The text below is the transcript from the Community Energy - Technology Workshop Webinar.
Good evening, everyone, and Welcome to this Community Energy webinar hosted by SP Energy Networks. and supported by Energy Saving Trust. I'm Nathan Hill, I'm had a community of renewable energy at the Energy Saving Trust. I'll be hopes for this evening. But Miss Julie, for everyone attending tonight, I will keep my own musings for a minimum.
Give as much time as possible to our fantastic presenters and our breakout group discussions. This will be the first of a three part series of events. We have aligned our workshop themes with what stakeholder groups have taught us are the biggest knowledge capacity gaps. So tonight the theme is Technology and Community Energy Projects.
Which will strengthen your understanding of how different technologies can be used to meet your community energy needs. The second events in the series will be hybrid events, so both online and in person will be available. The theme will be innovation and community energy projects. So how innovation can be brought into community energy projects. The third event in the series will either be in person or hybrid event attending on demand.
From you all three. The format the theme will be connection between generators and users. So how community energy projects can connect renewable energy generators to to the end users. So the purpose of these events is to help you a learn about community energy projects, So discover if they're a good fit for your community. B brainstorm project ideas.
So get insights for developing your own community energy initiatives and see to find support connecting you with resources to turn your ideas into reality. We hope that this group of organizations with us tonight can continue the journey with us throughout this workshop series. That's the intention to take this core of organizations, not through just the agenda tonight, but through this series of events.
And that is the intention of the series. One last thing from me before I hand over to Luis. This event will be recorded that is currently being recorded. I hope everything's okay with that. And if you're not to do, let us know. Okay, so I will now hand over to Liz Taylor from Aspire Energy Networks to give a brief introduction to their role in supporting community energy projects over Luis.
Thanks, Nathan. Good evening, everybody, and thank you all very much. Coming along. So I am Liz Taylor, and I am the community energy engagement manager for the SPM license area. I've just got a few slices to cover with. You are just to give you a brief introduction of who we are at Energy Networks and our role within community Energy.
So expansion networks, we are part of the Scottish Power Group, which is owned and operated by the Spanish company Pedro La
We've been a key part of this group now for over two decades, which has kept us clearly ahead at the energy transition in order to tackle the challenges posed by climate change and the need for clean electricity.
So our main role within the Scottish Power Group is being the DNA. So the distribution network operator, we had a completely different business to that of Scottish Power Retail.
So regardless of who you pay your bill to, if you live in our license area, we are the one who makes the electricity to and from the homes and businesses across our network and Scottish power and energy networks. We have complete business separation and we're regulated completely different by Ofgem. So we have c regulated electricity businesses. We've got the SP transmission, which looks up to anything above the 50 PCB network.
We've got the SP distribution network, which is anything once at the fair te, PCB, network and the SP license, which is anything onto the 1V2 kV, anything above 1G2 in the Manweb concerns a national grid. So we're working 24 hours a day, 465 days a year to keep the lights on. We provide electricity to 3.5 million customers across our two distribution licenses.
We have 50,000 substations, so that's one for every hundred customers, 40 cars, kilometers of our the headlines and 65,000km of underground cables. This is an infrastructure we need to continue to grow rapidly over the coming years. In our quest for net zero, as networks, we recognize the critical role of community energy that it plays in our collective journey towards a sustainable future.
And this is why we've committed to providing robust support for community groups across our distribution areas. So This year, we've created a new community energy team at SP Networks, where we've got Liam Cantwell looking after our license area and myself in the SP, my web license. Liam is going to go into more detail the work that we've been doing to help the support of the community groups in a couple of minutes.
Szczesny for mentioned This is one of a three part series of events which we hope you find useful. We’re doing these help you on your journey, so please take away as much as you can from these sessions. and please feedback to us anything that you think that is missing. As Nathan mentioned, this evening session is being recorded and will be made available after the event along with a copy of the slides.
It. So thank you a very much for comment and I will hand you back over to Nathan. Thanks, Luis. I'm just conscious of time. I was going to just quickly go onto the agenda, but you have all received the agenda in advance, so hopefully it's okay. Just to move on to the next agenda item. I think that's passing over back to spend.
And Liam Cantwell for a presentation on span strategy.
Thank you very much, Nathan. And again, just to say thank you to everyone for Coelho a this evening to this workshop and webinar, I appreciate all of the sudden quite a lot in more while I. So that's not too often in my section, it is really to talk through ESP and I'll do networks, community energy strategy, how it's given to development and what we ought to be doing going forward, and supporting community energy stakeholders and affiliated organizations and making sure that we can help to improve that sector and also adequately support up so to government of kind of high level insight into why we have decided to support community energy and what
are thinking behind that, as I think it's important to see how we are able to implement these changes and what helps our governments on a solid level. You have the government who sets the overall energy policy and objectives that is then regulated by Ofgem, who regulate the energy market
penalty that works is one of these days, and it was an off the back of the compliance that puts forward.
We develop a comprehensive business plan, Ed, to outline and how we will manage and improve the electrical distribution network over the five year period from 2023 to 2028.
The strategy we've developed is three pronged and focuses on three focal areas support, awareness, and continuous improvement from a support aspect that aims to provide technical advice and support through your dedicated community. Energy advisers myself and Liz. From an awareness point of view, but hopes to partner with local organizations to deliver community energy awareness campaigns. And from a continuous improvement point of view, we will be subletting our Community Energy Strategy, which is noted live on our website and this will be reviewed annually, ensuring that we are supporting community groups effectively.
The strategy itself, as you can see here as a document that can be found on our site, these slides will be shared later. And the QR code that you can see here gives you access to the different details and content within a. To go into a bit more high level detail of what the strategy took place and where the focus areas are.
Again, looking at the three pronged approach of support, awareness and continuous improvement from a support aspect, the main point that we have here as the accessibility to our community energy team, but myself at least we've established a dedicated channel of communication with our email address that you can see at the top Community Energy SP Energy Network, Stockwell, UK.
We can also offer help and support with options and engagements, making sure that community energy groups are adequately prepared of the resources that they need to make sure that these projects are successful, and support and applications that are getting put through. We also offer innovation support, exploring different technologies and funding mechanisms, as well as offering capacity building workshops similar to the one that you're all on tonight.
We also have a streamlined support with all of these resources, and gates can be found on our new dedicated website. And once again with a QR code that you can see at the bottom. This can be accessed. Looking up the follow up. So, you know, looking at the awareness that we have to offer, a main aim is to ensure that we are keeping our stakeholders informed of the different resources and industry developments.
So this is why we have sponsored the state of the Sector report for Community Energy this year, and are hoping to use the information from this to help steer movements going forward. From a collaboration point of view, we are working with the community energy representative bodies and Scotland, England and Wales to make sure that the support that we are offering and the awareness that we are driving as effective and useful, and through the multi-channel engagements that we have with social media and through a range of communication tools, we are making sure that any of these updates and insights into the sector effectively across and again through its participation, Our hope is that similar with webinars and workshops similar to this one, that you have today, we can help to continue to support and raise awareness of the Community Energy sector. Lastly, looking at the strategy and how it will develop going forward. As much as we are aiming to offer support from an advocacy point of view, we still need as much detail as possible for where the pain points are.
We have community energy groups and affiliated bodies and organizations need their own support and perhaps need some, for the support and resource building. That is something that we want to be able to identify and adequately help us. Body of management efforts continue. A body is coming up, and the way we would like to make sure that we can offer as much help and support and effectively in over them.
And as much as our strategy is developed on a yearly basis as still a reactive strategy and one that stagnated and thus shared journey that we brought together and community energy. Of the different points that I've highlighted today, again, I'll make reference to the community Energy web page that we have is a centralized hub. If you register as a stakeholder, you can get regular updates.
Again, this can be accessed through the QR code here. And to have an in-depth look at our community energy strategy, once again you have the QR code at the end. Thank you very much and I hope you enjoy the rest of the webinar for this afternoon. Thanks.
Just very quickly. We are Community Energy Wales and the covenantal community. We are a Welsh government funded, fully bilingual membership organization representing the interests of community energy organizations in Wales.
So we'll be sort of fighting, for you, if you like. This is the team. Don't particularly need to go through everyone. Just there's me in the bottom right hand corner there. Research and policy. So, as I said, we're really fighting, for community energy organizations, interests here in Wales. I deal with, you know, the organizations themselves.
And Welsh Government. We are around 60 members currently and always looking to support, more members across Wales as well. Around 75% of our members are community organizations. We also have corporate members and some associate. So we we work together with some, some of the agencies as well. We do have these groups. We provide support for community energy organizations as they are starting to get up and running, but also once they're running as well, representing their interests.
This is what we do, basically just leading by example, sharing our knowledge and our wisdom. So putting people in touch as well with, with others, that are already, here up and running, in Wales. I'm trying to, as I said, get that influence, on Welsh Government. As we mentioned or as Liam mentioned earlier, we have been working together with community Energy England and Scotland on putting together, the state of the sector report.
We also write our own state of the sector report for, Wales. And you can read last year, there if you want to, if you want to find out more. But this year, as I said, we, very kindly sponsored by, Scottish Power Energy Networks as well to get the details, for this year.
So that's basically our organization. And, if you are in Wales, or your organization is in Wales, please do get in touch. We'd love to hear from you. And, hopefully you'll be able to provide some support for you as well. That's been done. Thank you very much, everyone. Deal from our brilliant. Thank you. Jason.
Yes. Hi, everyone. Yeah. John Taylor here from Community Energy England.
Okay. Right. If you move forward.
One slide, please. Eight. Right. Yeah. Good evening everybody. And yeah, I'm John Taylor. I'm the head of capacity building and strategic development at Community Energy England. I think given the Brexit area covered by, such power, energy networks, I believe certainly the patchy lines around Liverpool, Cheshire, the Wirral area. But we certainly do collaborate very well with our partners in Community Energy Wales and Scotland as well.
So a little bit about us. We've been going since 2014 as the membership body in England, representing over 300 organizations involved with all aspects of the energy transition from large generation projects to innovation through to, fuel poverty, working energy advice, next slide please.
Yes. So, yeah. And a broad mission is to help the sector thrive as much as possible and scale up, especially with the changing government and the talk around, that energy ambition for the local power plant and GB energy, eight gigawatts of capacity is the national target now for local ownership of generation capacity. So we're very excited to, play a role as part of that.
And, working with the connection networks and OS distribution networks transmission, it's all, going to be, everybody pulling in the same direction to make that happen. The national work with leading is on the Energy Learning Network. Along with Ashton Center for Sustainable Energy, and it's going to be, capacity building program organizing. A training program, curating events and both virtual and in-person to share viable business models and how to be more effective social enterprises and professional partners working alongside local authorities and other commercial partners in the energy system.
And it's not limited to these as well. It's just three and a half year long program, so we're just right at the beginning of it. So please feedback to your national member bodies about what you'd like to see this network to live for you as well. Next please. One aspect and we got a kind of heat and retrofit coordinator who's leading some very interesting work around net zero terrace streets, how to decarbonize this particular niche of our communities.
Not very suitable for air source heat pumps, too. Not big enough for big heat networks, but then very interesting opportunity to integrate ground source heat pumps and rooftop solar PV energy storage. There's a very interesting smart local energy system trial being pioneered here. In, in Rossendale in Lancashire, which were running in that awareness and sharing events.
Later this month to hopefully replicate this model to other parts of the country. Next slide please. And, in that desert, as a member, you get access to lots of resources. Like, we run, monthly newsletters, links with governments, to influence, policy. And yeah, we've been running regional conferences as well, in the Midlands with our most recent one in Birmingham.
I think we're also got, community energy boards to celebrate best practice and, success across the sector as well, very much keen to raise awareness about community energy, get people excited about it. A delivery route, I'll skip forward is because I want to see the rest of the content later about wind farms and hydropower. Big thing we've got coming up responses is our, members of Ward Nights in Bristol, as well as well as our Southwest Regional forum.
Going to be in Bristol on the same day, the 22nd of November. You don't have to be a group in the south West of England to attend that. We have Welsh partners, people from the northwest and Midlands also. Welcome to join us as well. Scotland too, if you want to travel. But yeah, do look that up if you're interested in seeing what's out there at the moment.
It's that's it. That's very much
So shall I move over to Community Energy Scotland? The presentation on wind turbine technology.
Yeah. Hi, Jack. Hey. Yeah. So I'm Jack from Community Scotland. I'm the assistant. I'm an assistant technical officer and recently joined the technical team here. So my role is sort of help with any technical aspects that require, support and across a range of projects. So far, I've helped with our field analysis for, proposed energy generation technologies for community group.
Looking into our solar and, and wind as well. I've also been doing a bit of data collection for various projects, and I've also recently started supporting aspects of the Rural Energy Hubs project, which is based up in Orkney. Yeah. So today I'm just sort of going to give a brief intro into CS and quickly take you through what sort of, what community group might need to consider when looking into getting a turbine, what sort of turbines are available at the moment?
And also have a look at what community groups currently have installed as well. So kind of the next slide, please. Oh, sorry about that. Might have skipped one. Sorry. Okay, I missed it. Oh, right. Sorry. Yeah. So we're a member led independent organization which aims are to increase energy independence in communities and help them to reduce their carbon emissions.
We promote and support community led projects to help them through practical and technical support. And we help communities to build their understanding, build the capacity to create more, democratic, sustainable and low carbon solutions. One way we do this is by enabling our members to link up and network with each other, allowing them to share their knowledge, learn off each other's successes in succession, successes and failures.
So yeah, if you're an organization in Scotland and are interested, definitely. If you want to become a member, look into that. You can either go to our website or, I can edit my email address in the chat afterwards and you can email me, if you want to find out more. Yeah. So next slide please.
So yeah, I think it's just a nice example of, project the CSS is supported and it was a while ago now in 2009 it was completed the Westray turbine in Orkney. So I think it'd start ties in nicely if I'm going to talk about today. So due to the nature of the location, there are lots of barriers and question marks.
See, around like surrounding this project. See has played played a role in finding solutions to these barriers. For example, one was finding suitable turbine and convincing the developer that it was worth coming all the way up to Orkney to install it. So, yeah, this project was a success and it inspired and informed many other similar projects in the surrounding areas.
That will benefit their respective communities greatly. There are many things that need to be considered when choosing a wind turbine. Firstly, when resource and how windy is the site, how durable do your turbine need to be? Another thing to consider should grid connection, reinforcing the grid and being able to cope with large wind turbines can be very expensive, and so that something needs to be considered.
Obviously the cost of the turbine itself, as well as obviously very important, especially with regards to payback time for a turbine and for communities. The revenue stream created by turbines often increases once initial loans are being paid off. And I'll sort of give an example of that later as well. The impact that turbine has in the surrounding area often dictates what size of turbine is suitable for a given project.
If there's housing nearby, then the noise levels of a particular turbine may need to be considered, and even just the general height of a turbine as well. And if it's really close to housing. And lastly, another, thing that's important is making sure you have someone that's able to maintain your turbine for you. You know, if you don't have someone, we can do that, then you're going to have troubles down the line.
And that's sort of a consideration that's mostly relevant to situations. We can use second hand turbines, which also have sort of an example of later as well. So if I can have the next slides, and I just really briefly want to mention wind classes, just for about context, basically for anyone that doesn't know them, they basically just represent the different average wind speeds.
There's a couple other parameters as well, such as turbulence and gust speed and things like that. But essentially, not all turbines will be rated for all the wind classes. And going back to mentioned what I mentioned when resource as a factor that needs to be considered, obviously, you need to make sure that your wind turbine can withstand the wind.
It's going to be exposed to, in Scotland, you're mostly looking at classes one and two, and it's out of coastal areas and higher altitude areas. You're looking at mostly class one and two. That was just for a little bit of extra context for going forward. And, yeah, if I cover the next slide, please. She saw with, and mind, I'd like to show a little piece of data collection that I sort of did recently.
The issue show what sort of turbines are available from. So, I mean, manufacturers right now, this figure chart shows, capacity against type height, for turbines up to 200 meter type height. And this is only for class one and two turbines. As I was looking in Scotland, what we see at the moment is that both the capacity and like, height of turbines is increasing when compared to what sort of, community groups have currently, so another key point is that, only seven of these models.
And if we go to the next, the next slide, are only are class one rated. So this chart shows the same thing. But for class one turbines, and obviously certain areas of Scotland, it's, you know, you need to have class one. And as you can see, the choice is fairly limited at the moment.
And this is also quite important when looking at groups that already have turbines that want to repower them. If you look at, turbines that are 100kW or higher, community wind turbines and there's about 56 of them, I believe, in Scotland at the moment. And of those 56, around 20 of them are the same model to class one Energon turbine.
It's 900kW. And as you can see from this graph, there are only one model that's available at three different tip heights. It's an eight turbine and it's sort of suited to that. And so as you can see, there is quite a limited choice at the moment if you're looking at class one. Of course there are areas where, you know, you might you can get away with class two.
And so it's not all sort of doom and gloom, but I will, sort of show now in the next slide, the same sort of figure, but for what communities currently have in Scotland. And as you can see, there are a lot more clustered down on that very left hand side below, one megawatt. And not many communities have any there, you know, on the larger side of things.
Yeah. So I mentioned the 56 sort of turbines that are larger than 100 kilowatt. That's sort of what you see here. And the models for these turbines, only 43 of them, those models are still, only only the models for 43 of those turbines are still currently available. And which means the going forward, communities are going to need to look for different solutions if they want to acquire large scale, large scale turbines.
And although as I've shown that there are, the choice of turbine now is more limited, especially considering class one turbines and the turbines are increasing in size, communities are still showing they can make it work. And I'm going to give a few examples of that now. So if we go to the next slide again, the first example is an example, of refurbished turbines.
So it's a long time ago now. But the idea Heritage Trust, they, they got three refurbished Vestas turbines. They're 225kW each. They're now in their, 20th year of operation. And, it is a solution some, some of the companies I mentioned are or they were on the figures earlier. For example, best I still do offer maintenance on refurbished turbines.
And it is however on specific models, but it's just starting to show that that is an option. And the community group in the past has made it work. So even though if you're looking at sort of current models of turbine, even if it's quite limited in choice, there are still you can still possibly make it work using older turbines.
And another example in the next slide, is Point in Southwark Trust. They own the largest community owned wind farm in the UK with three three megawatt Energon turbines. The turbines generate 900,000 pounds annually for the community. And as I mentioned earlier, once initial loans are paid off, that goes up and is expected to increase about 2 million pounds per year for this community.
It's a really good example that show that communities can scale up alongside the sort of scaling of the market at the moment, and, and so, yeah, it's it's just a good example to show that it is still possible. And the communities are able to acquire these really large turbines. That three megawatt, these three megawatt turbines are the largest in terms of capacity that any community group in Scotland has.
And until the next slide, we've got one last example, Radio City Association in Gilbert, Kilbirnie in North Ayrshire. So they are almost completed. They've almost completed their 2.5MW turbine. It's going to be the first community owned subsidiary free turbine in the, in the UK. It has a diameter of two meters in the tip pipe, 110m, which makes it one of the largest community wind turbines in Scotland.
Well, that'll be when it's up and running. It's expected to be complete around the end of this year, maybe into January 2025. So basically, it's just a really good example that shows even though the options are more limited now and turbines are getting larger, communities are still able to, find solutions for their project. So yeah, despite the increase, it's not impossible for communities to find a solution.
And yeah, that's sort of me. Thanks very much, Chuck. So swiftly moving back and see agenda. I think we do have Jerry from Ricardo now.
thank you very much.
So my name is Joe. I work as, consultant here at Ricardo.
We work. Our aim is to create a sustainable, and safe word that world. And we do that with a lot of clients in, for example, the energy sector. So we might work with people like yourselves, community building level. We also work with people like, spend in terms of planning networks and we do, planning and implementation of, energy generation as well, tons of PV and, wind farms and so on and so forth.
So this evening, I want to talk to you a little bit about what we're seeing are some, some trends, some details of technologies. Some of them are, well established, a bit less so, but they're the sorts of things that I expect that you might be considering for your, projects. So I'll get into it. And when we're talking about community energy, what might that encompass?
Well, it may be as simple as a single EV charger, which is, you know, pretty small scale. It might be that you're thinking of a community hall and putting some sort of a generation on there, and you might have various reasons for that. So we'll come to you. We will talk about something a bit bigger in terms of a village scale and supplying energy.
In the case of this picture, we're look at district heating. And it might be that we're actually looking to create an energy generator, which for the from the point of view of a community would group would be a cash generator as opposed to across all scales. There are lots of different things that you could be doing for, for your, community group.
Before going to the technology, I want to take a little step back, though, and say when you're choosing those technologies are thinking about which path to go down. You have to ask yourself, why are you doing it? I suppose, and what we find when we talk to various different people is that those groups who know precisely why they're doing something as opposed to what they're doing, really make it easier for themselves to do the what they're doing, if that makes sense.
If you know of what your end goal is, which might be, for example, reducing your running costs, by generating your energy, it might be about, reducing your energy bills and people within your community in the homes of those people. It might be about trying to just generate some cash to use for something else. You it may not be the energy's your key focus, but some other project is or it could be that you want your community to say to you will take some action and some responsibility for helping the country and the world achieve net zero.
Or there might be some other things like, helping people to transition to EVs. If that's difficult in your particular area, maybe there's a lack of off street parking for people to install in chargers. Or it might be that you want to, showcase some technologies which you think, local community residents might want to employ in their own homes.
So lots of different reasons. This is not exhaustive list, obviously, but if you know that, then it much helps you to then get to the point of saying, well, what technology will be the right thing and how will we measure the kind of the quality of that technology that we apply? Not course in terms of how it works, but how it fits in terms of meeting our sort of success factors for our project.
So a flip at that point, let's because I think it's really important that people would do think about that before they go into technology choices and what not, because that will make the project much smoother. But I'm going to go on and talk about a few examples, of different things that we've been looking at recently and, and how they might impact on, on what you might want to do.
And in those examples, I'll highlight some of the regulations that you might have to deal with. So in the case of this, public EV charger, the things like the ChargePoint regulations, and there might be some regulations from the local authority about who can, create parking spaces and chargers in different locations. I'll try to talk a little bit about technologies so that might be the charger type that you're using in this instance.
And generally talk about how those things come together in a, in a project. So if you look at this example, a car charge is a pretty simple thing. You have an electricity connection, in this case coming from the grid. You, have a device which you can plug into your car, which has a meter and some kind of connection to the to the internet, usually so that you can take payment.
And then, of course, you can trace your, car up to that and plug in to connect it. So that's quite a common thing for community groups to want to do, because, in certain locations, it can make life a lot easier for community residents to be able to switch to EVs. But as I see, there are certain things that you need to think about.
For example, the ChargePoint regulations put a lot of burden on an operator of an EV charger to, store data correctly, for example, to process payments correctly to, deliver a certain resilience. So the charger, if you if you put it there and you're selling as a service, it has to work 99.999% of the time, so to speak.
So there's a lot of things in there that you might not consider at first glance. But for example, a third party operator could cover all those things because they have systems set up to do it. So you're there there are regulatory, requirements which should have an impact on how your model of delivering this project to your community might work.
And then, of course, there's the varying levels of burden, on your, on your sales in terms of how you manage it, and how you, get others in to help you effectively. And of course, there are questions to ask about, pricing. So you could price this, nonprofit sort of level in terms of what you sell your electricity to for the, for the, the car owners, what they pay you for it, versus what you pay the, the network, your supplier.
So lots of different things to consider. And what is in principle, quite a simple technology. Then if we look at the next, on my little list here, which is not an exhaustive list, it's just some cherry picked items. This is maybe more common, recently, at least for for community groups that you have a community hall, sports facility or, music venue, whatever it may be.
And you want to, generate some income, let's say. Or you want to reduce your reliance on the grid, and then you might choose to go down the route of some building, integrated, generation, you know, that might be a small wind turbine or in this case, it's, solar, affordable takes again, there's regulatory impacts. You've got planning permission, perhaps, on a particular building, depending on when you're located now, and then you've got the technology to grapple with as well.
Which might be the PV, the inverter, which converts your DC electricity into AC and connected to the grid frequency. You might choose to have a battery in there if you want to, iron out differences between the time of use, in terms of your consumption and the time of generation. So a lot of community buildings are used in the evening.
But of course, the sun is shining during the day, so a battery can help to link those two together. And of course, our meter, I'm indicating what we're calling the Tara structure, which again, might relate to, it's kind of energy or Tara for sports is the phrase I'm looking for, that you want to be able to, if you're sailing, electricity other than you're, you're generating more, you're using on a particular time of day, you want to get a good price for it.
And when you're buying electricity, for example, at night you want to get as cheap as possible. So Tara structures are really important that I highlighted because when you come to putting together a project like this, you do the obvious things of getting prices for all these different elements, and then you try and predict project into the future features that what you might generate, what you might sell, what you might therefore not have to import, etc., etc., to make your financial model stack up.
And that financial model, depends quite a lot on what the sun may do, obviously. But also depends even more largely on what your tire structure is. So that's something that you need to think about quite early on in planning these things, because it might be the difference between installing a very small system which just covers your own consumption, or is at least optimized to match your consumption.
Or it might be that you max out and cover every square inch of your roof, because you see an opportunity to make money. So there's definitely, a lot to think about beyond just the technology itself. But as was a bit of a, touch on that technology for a moment, please. There it is. Are reasonably efficient.
Don't forget your building one. Yes. Thank you for that one. Very, very good points. You may have to have a one again, depending on what works you're carrying out and as as of notice here, you've got, a roof structure which potentially, depending on what sort of scale of installation you're putting up there, may need, checked out by a structural engineer.
And, of course, if you need to do any, amendments to strengthen that restructure, then that's definitely one for for building one. For example. Yeah. So on technology, your PVS are fairly simple. You'll know what they look like. You've seen them 100 times on different roofs, but within the building you're going to have an inverter or multiple inverters, depending on the size of your, your array.
So that needs a little bit of space. And if you do go for a battery, then you again, you've got to think about space for that. Although they're generally getting smaller. So again, fairly simple technology now well-established. And you should be able to find lots of, installers who, who can call you for the work, but also you should be able to find lots of, specialists and give you good advice and other people can give you advice.
I'll come back to this at the end, but it's really important that you speak to other community groups have done something similar actually. So that's the second step in our scale. If I go along a further one, it gets more complicated. So this looks in principle similar that we've got, PVS on a roof, but in this case we've got a building which might be a block of flats.
For example, we have multiple, residents, and you want to get together as a community group to put some PV on that roof and then, somehow share the benefit. So technology wise, it's quite simple to generate electricity. It's quite simple to export to as well. But what we found recently when, when studying, the, the complexity of sharing benefit is that it's a very complex object and it's, I've sort of described here as a philosophical as much as a technical challenge.
And the reason for that is because you need to think in advance as to what you consider benefit to be and and how best to share it. So if I ever so exemplify a potential difficulty is that if you were to, let's see, generate electricity export just as a grid and then you just share the, the, the value of the electricity by reducing the bills of the people who are in or in that house or in that block of flats.
You can imagine that people who, people who are resident as homeworkers, workers during the day will be able to use the benefit of that electricity is being generated, whereas someone is, it works in an office somewhere else or, or no, at home, working during the day. They don't get the benefit directly of that. So you have to figure out a way of, well, how do we reduce, that each person's bills or how do we, equalize each person's income, to, to make it even depending on, you know, irrespective of whether you're, using the electricity that's generated at the time or not.
And there are technological ways of doing that. There are some clever systems out there could do it, but they're not cheap. And then there are some alternative billing ways to do it, which again, can be complicated by the fact that, different residents at the start of this project would have different agreements with different suppliers, therefore, are operating on different tariffs, and they would expect a different sort of benefit, if you like.
So we researched this recently, on behalf of, someone else. We didn't actually come to a single concrete conclusion, if that makes sense. There's not one answer that solves all of these problems. But it's more a question of what? What to the people, what to do, how much money do they have to spend, etc., etc..
So a very complicated one for what seems like a quite a simple, a simple community project where you kind of banding together and trying to make things, a bit better for everybody. It can be complicated by some of these issues, which would obviously slow things down. But again, it goes back to the the original questions that I posed, which are, why are you doing this?
If you're clear about your, your end goals, then you can navigate your way through this philosophy a bit easier. And then another scale here is something that we've seen quite a lot actually, in recent times where community groups, or parish councils, whoever it may be, getting the idea, which is interesting, a noble idea of generating electricity within their area, using that electricity to generate heat and then pumping that heat around to heat.
Everybody's building. So it's a way of dealing with the fact, and I particularly highlight villages here because these, many of these of communities there are, there are, buildings of a variety of ages, the variety of them, complexities when it comes to decarbonizing. So the obvious decarbonization opportunity is take out your oil boiler, replace it with a heat pump.
And it may be in, for example, a conservation village that, putting a heat pump outside your house is, frowned upon or difficult to do. Or it might be that, you live in a listed building, listed property where you can't do anything to improve things like u-values, less insulation of, of the property, which makes it bit more difficult for heat pumps to operate at an economic rate.
So this idea of creating a heat network and ensuring heat from a central source around the whole village seems like a good solution for dealing with that of course, you're probably more used to seeing networks in city centers where there's a high density of, heat demand. And so the cost of that network per person, so to speak, is fairly low.
And that's going to be higher in a, in a, in a community or a rural setting, like a village. But perhaps there's ways of making that work. If you're generating your own electricity, be a solar farm or a wind farm using an electricity to operate a heat pump, be it an air source, heat pump or again, source heat pump, and then distributing that heat, potentially, as in this diagram, through a thermal store, which effectively means you've got a giant battery on site.
If you generate lots of electricity when the sun is shining, you can you can save that up that heat in a store, for use later on. So there's a lot of complexity in a project of that scale. You can imagine there's more than just a bit of planning permission for your building. There's permission for for digging up the streets in your village, for example, there's obviously legislation associated with, heat networks.
There's legislation associated with, billing, you know, your customers and making sure you're metering them correctly. There's the planning permission associated with something as large as a solar farm. So these projects are big and complicated. They're not necessarily scary, but they're the sort of things, obviously, that you have to get the appropriate help for appropriate time in order that you can properly understand, what might the ultimate price per kilowatt hour of heat to your customers be?
Because that's kind of the, the, the benchmark against which they will choose to join that network or not. But this also sort of highlights an opportunity to do something which is, not really well established. But it's conceptually well thought of, which is something called a microgrid. So effectively that is like creating a small island in your community where you have, a single connection to the outside, electricity network.
You have your own network around that island, and you can sort of lift the drawbridge, so to speak, when you want to or need to, but also your, your supplier, your network could lift that drawbridge where they need to sort of cut you off and reduce the load on their network. So to do that, you obviously need some form of generation like.
Net instant PVS, and you need some form of storage to keep you going just in case that generation isn't happening, because of course, renewables, of this nature are dependent on the weather. So that storage might be a thermal store, it might be electric batteries. But, either way, if you've created that island and you have your generation and you have your storage, then oh comes down to what is the tariff that you can get agreed with your network supplier.
So that could be very advantageous pricing structure for you, if that's, if the network is really keen to be able to kind of raise that drawbridge and take you out of the picture when they're having their peaks, and if is a very advantageous tariff structure, then then that means that ultimately the price of heat to all these customers comes down.
So it becomes, quite a complex technical project because there's very many elements to it. But it's also, importantly, a complex financial project. You'll need to get the right, advice and support from, from, from the right places, to navigate your way through that. But, yeah, it's a, an interesting and more, more common roots that people are at least investigating, even if they're not successfully going to complete the project, they're definitely looking at it more and more often.
So I read that one is something some of you may be thinking about. Is there, in terms of the technology? We've talked a lot about PVS here, heat pumps. I'll just sort of a quick reminder of what they are that the, their devices, refrigeration devices effectively, which take heat for energy from a source and deposit that energy in a, in a different place like the pipes of your of your heating network.
So a heat pump could use heat from the air, or it could use heat from the ground. It could use heat from a water source. If that water source is flowing. And it's common that any or all of those might be combined actually in a, in a system as large as this. What I would say, though, is that, it's common knowledge, if you like an inverted commas that that ground source heat pumps are better than air source heat pumps, because they're marginally more efficient.
But they remind that your source heat pumps are considerably cheaper. So again, another financial aspect to consider when you're thinking about capital cost versus the your lifetime cost of the project. So that was a pretty quick run through of, various technologies. My last point here was to see where can you get advice? And of course, this would have been a good segue into the following presentations.
You've obviously had a bit of a head start on some of them anyway. But of course there are these organizations are here, and you hear more from them in this, meeting. But, of course, don't don't be shy about talking to suppliers and installers to to get their advice. When you're planning these things, look for consultants, engine consultants, when you have, you know, when you've got your concrete idea of what you want and you're a bit uncertain about the technical details, then make use of those professionals.
And as I alluded to at the beginning of this, we recently did some, research on, some success factors of different projects. And one of those pieces of advice from, from people have completed projects in the past was go and speak to other people who have completed projects in the past. So your fellow community groups, if you know someone who has, completed a project of whatever scale, then speak to them and find out their experience.
Find it what they found, the most difficult aspect of it, which may not be what, you know, a consultant thinks is the most difficult aspects and so prepare yourselves, by, by investigating those factors. And I think that's all I want to see. And I think that's about 20 minutes. So hopefully on track I'll hand back to you, Nathan.
And if there are any questions, obviously we can pick them up in the chat or later on. Right. Thanks very much, Joe. Unlike Joe said, if you got any questions on any of those technologies, you can ask Joe, the other panel members later on tonight. You can discuss them in the breakout sessions shortly. So I'll just move on now to the two case study presentations.
Is the Edinburgh Community Solar Co-op?
Okay. My name is Jim Lee, and, I actually work for energy all too. Can I take control of this? No. Yeah. I worked for energy for all, a not for profit organization that supports Edinburgh Solar. On 35 other projects across the UK that you know them in Scotland. I'm a director of the Edinburgh Solar Co-op.
So, I'm speaking on their behalf. Perhaps the more interesting thing about the Edinburgh Solar Co-op is the the journey that they had to the point where the establish the project. I started working for the energy, but all in 2016. And at that point they tell me they had been talking about the project for about ten years.
They had looked at various options. They had stopped it all been a very ambitious way. Their initial idea was to create a community owned one forum and Leith Harbor, and they did work for some time trying to develop the idea before realizing that, it wasn't practical in the I'd been setting in which they wish to do it.
They then went in the opposite direction and looked at one very small project, a starting point, a community center that had been through Community Asset Transfer. But for reasons that didn't work out called, Ida. And they tell me they were almost about to give up when they found themselves, almost by chance, in discussion with the Edinburgh Council, about how they might develop a project.
And they have been working with them, from 2013. The they have done two community share open one action towards the end of 2013 rather than 2016, as it says in the slide. Although the work was done in 2016. So we tend to associate 2016 with the the bus phase of the project. And the second community, she had off or done in 2020, raising over 2 million pounds.
The the bus share offer was a bigger one, 1.4 million. The second one, 660,000 pounds. It would have been a bigger project, but it was during Covid and a combination of Covid, and various guidance problems within Edinburgh and reduced it in size. And the the admiral said, look, I'm very proud to say that they raised nearly all the money from Edinburgh itself.
They only managed to raise 70% of the money in 2015. That was because it up against a couple of deadlines. One was a tentative deadline, the other one the Irish tax exemption running out. So they decided to offer shares to people outside Edinburgh, but they still managed to raise 70% of the money in Edinburgh. And in 2020 they raised every penny, within Edinburgh.
This means they have installed solar panels in the rest of 30 council buildings across Edinburgh, most of them primary schools, quite a few leisure centers. And they'd be very proud to say that they have paid the to set some of that Edinburgh up to solar panels and the rest of council buildings. They are also able to supply electricity to the council below great place at ditch rates, which means at the moment on 24 buildings.
The council was paying 2013 prices. And on the other six 2020 prices, albeit the second case was index linked, the, the capital o the operation and maintenance and all the financial suppleness was to community benefit. So, he make 20 to 30,000 crop a year. They then invite applications for up from across the city, 100g sold back to 3,000 pounds to community groups, and other of the like across Edinburgh.
They have not even, agreed upon these all 16 buildings. That was agreed by the council only two weeks ago. They are planning to do, a 2.6 million pound community share offer in early 2025. And some of the, the buildings involved this time, reflect the the ambition of the, the solar co-op, the, including the Royal Cornwall Pool and the International Climbing Center.
And they are also for the first time as at West stepping outside the council. So they are going to include, some community owned properties, not one, but couple of community assets. I spent, community centers, a charity owned, childcare facility, and a third poverty project that, leases our building from the council to.
Reasons why, the project has been successful. Possible because the council itself, had actually been using the label that council, then eight, ten years ago, they were looking for projects like this on, on plan one. So it was, was a good match. That said, there were all sorts of problems in terms of making the project.
What not only so them procurement, but just getting people across the council to all come to the same place. Whether it was denies the legal, and mistakes or whatever. Took a bit of walked and it was only leadership at the highest level. The chief executive, the council leader, stepping into the project that really made up in the way that the dense social was seeing that the, the project, because it didn't use the usual rules of retirement, were presenting themselves as, citizens of Edinburgh who were using certain values and principles, corporate values and principles like equality, democracy, solidarity and the lights.
And through that they were able to to work in partnership with the council. So as a business relationship, it is very much, a partnership business relationship. And it also has to be said that the council, has shown great faith in the community, it trust the community, and it takes quite a lot of courage, on behalf.
But, entities within the public sector to, trust the community to deliver on something that perhaps it itself would normally have delivered. And the final point I would make is the energy bill has helped with this project as well. We are only funded by the community groups who are actually, up and operating. So what about five of those ten years?
We what? Free of charge with the solar co-op to develop it? We we are funded by the, the one projects that we had established, towards that. I know that Edinburgh has been up and running throughout the years and supporting us where we develop other projects. So, very much a partnership that aspire to a success like it really.
And thanks very much, Jeremy Benson on the, fantastically successful initiative. Now I'll pass over to Wallace George and the Ogwen.
Good evening. Everybody is a good a pleasure to be here. If you don't mind this, we did manage, but moving the slides for me. Yeah, I'll try to. And if you don't mind, I'm going to switch off my camera because my notes. So a separate screen to my rights on this side is on my best profile.
So if that's okay here, certainly we can move on to the to the next slide, please. Just to confirm, first of all, on your Gwen trustees question, please ask or Gwen energy. Were based in Duffield Gwen. The Ogwen valley now which I'll tell you a bit more about. In a moment. Picking up on Chuck's points earlier in terms of why, how this initiative come about.
Fundamentally because we would issue established by a community development organization called Partner Program which is formed by three county councils coming together to pool the resources to stimulate various economic and social projects, in the area. So sustainability of the community achieving net zero was central to that, but also quite fundamentally, the ownership of natural resources for community benefits, including wealth creation, detention.
I could have the next slide, please. So this is Avon or Gwent, the river Ogwen, which flows through our valley. We are located to the south of Bangor in Gwynedd in north west Wales. The valleys, both during the day on one side by the mountain range, on the other by the company, like, the upper valleys part of Israel National Park and the other, you probably know was Snowdonia are historically now the community was very dependent on the slate industry and has suffered at tremendously from its decline from the 1960s onwards.
At its peak, the beginning of the last century, well over 20,000 people lived here, but this is now reduced to around 6500. The Welsh language is very much a live in country language with roughly three quarters of the local population. Able to speak the language, but also, according to the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation, all the war in the valley are amongst the poorest 10% of Wales.
The area is now very heavily dependent on the visitor economy. Unlike many of those have seen a proliferation of short term holiday lets. Airbnb and the like in recent years. Can I move on, please? So here we have I don't know, Gwen. This is the we year, which was constructed in 2016. Just behind it, you will see, Pont for Gwen, the old Gwen Bridge, which is quite a well-known local landmark.
And interestingly, just beyond the bridge on the other side of the river, there is a site of a hydro which was developed by the local quarry over a century ago to provide them with power. So this is the low intake weir beneath the bridge. From here, there's a ten meter outlet pipe that goes into a small head south and if we could have the next slide, please me.
So. Well, then the water travels roughly 360m down this pipeline. Would she be pleased to know is now buried to the turbine house, which you can see on the slide. Beyond that, to the top. Returns the water to the river. Next slide, please, until we are inside the turbine house. The handsome gentleman at the height of his jacket.
He's got it. Come in. Jones, who is our chair? And we are very, very lucky to have his services because he has spent a lifetime, working in the hydro industry across the world, developing some very significant huge hydro projects. And this is where the magic happens. You see the intake pipe on the right hand side there, the generator, just to the left.
And then from here, the electricity that's created goes up to a permanent transformer. It's just above the turbine house, which is then converted into the electricity. Export is a high voltage. Next slide, please. So why you how you drew is one of the questions I was asked to consider. Well, as I hope you see in the other, when is very much at the heart of the valley.
So it was immediately obvious to the founders of our organization that they should be looking at the potential fill out in terms of energy generation. There are also other how you do, in the area, one developed at the National Trust and a couple of others in private ownership. And so I've got us camera interviews here.
What emphasize is obviously a proven technology and highly efficient in terms of it. But just to note, the capacity is 100kW. The initial ambition was actually to install a generator for 500kW, but had to be reduced following negotiation negotiations. About the obstruction light sense. Unfortunately, the development costs of nearly half a million, well, all, funded by a Quincy share offer.
As with Edinburgh, with vast majority, that funding was raised within the little community. We have been fortunate that the scheme started generating in 2017. I would able to access the feed in tariff, which certainly made the initial business case a far more economically viable, option. Next slide please. So in terms of outputs, the generator is predicted to produce approximately 500MW.
That was a clean electricity each year on see what I would hundred and 50 tonnes of carbon. Next slide please. And if I remind you of obviously the initial imperative here was the message about wealth creation as it was about carbon addiction. I'm glad to say we have been very successful in generating benefits. We have set up a totally independent, separate charity called Lewis and Ogwen and the we provide funding to that charity on an annual basis.
And for this financial year on the previous year that has been 15,000 pounds, up to date. David will be in the region of 54,000, which we're very, very proud of. Next slide please. And then this beauty is a 16 seater electric minibus which we funded in March of this year, for use primarily for like a local secondary school and primary school.
I was actually managed as part of part of Gwen's Country Transport service. Next slide please. So again, since 2020, the attention, has turned to the potential for solar PV installations. The game picking up on Jack Street is to. Why solar? Fundamentally, because the the overall vision for the new Ogwen used to be able to supply energy directly to local households and into the local markets.
So initially, the focus has been on providing affordable, clean energy to community buildings and SMEs. And then we entered into a power purchase agreement with the occupants of those buildings. We use local accredited contractors, and in that initial phase in 2020, we did actually install on six sites with a total capacity of 21kW. And I should emphasize at that time, the organization, had no staff.
It sold. So all this activity was delivered by the volunteer directors. Next slide please. So here we have Carbon Caskey get, which is a county owned bunkhouse in the village of Garland on the upper slopes of the valley. Now, this is a very small one kilowatt scheme. I want to show you in discussions with that at the moment in instead of adding to the installation that's already there.
Next slide please. And this is Bethesda Rugby Club, the new clubhouse up in 2020 where we installed a four kilowatts system. Next slide please.
Jim mentioned that the impact of Covid clearly, and that is certainly the case in terms of, near Gwent ability to carry forward the will about neutral. But we're very grateful to Welsh Government for making a grant fund available. The Quincy Energy Resources Grants, which we have been successful in securing funding for my post, for two years.
And I shared the post with my colleague David Merrick. Other targets for the two year funding periods is to produce a further 600kW of generation capacity, both on all fronts. I'm going about it. Next slide please.
So to date, we our capacity has reached end of 15kW. Thus on a so, eight sites, with an investment of 132,000 pounds. And I should note that all of the funding for these installations to date has come from the profits generated by the hydro scheme, in addition to the community benefits that I indicated earlier.
We've completed five installations in this year. Three of those were extensions to some of the schemes, completed back in 2020, along with two websites. And we cut off the activity working on another six sites. Which should roughly 68kW to add to that engine. 15. Next slide please. So here we are back at the rugby club. We had an additional nine kilowatts, were installed in March bringing our total generation capacity up to 13.
Next slide please. And this is kind of, Kevin Vice. The revised center which you meet will coach from the building's appearance a long time ago. Used to be a local grammar school. It was then the county center operated by the local authority. But of a couple of years now, it's actually been a repurpose and managed by partner for Gwent, the local community development organization.
And within it, they have some of their old staff located there that are currently spaces that is a co-working area. And on the lower ground floor there are a number of workshops which are let out at a regional rent. The site is also the base for charging their fleet to for community transport vehicles as well, so energy consumption is quite significant.
We've installed a 59 kilowatt system here, in May of this year, which is proven to be very, very successful to date. Next slide please. And this is the roof of the combi center. So in total, 91 panels, at a cost of 53,000 pounds. And net addition to that. But it's all good themselves. Invested in a 64 kilowatt hour battery storage system, which obviously enables them to maximize.
Let's see it generally shown, particularly in terms of charging that fleets of electric vehicles overnight. Next slide please. I'll just to give you a flavor as Jack and I think Jim also mentioned, you know, talking and engaging with other organizations. The organization of that first bullet points on the Enervon, is in an adjoining valley to the east of us.
And they have been generating very significant how you drill since 2015, and we certainly benefited greatly from that experiences. An important part is that in the third bullet point is to the valley, to our west. They've developed their hydro scheme in exactly the same timescale as we have, and we continue to collaborate with them. And others where whenever possible.
There are just a couple of other schemes which I thought might be of interest to you. I need that width, which translates as new energy. Is a scheme which is projected to produce, 30, 13MW, in a location called Bretton Hall, which is on the Flintshire, Cheshire border in the two countries they now with had planning consent in both.
Look two years and are looking to issue a share offer later this year and then only held a sug. How do you solve being a moorland area in Denbighshire to the east of us here? Well, a 60 megawatt wind wind farm is proposed, where it is intended that there will actually be a shared ownership model between the local community group and you had a fog on the private developer, and they recently completed the the pre-application consultation.
So again, that could be very significant as a model to enable communities to gain broader benefits. What would also sharing the risk by working closely with an experienced developer. Virtually all I have to share with you, this evening. I hope that's been of some useful some here. Obviously, my contact details on on the next slide north.
Then if you want to show up now. And again, if anybody wants to follow up. So, any more information about any of our experiences? Obviously we're very, very happy to share those with you. Thank you very much to Helen Young. You know, Wallace, representation on lots of different case studies of community energy projects across North Wales.
Appreciated. Thank you.
So the next 50 minutes is a Q and Q and a panel discussion with our panel members. So the panel is Jack comfort, sort of Gulf community. Andrew Scotland Gray emailing community material energy program manager, Energy Save Trust and Joe Gamble tactical specialist Ricardo energy and Environments.
So any questions you had from the breakout groups? They weren't supposed to our panel. Please feel free. I'm not sure our best way to do this, whether it's people raise their hands and then the team can unmute you. Or feel free to put questions in the in the chat.
I can start with kind of a problem from our group. That's probably I imagine would be across the capes. But, we had quite a good discussion at community by and it just how to really get people on board with these projects, understanding what they're doing. And just having kind of bringing the whole community along with you, which isn't really a question, but I guess just looking for, general advice and lots of people talking about how to really build that capacity and make sure it's not just one person leading things, but bringing people along and making sure that everyone feels about it.
Anybody has experience to speak to on that kind of end?
I could chip in if if, if said this was also an issue that came up, in our group. So we had a mix of organizations that are already very immersed in this, but also some who are kind of at an earlier stage in the journey. And there was a lot of discussion about, just making sure that there's good information out there that she's spending a bit of time on, on, community engagement.
We also had some discussion about the need for kind of common approaches on community engagement by the private sector and the opportunity there for getting kind of, shared ownership potentially as part of that. That community benefit is something that our organization to be involved in in Scotland. And also some discussion about there are some organizations out there with sort of engagement processes, almost like an off the shelf product that can, that can support.
So one that was flagged was, center for Sustainable Energy. That kind of community energy landscapes and project, which is something that kind of works on that getting getting the community together around a, renewable energy project.
Scram.
Any other questions? Those are breakout groups. Any observations? Had a learning to share.
I think from the first question, the, the main catalyst, folks, we were looking at where the challenges surrounding the community energy projects are. And I think one of the main things we were getting was the people capacity element and making sure that there was actually professionals within the sector who can help and provide support on a reliable, long term basis, rather than the the continual kind of voluntary aspect to the part time element.
A couple of other issues that we found around, some challenges potentially would be constraints on the grid. Of course, having that capacity to take on projects, find and then source and correct funding sources. And again, finding the correct and the the tools. What are the points that ed to admit was the you know, what these projects can serve for so long without any code because the right people just haven't found each other to be in the right room to have the conversations to get from step one to step two through to step ten.
And a lot of the time it's it's not that the process is difficult, is finding the correct people to point in the right direction can be more difficult. But I actually see, you know, so I think from a signpost and point of view, a benefit the sector could probably see and would provide a decent amount of help with people.
There's a clear pathway of who the individuals are to deal with. But Lake Edison and the, the each, the relevant within the lay and the amount of options it gets to the point where you know you have an information overload that cannot, can often leave you stable enough without technical and then without overwhelming feeling can often lead to it was a lack of progress off the back of that.
So what are the main things we with that say would be finding the right individuals, and shared and communicating the process. Again, this was touched on earlier with some of the key studies that projects have had success in the past years. And this is I can Shane and later a beacon to inspire others and say, okay, well, this is a path that can be trodden and, you know, throws light at the end of the tunnel.
I think that's quite important, too. So that was just a quick capture of the kind of first aspects of of what was looking at a failure and then some muscular drawdown of the bike itself.
Yeah. Just to follow up on what Liam just said, we discussed similar things with our group, and indeed, it's. I come from a group that's in the very early stages of a project, and the word signposting is the word that, I feel would help us a lot if there was a, not not necessarily a blueprint, but a clearly mapped out path that we could go along.
The whole project might proceed much more quickly, and I guess that's where we're looking at others to give us that sort of help. And, you know, would you be able to come up with anything like that? Is there a is there a simple route for most projects to follow, or are they all much more complicated?
I think, I mean, something that we tried to do at Clean Energy Scotland is exactly kind of like what's been touched on here. It's quite often when I like a member, one of our members comes to us with a question. Quite often it's just like pointing them, pointing out another member that we already know knows the answer and getting them in touch.
And that's often enough. And yeah, so I think like, I'm sure it's the same for communities you Wales and Scotland and England as well. Yeah. If you're not a member of of them, I would, I would definitely look into that because I think that's one of the sort of best idea. Maybe one of the most useful features is that they, I guess, have a lot of contacts, that maybe have at least at least one of their contacts or one of the groups.
So one of the members may have been on a very similar journey to you, and it might be that, yeah. It's just getting you in contact with one of those groups that's had a similar or just even. I mean, I'd certainly know, like colleagues, of mine at Community Scotland. We'll have a question. Come in. And it's just like, oh, we know that this person, this has worked on a project that was just like that.
Let's see what they know. And so I definitely recommend like becoming a member if of one of those organizations. Yeah. Thank you. Graeme. Thanks, Jason. Yeah I think I definitely echo what Jack said. I know Community Energy, Wales, England, Scotland, they've all got kind of good resources to help with that. Also to add I mentioned earlier the as, as you say, just we're involved with the Scottish and Welsh Government's community renewable support programs and within the resources for that, certainly in the cares, resources and toolkit, there is a, sort of high level kind of map of what the process might be of developing a community renewables project that
kind of breaks it down into stages with the different kinds of things that you need to address at each stage. So that would definitely be worth looking at. And I believe there's a, a similar version for, for Wales or although it's a Scottish Government resource, a lot of the, you know, the technical side of that is all going to be pretty much the same for England.
So then that would be on the local Energy Scotland, website. We can always follow up with some links these things if it's helpful, but that that might kind of help you understand what's there. And yeah, John's probably going to come into the middle because I know there's some really good resources on that. The Community Energy England site as well.
Go ahead, John. I that yeah yeah I the resources in Scotland Wales protect our when far in advance of what's available in England just because we have a lack of projects to draw on. Although there is a. Yeah, the guys in Bristol did a really good job with getting their one done and it's going to be an output.
It's the energy learning network to quite rapidly share that sort of knowledge. And we've already updated the how to guides on the Community Energy England website with a specific community wind page. So yeah, watch this space for that. But definitely heard you need the.
At the risk of speaking too much sorry to the couple of things that actually I think came up in Liam's group as well that might be really useful for thinking about the the future workshops as well. Was similarly, a lot of people in our group had experienced those network connection issues.
And so I know with the new incoming government, it is working with Ofgem to try and address the waiting list problem and zombie projects and all of that kind of stuff, but it might be really interesting to look at, you know, how how quickly is that going to have an impact for the Spen area, and what can people expect to see on that?
And then linked to that, there was also discussion about how can communities tie in the demand side alongside, you know, what can communities do to help connect in a potentially constrained situation by, you know, having batteries or having demand side management or, you know, linking it into sort of energy, local models that that kind of thing. It would be interesting to have a discussion, you know, is that something that Spen can help out with and give people more guidance about what is actually going to help?
Because I know it can vary very much from one situation to another depending on what the load on the grid is. So having a bit more kind of guidance or useful dialog around what can communities do within their own community to help with connection, where there's a constrained grid connection to get those kind of win wins of demand side management alongside renewables?
Yeah, but so I can step on here. And Louise, if there's anything you'd like to add, feel free. But our other end, we have been in discussions with, kind of two set, three set teams with connections, the flexibility team, other strategic optimizers. So strategic optimizers look at heat maps local guidelines. And again our next 5 to 10 year long term I hope is the the network.
And specific is going to look and a lot of what they are doing just now is kind of building the tool so that that information can become a lot more accessible. Myself and Louisa, in the process of trying to understand just just how they go about this and how that thinking is inspired and, and what goes and is part is displayed in that.
So their hope would be between myself and Louise at the more we can understand that and get to grips with that move that we can kind of then read, I would put that in a sense of, well, this is the workings of the company. This is what we're doing, and this is this is the projects and plans going forward.
They just all are seeking basis from a flexibility point of view. The team that are looking to develop a document within the next week or two, which again should show additional opportunities for different community energy groups to potentially enter into that flexibility market as well. And from a commercial point of view, look to get either a sources of revenue through the project.
So I think those would be the two main aspects. But as I say, I think the best way to communicate that information is as from the horse's mouth. So a lot of the work myself from the retail traders, go into these teams and go into these departments to try and other end to find out as much as we can, because we appreciate that, you know, a lot of puts that can get put on social media can can kind of fly past that.
He doesn't know best. I think with the two of us as two central points of we have that information, we can kind of put it across a little easier. So that is something the bit we are in the process of that. Yeah. All right. No thanks in that later. Thanks, Graham. Unless there's any other burning questions, I think I'll draw close to this session.
There. Sort of say thank you again to all our presenters, for some fantastic presentations. And thank you all for attending today's webinar. As I mentioned, the start of the webinar, there'll be to follow up for events later this year, early next year. More details on these events and how to register them will be sent to you, via email I think shortly.
If you do have any follow up questions where you'd like more information on any of the items discussed this evening, please contact this in box in the chat that was put there, and we'll, answer any questions that you have, as soon as we can. So I think that's, it's, for now. Thanks again for joining us and have a good rest of your evenings.
Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much. Thank you. Bye bye.