We worked with Communities for Renewables to assess the feasibility for community owned solar PV on the roofs at Lee Mill Industrial Estate and surrounding areas. 

We  completed a feasibility for Lee Mill Community Hospital, Portlebay Popcorn, Luminati, Countryman's Choice Farm Shop and the Woolwell Centre. The five sites have potential for a 163 kWp in total, which would generate 168 MWh per year and save over 72 tonnes CO2.

If you are a business in the South Hams with a high energy demand, and you would like to reduce your CO2 emissions, get some great PR, support your community and save a bit of money, please get in touch. At this stage you would only need to share energy metering data with our technical consultants and allow access for a site survey.

This project was funded by a grant from the Rural Community Energy Fund. RCEF is a £15 million programme, delivered by WRAP and jointly funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (DBEIS). It supports rural communities in England to develop renewable energy projects which provide economic and social benefits to the community. For more information on RCEF, visit www.wrap.org.uk/renewables
For more information on this project please click below to register your interest or download FAQs. 
Thinking of signing up but not sure how it would work? Here's a step by step guide from now to getting installed:

Step 1: Register your interest. Use the sign up form, or get in touch.
Step 2: We contact you to arrange a no obligation meeting. We'll go through a pre-assessment questionnaire. If you are a tenant, you need to check with your landlord.
Step 3: You agree to take part in the study, and provide electricity data (we can help with this) and allow access for a site survey.
Step 4: If the site is suitable we will carry out detailed modelling. The solar PV array will be sized so that your business will use all or nearly all of the electricity, so we need to look at when you use electricity and how much.
Step 5: We provide you with a detailed proposal, Heads of Terms for leases and power purchase agreements (how much we will sell the electricity to you for) and example leases and PPA. (If you have any questions relating to legal issues please contact us, our lawyer would be happy to chat this through with you, for free of course!)
Step 6: You sign the Exclusivity Agreement, to say that you won't go ahead and install with another company while our project is underway.
Step 7: SDCE launches a community share offer to invite local people to invest in the project. If you don't know how community shares work please see here.
Step 8: System is installed, and you start paying less for your electricity and get a warm fuzzy feeling for investing in a more sustainable community and reducing carbon emissions.
Picture
Sungift recently installed PV at SJ Fisheries on the estate