Community Solar

18 March 2020 17:16

Community Solar

Local benefit across the Tamar Valley

Tamar Energy Community is celebrating its fourth year of generating community owned solar energy across the Tamar Valley, and we’d like to invite you to get involved. Working with local organisations we have installed 327kW of rooftop solar PV across six sites: Abbey Garden Machinery, Tesco Callington, Mount Kelly Senior and Prep, Plymstock School and Carbeile Junior School at Torpoint. We couldn’t have done this without the wonderful support of our Community Seed Loan Investors, the Low Carbon Society, our installers (Sungift Energy and ZLC Energy), our volunteers and of course our host sites. We’d now like to repay our loan investors, providing an opportunity for wider local ownership of Community Solar through our community share offer, which will be launching in the spring of 2020. Community Solar is an important way in which we can increase locally owned energy generation with benefits including:

putting money back into the local economy
using any surplus locally to tackle fuel poverty and energy efficiency
‘co-ownership’ for the community by purchasing community shares with a fair return
Generating more energy locally from renewable sources

Our host sites also benefit by enjoying a saving in energy costs, plus the installations support understanding of energy within the schools’ curriculum. Tamar Energy Community project developer, Kate Royston said: “We’re immensely proud of our first community generation project and we’ve enjoyed working with everyone who’s been involved. We’re looking forward to wider community ownership, and to opportunities to develop more power and heat projects in the future.” If you’d like to know more about Community Solar and investing in our share offer, visit tamarenergycommunity.com, email hello@tamarenergycommunity.com or call 07969 569 444. Please also contact us if you’d like to get involved in community energy, help with social media, IT, monitor installations, join discussions and deliver greater local benefit.