01:03:21.680 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And put a load of washing on, and turn the dishwasher on, and put the tumble dryer on, and turn the telly on, and turn all the lights on, and turn the heating on, then you are going to be spunking a whole load of money up the wall very, very quickly.

422 01:03:21.780 --> 01:03:31.669 Todays Speaker Community Energy: If you… and this is one of the things that, you know, when you're doing your community energy groups, you need to make clear to people, is this is about helping you help yourself.

423 01:03:31.780 --> 01:03:34.690 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So, if you're going to put your dishwasher on at

424 01:03:35.090 --> 01:03:42.960 Todays Speaker Community Energy: 10 o'clock at night, when you go onto your cheap rate, rather than at 8 o'clock at night, when you're on your peak rate, you're gonna save a whole load of money yourself.

425 01:03:43.220 --> 01:03:44.080 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So…

426 01:03:44.310 --> 01:04:00.129 Todays Speaker Community Energy: you just need to be mindful about creating your groups with the assumption everybody's going to save money. Personal behaviour and personal choice goes a very, very long way to those people that will… will save a lot of… a lot of money.

427 01:04:00.130 --> 01:04:04.639 Dave Faulkner The Green Group Almeley: normal pitch to, to get new off-takers to the, join the energy?

428 01:04:05.330 --> 01:04:06.180 Dave Faulkner The Green Group Almeley: Club.

429 01:04:06.850 --> 01:04:07.720 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So…

430 01:04:07.720 --> 01:04:14.010 Dave Faulkner The Green Group Almeley: That they're going to get local energy, because if they're not going to save money, it's quite a… it's a very different sale, isn't it?

431 01:04:14.300 --> 01:04:15.789 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Yeah, so… but…

432 01:04:16.020 --> 01:04:26.389 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Look, the idea is the club is going to generate some money, and that the club can do things with that money to improve your environment and to improve your community.

433 01:04:26.400 --> 01:04:36.680 Todays Speaker Community Energy: The other thing as well is, it's not that they're not going to save money. They may well save money. A lot of it is going to be how you balance your generators with your off-takers.

434 01:04:36.800 --> 01:04:42.039 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So, let's say somebody's just built a 5MW solar panel farm down the road from you.

435 01:04:42.160 --> 01:04:54.249 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And they've stuck a massive, great, big battery storage device next to it, so they can literally supply as much energy as you need at any given… given time. If you then take the whole village, and there's 400 people in the village, say, and they all… they all…

436 01:04:54.430 --> 01:04:57.490 Todays Speaker Community Energy: chime into that, then there's a strong possibility.

437 01:04:57.510 --> 01:05:11.580 Todays Speaker Community Energy: that that's what's… that's what's gonna happen. They're all going to save money. But when you start small, and we are going to be starting small, that's less likely to happen. So again, you're looking for people that want to make a difference, want to change.

438 01:05:11.580 --> 01:05:27.509 Todays Speaker Community Energy: those people that are struggling to do it on their own buildings and their own things, you know, they've got listed buildings, or they don't have the capital to invest in these projects themselves. There's a lot of people out there that are asset-rich and cash poor. They want to engage with their community, they want to engage with

439 01:05:27.660 --> 01:05:39.409 Todays Speaker Community Energy: net zero electricity and stuff like that, but they just don't have the opportunity, so for them to join their community energy club and feel like they're doing their bit without having to spend £10,000 on putting solar panels and…

440 01:05:39.780 --> 01:05:45.609 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Solar panels on their own building can be a really good way for them to feel like they're doing their bit.

441 01:05:45.720 --> 01:06:01.429 Todays Speaker Community Energy: there's… it's more than just the energy, it's the community, and how you build that community, because once you've got that groundswell, then there's other things and other projects that you can take on through this. It's a catalyst, it's a start, it's not an end.

442 01:06:03.760 --> 01:06:04.510 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Alright, thank you.

443 01:06:04.510 --> 01:06:04.850 Dave Faulkner The Green Group Almeley: Thank you.

444 01:06:04.850 --> 01:06:19.559 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Let's move back to the questions on the chat. So, how big does a community building need to be to generate 10,000 kilowatts? I've seen that the latest solar panels, the standard size, are now up to generating, what, 450.

445 01:06:19.560 --> 01:06:20.940 Todays Speaker Community Energy: What's a piece?

446 01:06:20.940 --> 01:06:23.690 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: And maybe that'll go… keep going higher, I don't know.

447 01:06:24.360 --> 01:06:30.140 Todays Speaker Community Energy: 30… No, 20 panels will generate,

448 01:06:30.280 --> 01:06:35.129 Todays Speaker Community Energy: 500 watt panels will generate roughly 10,000 kilowatt hours a year on a south-facing roof.

449 01:06:35.340 --> 01:06:38.909 Todays Speaker Community Energy: You can… a large house will…

450 01:06:39.000 --> 01:06:58.789 Todays Speaker Community Energy: with a single roof and facing in one direction, we'll probably be able to get about 20 panels on it. To be honest, if you're driving around your community, and you see some solar panels, count how many are on the roof, and you've got to get to 20 to… to get going, and that's roughly how big it is. So you'll be able to see from… from your… what's… the arrays in your local area, roughly how big 20 is.

451 01:06:58.860 --> 01:07:04.959 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And that… and that's a 10kW system, and that's… that's the bare minimum that you need to get started.

452 01:07:05.060 --> 01:07:11.670 Todays Speaker Community Energy: If you were, I don't know, in a particular village, and you've got a lot of big houses, and you drive around and you see

453 01:07:12.400 --> 01:07:21.640 Todays Speaker Community Energy: 5 houses, each with 20 panels on their roofs, you know, you're almost at the point where you could knock on their door and say, do you fancy starting an energy local club with us?

454 01:07:21.800 --> 01:07:24.219 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Or a community energy project with us.

455 01:07:24.440 --> 01:07:28.519 Todays Speaker Community Energy: that's… that's the sort of number you need to get going. The thing to bear in mind is.

456 01:07:28.650 --> 01:07:32.569 Todays Speaker Community Energy: You get a 10kW system, You can probably get…

457 01:07:32.680 --> 01:07:45.889 Todays Speaker Community Energy: 5 club members with that system. There won't be enough energy to go round any more than that. There's no point having 25 club members on a 10kW system. Everybody's going to be getting 5p's worth of electricity a month. It's not gonna work.

458 01:07:45.890 --> 01:07:53.919 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So you've got to match your generation with your off-takers. But if you suddenly get, you know, canvass your village, and you find you've got 100 off-takers there.

459 01:07:54.300 --> 01:08:04.200 Todays Speaker Community Energy: go speak to the farmers. Say, mate, look, I've got 100 people that will buy the energy, can you put some solar panels on your barn? There's loads of advantages, they've got tax write-offs and…

460 01:08:04.310 --> 01:08:17.310 Todays Speaker Community Energy: they're gonna be… they've got a guaranteed income coming in and stuff like that. So, you know, to a certain degree, some schemes struggle because it's a chicken and an egg. Do you get your generation first, or do you get your off-takers first?

461 01:08:17.319 --> 01:08:25.540 Todays Speaker Community Energy: The reality is, it doesn't matter. If you've got a group of off-takers, you can find generators. If you've got a group of generators, you can find off-takers. It's just a marketing thing.

462 01:08:26.859 --> 01:08:31.959 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Okay, thank you very much. I've got Peter Bates as next, in line to answer.

463 01:08:32.170 --> 01:08:34.140 Peter Bates - SSECAM - Cambridgeshire: Hi, Darren, yep,

464 01:08:34.229 --> 01:08:40.750 Peter Bates - SSECAM - Cambridgeshire: I like the whole idea of community energy as a service, which is a great idea.

465 01:08:40.790 --> 01:08:59.620 Peter Bates - SSECAM - Cambridgeshire: And I like the idea that you can actually get produce up and running within 3 to 6 months in that respect. I mean, in East Cambridgeshire, although they were 100% funded, we actually, had something like 11 community, energy projects, operating within a relatively short time.

466 01:08:59.640 --> 01:09:02.559 Peter Bates - SSECAM - Cambridgeshire: In that respect.

467 01:09:03.470 --> 01:09:04.609 Peter Bates - SSECAM - Cambridgeshire: Sorry.

468 01:09:04.819 --> 01:09:08.629 Todays Speaker Community Energy: I was just saying, well done, I mean, get 11 up and running, that's a pretty good game, my friend.

469 01:09:08.630 --> 01:09:27.170 Peter Bates - SSECAM - Cambridgeshire: Yeah, great. I was going to say that, yeah, and I certainly will intend to kind of contact you after this meeting and have a chat. I guess, well, the question I've got is, you run a group of companies, according to your website, and what's the deal that we would have

470 01:09:27.220 --> 01:09:30.490 Peter Bates - SSECAM - Cambridgeshire: With you, or a community group may have with you.

471 01:09:30.779 --> 01:09:49.809 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Yep, that's perfectly reasonable. So, I, I run Simcoe Renewables, we're part of a group, Simcoe Group, we're based in Whittam in Essex. We are a for-profit organization, okay? We have two things that we would like to sell you. One is, a service package around helping you get set up a community energy scheme.

472 01:09:49.819 --> 01:10:02.039 Todays Speaker Community Energy: I can provide details around it, but essentially, there's… it's about 1,500-2,000 to kind of get through all your feasibility studies across multiple sites. If it's one site, we do it for free, because that's just

473 01:10:02.079 --> 01:10:14.989 Todays Speaker Community Energy: what we do, we do that every day, but if you've got 10 or 15 sites, then we charge for that. And then after that, it's, a £75 per hour sort of fee to get stuff done for you. So one of the big blockers we find is that people

474 01:10:15.499 --> 01:10:31.839 Todays Speaker Community Energy: run out of steam and time to actually progress things, which is why we offer a service to actually go and do it. We also can refer you into, like, legal solicitors that have done this sort of stuff before, and refer you to other people, like Jules, to help find funding.

475 01:10:31.969 --> 01:10:50.019 Todays Speaker Community Energy: The other thing as well is, ultimately, if you are going to build something, we would like to quote to build it. Now, we understand that we can't enter into, sort of, single supply agreements and stuff like that, that is not transparent, that is not the way we do it, you need to get other quotes, perfectly happy with that, that's not a problem, but we'd like to be one of the people that get to quote for you.

476 01:10:50.019 --> 01:10:54.769 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And if we give you a good price, and we give you good service, then hopefully you buy it from us. So…

477 01:10:54.769 --> 01:11:13.749 Todays Speaker Community Energy: that's it. And if none of that's, available, you know, if you don't want to proceed with any of that, that's fine. We're more than happy to talk and give you this free sort of advice, that's not a problem. But yeah, we are a for-profit, organization, but at the end of the day, we've got to be good enough for you to want to spend some money with us to actually make any money, so that's what we're trying to do.

478 01:11:14.790 --> 01:11:26.840 Peter Bates - SSECAM - Cambridgeshire: That sounds great, yeah, and we've got an event which is probably happening in March in East Cambridgeshire, so we'll invite you along and see how far we can progress on that one. Fantastic.

479 01:11:26.840 --> 01:11:31.550 Todays Speaker Community Energy: We… we go to a lot of, community meetings. If you want… if you've got,

480 01:11:31.970 --> 01:11:38.609 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Teams meet, if you've got, like, a parish that wants a Teams meeting, they're free, we do those all the time.

481 01:11:38.720 --> 01:11:53.030 Todays Speaker Community Energy: For the bigger ones, we have done some sponsorships, so we just sponsored, we provided all the lunches for 16 people doing a local energy two-day training event. I've got another one in Essex, we're sponsoring £500 to come along and do that.

482 01:11:53.130 --> 01:12:03.000 Todays Speaker Community Energy: I haven't got the deepest pockets in the world, but, you know, if there's big events going on where you want people to come along and maybe throw a little bit of sponsorship your way, then, you know, we're always happy to talk about that.

483 01:12:04.110 --> 01:12:05.390 Peter Bates - SSECAM - Cambridgeshire: Okay, great, thanks.

484 01:12:06.250 --> 01:12:11.759 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: It… Wes, you've been waiting very patiently, so could I ask… jump straight to you, please?

485 01:12:13.050 --> 01:12:15.129 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: You're on mute at the moment, Peter.

486 01:12:19.230 --> 01:12:20.370 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Pete, you stood on mute.

487 01:12:20.370 --> 01:12:30.360 Pete West - Dorset: Hi, Darren. I thought that was really, really interesting and inspiring. Actually, I'm a founding director of Energy Local Bridgeport, which is a…

488 01:12:30.360 --> 01:12:30.760 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Oh, okay.

489 01:12:30.760 --> 01:12:35.559 Pete West - Dorset: energy market, yeah, which we… Yeah. First in England, we set it up in 2020.

490 01:12:35.560 --> 01:12:53.429 Pete West - Dorset: And so the good news is we've got 60 householders supplied with electricity at 15p from a farmer-owned wind turbine, 50-kilowatt wind turbine, supplying 50 householders, and in 5 years, nobody has left the scheme unless they've left the primary substation area. So I think that's very positive feedback.

491 01:12:53.430 --> 01:13:02.609 Pete West - Dorset: I think our biggest issue has been to find an electricity supply company partner. I think Octopus have definitely pulled back.

492 01:13:02.640 --> 01:13:10.879 Pete West - Dorset: I'm slightly optimistic. We have to shift now to 100 Green, which they basically are a company that really support local energy markets.

493 01:13:11.530 --> 01:13:29.990 Pete West - Dorset: The only last thing I was going to add is this idea of the backup at a time of use tariff, different times of the day, a different price. We found that really successful, and I think, really, it's going to be rolled out nationally, because basically what we're doing, we're balancing the grid by, as you said, not using power at these peak times in the early evening.

494 01:13:29.990 --> 01:13:45.269 Pete West - Dorset: the government has to turn off wind farms and things, and pay their duty turned off. Well, really, it's much, much easier for householders to use power when it's cheapest, when it's available. So I'd say, in summary, half of our savings, which are about 15-20% of standard electricity costs.

495 01:13:45.320 --> 01:13:54.170 Pete West - Dorset: Half is due to our 15P wind, and the other half is actually due to the time of use tariff. People are making good use of it, so yeah, well done.

496 01:13:54.860 --> 01:13:57.750 Todays Speaker Community Energy: I think as well, with your time of use tariff,

497 01:13:57.990 --> 01:14:12.979 Todays Speaker Community Energy: battery-only installations are going to blow up this year. And the reason they're going to blow up is because sodium ion batteries are going to be coming to the market end of this year, beginning of next year.

498 01:14:13.100 --> 01:14:22.499 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And if you watch any of the YouTube videos about it, you're gonna know that sodium iron is a lot, lot cheaper than lithium ion, and also that it's,

499 01:14:23.190 --> 01:14:31.260 Todays Speaker Community Energy: It's heavier, but that doesn't matter in a domestic setting, because you can still… you can still get it. So, what… what you're paying…

500 01:14:31.470 --> 01:14:44.330 Todays Speaker Community Energy: two or three thousand pounds for now will probably cost you £1,000, £1500, in 18 months from now. And once you can get battery storage for residential properties at that price point.

501 01:14:44.660 --> 01:14:59.159 Todays Speaker Community Energy: being able to use all these cheap tariffs and take the energy when your wind farm or your solar panels and stuff like that, are making the energy is going to make a massive difference to how people benefit in terms of the cost-benefit analysis. So,

502 01:14:59.190 --> 01:15:07.730 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Yeah, battery storage is going to be huge in the next year, 18 months, particularly when the sodium ions hit, and then you'll be really raking in on the community energy.

503 01:15:10.250 --> 01:15:14.419 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Thank you. John… sorry, John Bitterley, can we move to you, please?

504 01:15:15.220 --> 01:15:19.509 Jon Bitterley Parish: Yeah, I just wondered if you could just help me a bit. I'm struggling with,

505 01:15:20.780 --> 01:15:29.230 Jon Bitterley Parish: I'm sort of struggling with this a bit, because surely from, like, a parish council or my parish council, I've got a fairly big parish hall with a fairly big roof.

506 01:15:29.380 --> 01:15:34.410 Jon Bitterley Parish: I get that. I've also got some money that someone's given me, so I'm lucky.

507 01:15:34.810 --> 01:15:45.490 Jon Bitterley Parish: But I could see a lot of grief with this, when I could just sell the money back to my energy provider at 15 pence, if not more, through, you know, SEG payment, and not have

508 01:15:45.600 --> 01:16:01.420 Jon Bitterley Parish: the attendant grief from everybody else, you know, having to set up a group, find suppliers, governance and all that stuff. And I'm just wondering, in my mind, why wouldn't I do that compared to going down a, you know, a cooperative energy group?

509 01:16:01.580 --> 01:16:03.900 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Okay, very good question. So…

510 01:16:04.630 --> 01:16:22.000 Todays Speaker Community Energy: The government has changed the rules about how energy companies can find new customers. So they can't do discounted deals anymore, they can't do door knocking anymore. In fact, there's pretty much no way for energy companies now to… to… to actively recruit new customers.

511 01:16:22.770 --> 01:16:33.330 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So SEC payments have become one of the ways that, energy companies are recruiting new customers. If you offer a nice, big, chunky

512 01:16:33.450 --> 01:16:38.039 Todays Speaker Community Energy: seg payment, then people with existing assets are going to come to you.

513 01:16:38.100 --> 01:16:39.670 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Now…

514 01:16:39.680 --> 01:16:57.190 Todays Speaker Community Energy: if some… like, Octopus, if you… if you're an Octopus customer, okay, and you're selling your energy back to Octopus, I think they're offering around 15p a kilowatt hour. Now, compared to what you're buying that in the wholesale market for on an average basis, that's probably at 6, 7p in the wholesale market, okay?

515 01:16:57.190 --> 01:17:03.999 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So, what Octopus and a lot of these other companies are doing is they're kind of hoovering up as many people with these

516 01:17:04.000 --> 01:17:07.810 Todays Speaker Community Energy: with renewable energy assets at the moment, by offering these high seg rates.

517 01:17:08.200 --> 01:17:23.419 Todays Speaker Community Energy: But they're not gonna last. They can't last, because they're paying so much over the odds of… for the energy. Now, they can suck up a certain amount of this to gather up these new customers, and it might be a relatively cheap way for them to do it compared to other marketing types.

518 01:17:23.460 --> 01:17:42.910 Todays Speaker Community Energy: But it can't last, because as more energy comes onto the grid, more wind energy, more… like, when Hinkley Point C comes online and stuff like this, the cost of energy is potentially going to go down. What these schemes do is kind of give you an opportunity to enter into a long-term contract

519 01:17:42.960 --> 01:17:56.680 Todays Speaker Community Energy: with your community to sell that energy at a fairly consistent price point. So you know that you've got a 50kW system sitting on your community hall, and that means that you can have

520 01:17:56.810 --> 01:17:58.230 Todays Speaker Community Energy: 75.

521 01:17:58.290 --> 01:18:11.530 Todays Speaker Community Energy: community members based in the club, and as a result of that, that means that you're going to be able to guarantee that you're going to get that money over the lifespan of the system, as long as you keep the club running.

522 01:18:11.530 --> 01:18:20.039 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So, segments at the moment are loss leaders. They are out there to gather new customers, and we don't expect them to last over this period of time.

523 01:18:20.310 --> 01:18:24.569 Todays Speaker Community Energy: But it's also… It's also not just about the money.

524 01:18:24.710 --> 01:18:26.110 Todays Speaker Community Energy: It's about…

525 01:18:26.110 --> 01:18:30.719 Jon Bitterley Parish: I do get that, by the way, and I do get the community. I think you open up a really interesting

526 01:18:30.730 --> 01:18:33.819 Jon Bitterley Parish: point. I do take the point about SAG payments.

527 01:18:33.820 --> 01:18:41.899 Jon Bitterley Parish: So, for those people you look around our neighbourhoods who've got large installations, who are getting said payments, they may be a good source of

528 01:18:41.900 --> 01:18:58.679 Jon Bitterley Parish: community power to add to the group later if the segments disappear. So there's, again, an additional opportunity potentially coming in a couple of years. My neighbor's just put 18 panels on his roof, he gets a SEG payment, he might not get that for much longer at the rate he thinks he's going to get it.

529 01:18:59.130 --> 01:18:59.560 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Yeah.

530 01:18:59.560 --> 01:19:04.059 Jon Bitterley Parish: So there's an additional, opportunity out there for us.

531 01:19:04.240 --> 01:19:04.830 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Yes.

532 01:19:04.830 --> 01:19:07.329 Jon Bitterley Parish: Okay, thank you. You explained it very well, thank you very much.

533 01:19:07.570 --> 01:19:25.540 Todays Speaker Community Energy: There's also other things, like, if you've had it recently, your neighbor's probably got a battery, right? So, aggregation services, which is where you utilize, you make what's called a virtual power plant, so you take lots of disseparated assets, and you basically run them as one asset.

534 01:19:25.540 --> 01:19:26.100 Jon Bitterley Parish: Hmm.

535 01:19:26.190 --> 01:19:35.060 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And these are the things that are gonna, generate big payments going forward. So, having a community project where you then can introduce,

536 01:19:35.250 --> 01:19:50.390 Todays Speaker Community Energy: maybe battery storage to the people that can't have the solar panels on their roof and stuff, and help them do it, and then have an aggregator that works with all of you across the whole site, then generates other revenues that you're not going to get from,

537 01:19:50.620 --> 01:20:07.209 Todays Speaker Community Energy: energy companies and stuff like that, and again, we've got a number of aggregators that we're working with. They're all 20-something, they're all super bright, they're all computer geniuses programming things in and out, but they are creating some really interesting opportunities to help manage and mitigate the energy in the UK.

538 01:20:07.600 --> 01:20:17.470 Jon Bitterley Parish: No, I think you explained it very well, thank you. I mean, the community bit's very important, but you just explained… I never quite understood the SEG payments anyway, now I think you've probably…

539 01:20:17.900 --> 01:20:20.420 Jon Bitterley Parish: Sort of straightened my thought out of that, so thank you very much.

540 01:20:21.900 --> 01:20:24.559 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Stuart, good afternoon, can we move to you, please?

541 01:20:24.740 --> 01:20:29.379 Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: Yes, thanks, and, thank Darren for a very interesting presentation.

542 01:20:29.780 --> 01:20:35.959 Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: I'm not sure if I missed it, but did you mention the app which Mary was talking about?

543 01:20:36.470 --> 01:20:50.070 Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: Which tells you exactly the time of use, when you're generating, so you get cheap electricity, and the time of use, which is beneficial for, 100 green to know when it's cheapest.

544 01:20:50.930 --> 01:20:56.640 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So, and Pete probably knows, as much about this as… as I do. So,

545 01:20:57.040 --> 01:21:04.250 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Energy Local produce an app. The app shows you when your… when your renewable energy assets are generating.

546 01:21:04.270 --> 01:21:23.120 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So you can have a look at it, and you can make decisions around what you choose to do. So, if you are, thinking of doing a load of washing, or putting a tumble dryer on, you can quickly check your app. You can see that your wind farm, or your community solar panels, or your community hydro project is currently making energy and sending it back to the grid.

547 01:21:23.120 --> 01:21:28.110 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And then you can choose to turn your appliances on and actually take advantage of that.

548 01:21:28.420 --> 01:21:44.810 Todays Speaker Community Energy: I would imagine, over the course of the next couple of years, that these sorts of things are… are going to get a little bit more automated. You might suddenly find that Mary can develop it, so you get a little text message pop up, or a WhatsApp message pop up to say, hey, there's spare energy, have you thought about doing something?

549 01:21:44.860 --> 01:21:52.889 Todays Speaker Community Energy: It may even, within a couple of years, evolve into that, those people with batteries storage, it then turns their batteries on and starts charging them up.

550 01:21:53.070 --> 01:21:58.870 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So… It's moving in a lot of very, very interesting ways very, very quickly.

551 01:22:00.860 --> 01:22:01.139 Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: H.

552 01:22:01.420 --> 01:22:02.980 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Ew, okay, I'm not sure.

553 01:22:02.980 --> 01:22:13.769 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Stuart is one of the people that we've been doing a little bit of work for in Essex, so he's got a… I think we're up to… the last time I did a design for you, I think we're up to about 80 kilowatts on your community building, weren't we?

554 01:22:13.930 --> 01:22:16.819 Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: Yes, yeah, I was a bit surprised at that.

555 01:22:17.510 --> 01:22:19.960 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And mate, I found every roof space I could possibly find for you.

556 01:22:19.960 --> 01:22:21.390 Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: I know.

557 01:22:22.110 --> 01:22:32.269 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: All right, thank you. At the moment, there are no more live questions, so let me just run over to the chat. Mike Edels, you asked, on the subject of VAT and the charity, does that…

558 01:22:32.270 --> 01:22:42.979 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: only apply to CIOs and charities controlled by the Charities Commission, or are we also talking about non-profits, CIC, company limited by Guarantee, and so forth?

559 01:22:44.120 --> 01:22:55.989 Todays Speaker Community Energy: I don't have knowledge on that subject, I'm afraid. We can… wherever your legal ownership is, we will do the check, and if you don't have to be paid that, then we won't charge you that for it, but I… I don't have enough knowledge to pass comment upon that.

560 01:22:56.570 --> 01:23:15.120 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Okay? The next one is not so much a question, just a recommendation from Gordon Coppock, so I'll… rather than read that out, I'll just draw everyone's attention to it. By the way, all the chats do go up onto the knowledge base at the end of the session, so these questions or statements will be covered there.

561 01:23:15.600 --> 01:23:21.280 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Question from… another one from Mike. Do co-ops get a VAT concession?

562 01:23:21.560 --> 01:23:25.819 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Not sure if that's within your bailiwick either, Dale? That's right, Darren.

563 01:23:25.820 --> 01:23:42.750 Todays Speaker Community Energy: I believe the co-ops are registered with the… are registered as, like, under a charity status, I think, because they're registered with the Financial Conduct Authority, so I would believe that the co-op would potentially be able to get the… the VAT. Bear in mind,

564 01:23:42.850 --> 01:24:01.420 Todays Speaker Community Energy: the issue is the owner of the land or the building that you're putting the solar on, not necessarily the organization itself. So, if you're putting it onto a community building, and that community building is controlled by a charity, then we don't have to charge that.

565 01:24:01.680 --> 01:24:05.300 Todays Speaker Community Energy: That… that's the issue. It's… it's where it's being put.

566 01:24:05.520 --> 01:24:06.950 Todays Speaker Community Energy: That… that affects it.

567 01:24:08.330 --> 01:24:10.109 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Okay, thank you.

568 01:24:10.310 --> 01:24:16.210 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Moving on, Pete, since you're still here, is your question still valid, or do you think we've answered that one about the…

569 01:24:16.210 --> 01:24:32.079 Pete West - Dorset: You've answered it really, really well. I mean, just to add on a little thing. As Darren was saying, you know, this really seems to be a growing movement, and in the rest of Europe, there's actually legislation which forces electricity supply companies to offer this metering and billing for community energy groups.

570 01:24:32.080 --> 01:24:37.300 Pete West - Dorset: So there's legislation proposed in the UK, but we're a bit behind the rest of the Europe on that one.

571 01:24:38.680 --> 01:24:46.830 Todays Speaker Community Energy: the person that's been employed by GB Energy to get these 100, sorry, 1,000 groups up and running.

572 01:24:48.110 --> 01:24:59.840 Todays Speaker Community Energy: has all the contacts. He's been working on a strategic infrastructure fund project, which is funded by Ofgem, and it's the project we've been working on, which is how we got into all of this.

573 01:24:59.870 --> 01:25:13.860 Todays Speaker Community Energy: So, there are now people in positions that understand blockers, and they've been told to unblock them. So, they've been told, you know, they can go back to Ofgem, they can go back to the energy suppliers, and they can basically say.

574 01:25:13.920 --> 01:25:30.420 Todays Speaker Community Energy: no, we're doing this, and that's why they've been… that's why these people have been appointed. It's very refreshing to be working in a part of an industry where so many people at all levels of power and control all want the same thing, and all seem to be pushing in the same direction.

575 01:25:31.620 --> 01:25:41.010 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Yeah. It's a nice place to be. You know, there's lots of people out there that are prepared to solve problems, and there's regulators that are prepared to change things to solve those problems.

576 01:25:41.150 --> 01:25:49.580 Todays Speaker Community Energy: I've not come across that in my business career before. It's like, you hit the regulation wall and you get stuck. And this time, it seems like we're actually going to do something.

577 01:25:50.710 --> 01:25:51.260 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Good.

578 01:25:51.410 --> 01:25:58.759 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Sue, you're still online. Do you think your question about the costs for a parish council using SimCorp had been answered for you?

579 01:26:02.030 --> 01:26:03.080 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: And you…

580 01:26:05.210 --> 01:26:24.460 Sue Burton Battle TC East Sussex: Yeah, I… sorry, I think that has been answered. You know, there is a cost, and you'd have to work it out. I don't underestimate a comment of getting planning permission. A solar farm near and a parish near us took a year, but that's…

581 01:26:24.790 --> 01:26:39.640 Sue Burton Battle TC East Sussex: I think it should get easier the more this happens, to get planning. Yeah, it does feel a bit overwhelming, and one of the difficulties is councillor input and,

582 01:26:39.640 --> 01:26:49.600 Sue Burton Battle TC East Sussex: Getting things on the action plan and all that. That doesn't make it very easy to move forward fast at the, at the parish level.

583 01:26:49.690 --> 01:26:58.099 Sue Burton Battle TC East Sussex: and elections, you know, so… but a very interesting, and, who knows? Thank you.

584 01:26:58.550 --> 01:27:09.120 Todays Speaker Community Energy: If you want a half-hour Sue, for one of your parish meetings, for, you know, a Teams meeting to help convey what we've said here, that's free. We're more than happy to do that for you.

585 01:27:09.370 --> 01:27:16.849 Todays Speaker Community Energy: sometimes having an outside speaker come in just helps clarify people, and I'm very excited about this, so hopefully I pass that energy on to them.

586 01:27:16.850 --> 01:27:35.419 Sue Burton Battle TC East Sussex: You have. If I can just say two things. First of all, Dale and I, who's also on this call, I think we're part of a group called Battle Solar Town. This is not as volunteers, and our target is to get 25% of the energy used in battle

587 01:27:35.420 --> 01:27:51.460 Sue Burton Battle TC East Sussex: Produced in battle by energy, solar energy, so that's something that's going on. And we're working with a community energy company, already, but as you say, they come in different shapes and sizes.

588 01:27:51.540 --> 01:28:01.050 Sue Burton Battle TC East Sussex: However, I went to visit a school yesterday, who I'm sure would have a great potential, they're interested in putting panels.

589 01:28:01.170 --> 01:28:06.119 Sue Burton Battle TC East Sussex: And, you know, maybe how to make that a…

590 01:28:06.120 --> 01:28:22.840 Sue Burton Battle TC East Sussex: a doable thing, because it's not within the town of Battle. You know, it's a bit… it's a bit mind-boggling, but I think, thank you so much. One, your enthusiasm and making it a little bit easier, and your offer to come and talk to us. Thank you.

591 01:28:23.240 --> 01:28:23.890 Todays Speaker Community Energy: You're welcome.

592 01:28:25.130 --> 01:28:38.479 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Right, on to Stuart, who's asked a question which I think I've already covered with you, Darren, but we might as well make it public. Does this scheme only work on existing buildings, or does it apply for buildings which haven't yet been built?

593 01:28:39.140 --> 01:28:47.330 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: So they've got a developer who's received planning permission for a site, where they're building new homes and a new village hall. Can we use this scheme for the new village hall?

594 01:28:48.500 --> 01:28:52.790 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Yes. So the thing… so the thing to…

595 01:28:53.400 --> 01:28:58.120 Todays Speaker Community Energy: To look at is the… all the new houses are going to have some solar on them now.

596 01:28:58.320 --> 01:29:14.870 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Okay? So you can potentially go to the developer and say, you know, we would like to do a community energy scheme, we would like it to be based around this housing development and the village hall. The village hall will probably have solar panels. We've done so many new-build village halls on

597 01:29:14.990 --> 01:29:16.390 Todays Speaker Community Energy: New build sites.

598 01:29:16.730 --> 01:29:21.580 Todays Speaker Community Energy: That, that, that could do it. The key thing, the key advantage you have there

599 01:29:21.820 --> 01:29:33.870 Todays Speaker Community Energy: is you have a bit of a captive audience, because when, when you buy the new house, it will have an existing energy supplier. So, if your developer will engage with you and

600 01:29:34.000 --> 01:29:51.700 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And help you set up, or you can set up the Community Energy Club. When people move in, they will be signed up onto the, Community Energy, the 100 Green Community Energy Tariff. And then you have an instant opportunity to say to those people, well, you're already signed up to the Community Energy Project.

601 01:29:51.980 --> 01:29:55.109 Todays Speaker Community Energy: It's now down to you to decide if you want to leave it.

602 01:29:55.510 --> 01:30:11.810 Todays Speaker Community Energy: And if they're getting cheaper energy, and you can obviously explain the, the advantages of, being part of the community energy, and it's gonna, you know, get them cheaper… hopefully get them cheaper energy, and generate these other benefits for the community, then hopefully they will stay.

603 01:30:11.830 --> 01:30:18.690 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Can't promise everybody's gonna stay, but, like, as Peter said, the only people that have left his club are people that have left the area.

604 01:30:18.750 --> 01:30:21.880 Todays Speaker Community Energy: You do… you do find that you get a very, very…

605 01:30:22.120 --> 01:30:37.899 Todays Speaker Community Energy: stickiness with the members. They, you know, people engage with this, they want to be part of it, they want to tell everybody about it, and they generally stay… stay around. So, on a new build estate, there's a big opportunity, because it's, you know, you can almost set it up as the default option when they move in.

606 01:30:40.650 --> 01:30:45.680 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Brilliant. I think I've got to the end of the open questions on the…

607 01:30:46.090 --> 01:30:53.069 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Chat, this one brilliant question which was asked and then immediately answered by somebody else, which I thought was marvellous. Thank you so much.

608 01:30:53.210 --> 01:30:57.979 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: Let me just check with everybody if there are any further questions.

609 01:30:58.560 --> 01:31:02.340 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: No one is saying anything to me just yet, okay?

610 01:31:02.700 --> 01:31:08.740 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: It then remains for me to say, Darren, thank you so much. I did think that was a really interesting,

611 01:31:09.100 --> 01:31:11.119 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: presentation, and I look forward…

612 01:31:11.120 --> 01:31:11.730 Todays Speaker Community Energy: Thank you for inviting me.

613 01:31:11.730 --> 01:31:14.960 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: It's worked, and thank everybody else very much.

614 01:31:15.290 --> 01:31:17.870 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: And if I'm very, very clever.

615 01:31:18.370 --> 01:31:29.140 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: I can go onto the website and tell you, I haven't got the slightest idea who's going to be talking next week, because Darren was due to talk next week. He came in to help us out today.

616 01:31:29.270 --> 01:31:41.290 Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration - Bembridge: And that leaves a gap for next week. So I'll do my best to fill it, and let you all know what it's going to be, but in the meantime, thank you so much for your time. Sorry that we overran, but I think it was worth it. And, look forward to seeing you next time.

617 01:31:41.420 --> 01:31:43.460 tristram cary Winchfield Hants: Thank you, Will. Take care. Bye-bye.

618 01:31:43.800 --> 01:31:46.710 tristram cary Winchfield Hants: Darren, thank you very much. Brilliant. My camera's back.

619 01:31:46.710 --> 01:31:49.770 Sue Burton Battle TC East Sussex: Thank you so much, both Graham and Darren. Bye. Bye.

620 01:31:49.770 --> 01:31:51.240 Todays Speaker Community Energy: I'll be with you soon. Bye-bye.

621 01:31:51.620 --> 01:31:52.490 Gordon Coppock,Big Solar and Pomona Solar CoOps: Thanks, guys.

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Markdown copy of Darran's presentation (for AI search index):

Community Energy for Parish Councils

Darran Ford — Simcott Renewables [email protected] 07762 771187

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What is Community Energy?

Short answer: whatever you want it to be!

There are however generally two themes:

• Energy assets owned by the community

• Energy assets in your local area supplying electricity to local people and businesses

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What a Local Energy Organisation Does

• Develop & finance local renewable energy assets

• Facilitate local energy markets

• Engage communities & manage governance

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Considerations

• Existing assets

• New assets

• Land

• Finance

• Fundraising / grants

• Feasibility

• Ownership / legal structure

• Planning

• Revenues

• Profit allocations

• Community benefit

• Operation issues

• Repair and maintenance

• Marketing

• Community engagement

• Energy contracts

• Utility companies

• Power purchase agreements

• Lease holders

• Freeholders

• Insurance

• Data protection

• Health and safety

• Annual general meetings

• Governance

• Branding

Energy Generators

• Solar PV

• Wind turbine

• Battery storage

• Hydro power

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Simcott Renewables Service

• Advisory & feasibility studies

• Project development & delivery

• Local energy market facilitation

• Training, toolkits & capacity building

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Case Study: White Colne Village Hall

White Colne spent:

• £12,000 on solar panels

• £8,000 on battery storage

• £12,500 on an air source heat pump

They received a £7,500 BUS grant towards the air source heat pump.

VAT is dependent on the legal status of the building owners.

The building required a new roof and the solar installation was tied into the roof replacement, cutting the roof replacement cost in half.

Results:

• Previous energy bill: £2,000/year

• Now: £1,000+ annual surplus from selling excess energy

• Further revenue opportunities under investigation

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Operational Model

• Anchor sites: councils, schools, housing, community buildings, farms, landowners

• Existing renewable assets: solar, wind, hydro & anaerobic digestion

• Supplier & lender partnerships

• Community ownership & benefit sharing

• Phased pilot-to-scale approach

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Funding & Revenue

Grants

• Good for feasibility studies

• Harder to secure for asset installation

Borrowing

• Asset finance

• Community shares & bonds

• Ethical bank debt (Triodos, Ecology)

Revenue

• Ongoing management

• Local energy market revenues

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Key Risks & Mitigations

• Low liquidity → anchor loads

• Regulatory complexity → supplier partners

• Grid constraints → early DNO engagement

• Trust → transparent governance

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Roadmap to Scale

• 0–6 months: setup & feasibility

• 6–18 months: pilot projects & local market

• 18–36 months: scale pipeline & services

• 3–5 years: regional hub & replication

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Contact

Simcott Renewables Darran Ford [email protected] 07762 771187