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Wolverton Community Energy hub

  • Added: 30/07/15

We will enable long term community energy resilience and ultimately provide the resources to deliver

Overview

We want to radically improve energy efficiency across Milton Keynes. We will install solarPV at scale on industrial and community buildings in order to generate long term revenues to invest behind our ambition. We will work with those businesses buying our cheaper, greener energy from the panels above them. Our aim is to re-invest 50% of our revenues to drive energy efficiency here and cut usage and costs. We will invest the other 50% to help eradicate full poverty, targeting households that most need our help and some community buildings. We are already building partnerships to make sure we are using the networks of those around us embedded in the heart of Milton Keynes. So far we are working with Future Wolverton who has ten years of track record in delivering energy projects locally - everything from e-cars to insulation. We are developing a partnership with Swan Credit Union, who will help us find the households in most need. We see an MK consortium of energy hubs in our future.

We have begun with Wolverton Community Energy www.wolvertoncommunityenergy.uk, registered in April 2015 as a Community Benefit Society FCA number 7113. We hope that we will nurture a series of community energy hubs across MK and expect to register a Milton Keynes Community Energy Consortium when appropriate.

Our aim is to provide the information and the resources to fundamentally impact on the energy efficiency of our neighbourhood, and provide long term community energy resilience.

Our strategy is to install solar PV at scale on commercial and industrial buildings so that we are generating energy that we can sell to provide us with resources and build a sustainable community business for the long term. We will install smart meters to not only read the energy data coming from the panels, but all the energy use across the businesses with which we will work. Analysis of this data will be the starting point for our energy efficiency plans for each business (we will of course also do an on site survey and EPC on each property with which we work). Our intention is to invest 50% of our surpluses each year in the property of these businesses, the other 50% will be invested into the local neighbourhood.

These neighbourhood funds will be targeted towards those households that most need help. We are not interested in 'sticking plaster' solutions. We want to fundamentally change the energy use in households that are most in need, starting with improving the energy efficiency of those buildings and understanding energy habits to bring usage and costs down. We know how hard it is to find the right people - so have built a partnership with Future Wolverton. We are also in discussion with Swan Credit Union and others to make sure we develop a coherent community investment strategy. This is where your funding will really help.

We would like to spend serious time to develop an approach to using the data from smart meters to better understand the relative impact of energy efficiency measures - and importantly, to better communicate these. We would like to build the community strategy to improve energy resilience among households who are in need. We would use your funding to pay someone to investigate the best options, to pilot site surveys and to clarify our approach.

Our other key investment at this stage is to sign up rooftops. This requires lease drafting, and your funding would help pay for our legal bills. We are at the stage where we have an offer of loan funding from Big Issue Invest for our first installation on The Radcliffe School, which we are hoping to begin in October 2015. We are in talks with many other property owners and tenants. Our aim is to get enough commitment to run a share offer in Autumn 2015.

If we are successful in receiving £5000 from you we will split it 50:50 between the community energy efficiency strategy and the legal bills.