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National Grid’s Net Zero Communities Forum is holding an online event on 31 March at 13:30. This will enable you to understand and learn more about the challenge of decarbonising our homes and what the upcoming changes to connection charges might mean. In this forum we are going to be hearing from:

1. Regen’s Head of Demand and Flexibility, Becky Ford, on the key challenges of net zero and decarbonising domestic homes.
2. Ian Cairns from the University of Strathclyde who has worked on a project looking to understand how the relationship householders share with their local community shapes retrofit decision making.
3. Kyle Smith from National Grid’s connection team to talk you through the upcoming changes to how National Grid charges for connections, including how these may help your projects.

As always in these sessions, we will have breakout groups for you to learn from each other and the experts, as well as ample opportunity to ask questions to any of the speakers.

If you have any questions around the forum, or any accessibility needs, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Sign up to the forum here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMsde2opz8tHtJb6dxS3SVFPskfFIjvygK_

We are pleased to announce that our partner, the Big Solar Co-op, has now relaunched its share offer with improved terms (5% interest). Their first share offer ended in December 2022 with a total raised of £840k. They are progressing some very promising solar sites and they need to make sure we have the funds in place to finance them.

Amongst these sites are the ones that we, at DDCE, have been working on with the Big Solar Co-op. By investing in the Big Solar Co-op you will be directly supporting the development of community owned solar PV in the Derbyshire Dales.

You can find details of how to invest here: https://bigsolar.coop/invest/

Derbyshire Dales Community Energy (DDCE) is delighted to announce that our next networking event, set up to support community energy groups in Derbyshire, is scheduled for the 21st of March 2023.  The event is to be held at Cromford Mills where we will hear from Noel Lambert; the National Coordinator for Big Solar Coop.  Noel will talk in more detail about the exciting new opportunity provided by the formation of a new Derbyshire community energy node and the opportunities that partnering with Big Solar Co-op will bring.

The collective ambition of the 4 community energy nodes  is to install 100 MW of rooftop solar along with engaging 250 active volunteers across 25 local groups by 2030.  Big Solar Co-op will also create 10 new sustainable jobs along with offering a range of ethical, accessible social investment opportunities raising £25m. They anticipate this will save over £300,000 annually on fuel bills for community buildings and social housing.

Motivated by strong aspirations to improve the efficiency of local energy systems and to support zero carbon objectives DDCE are aiming to achieve over 1MWp of installed capacity in the next year.  DDCE has already identified several local sites and along with Big Solar Co-op has issued proposals, for solar panel installation, to the site owners. These sites represent 746kWp of installed capacity, and the team are continuing to work with several other sites to evaluate their suitability.

Like DDCE, Big Solar Co-op is also a cooperative: a not-for-profit, carbon-first and volunteer-led organisation. Importantly, they take the issue of sourcing ethically manufactured solar panels from organisations very seriously, and they currently use European manufacturers who use hydro-powered processes rather than carbon intensive ones.

Daniel O’Connell (Community Energy Support Officer) said:

“This is a fantastic opportunity for the growing number of community energy organisations that we are engaging with in Derbyshire. There are limited resources within groups and therefore expending time and resources on complex tasks including fundraising, technical design and procurement is not always possible to progress projects at the required pace.

Big Solar Co-op who have already raised nearly £850,000. A proportion of these funds will ramp up decarbonisation activities in Derbyshire. The knowledge, experience and agile systems Big Solar Coop have will provide effective support for the installation of solar pv on roofs in Derbyshire.”