Welcome to sharenergy.
If you are based in the Rural Regeneration Zone of the West Midlands and would like a real renewable energy plant owned and operated by your community, you have definitely come to the right place.
sharenergy is run by Energy4All, a not-for-profit company owned by the renewable energy co-ops it creates. It is supported by funding from Advantage West Midlands.
If you’ve ever looked at an old weir and wondered if it could be used to generate electricity, or thought about using food waste to make biogas, we want to hear from you!
You could:
- be involved in running your local green electricity generation plant
- invest some money and get a decent return
- provide an energy generation site and earn rent
To find out more about how it works, take a look at our one minute introduction or dive into the details using the links at the top of the page.
November 6th, 2008 | Category: headline | Comments Off
This is a useful online tool to help you calculate area and dimensions of a potential solar roof. The screenshot below left shows us calculating the potential of our own office roof, which is a bit small unfortunately although it points the right way.
The tool itself is on the right. You can search for your address using the address box at the top then use the buttons on the map to zoom in and out and find your roof. You will then need to follow the directions on the website. Basically you click four times on the corners of the roof and a fifth time back on the first point. It then shows you a red line: drag it so that it points up the roof (as if you were positioning a ladder up the roof). At the bottom of the page it will then tell you the area as well as the orientation (and give an estimate of the peak power you could generate. We will not use their calculation but it’s interesting to see). The area is given in square feet so multiply by 0.093 to get square metres
| Example: our office in Ludlow:
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Interactive tool:
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August 26th, 2010 | Category: solar | Comments Off
Sharenergy, working with All Rivers Hydro, have put in an Expression of Interest for the lease of land at Castlefields weir in Shrewsbury. Shropshire Council announced a call for expressions of interest, and our submission went in on Friday 4 June (the deadline). Our proposal builds on the detailed assessment and design work we have done on the site, working with our hydro consultants (IT Power) and many of the UK’s most respected hydropower suppliers and installers. As with all our projects, the hydro installation would be entirely owned and managed by local people, with the finance raised through a public share issue. We’re really excited by the opportunity to bid for this and confident that our proposal will bring the greatest benefit to the environment and to the people of Shrewsbury. Now we have to wait and hope the Council see it the same way!
June 10th, 2010 | Category: hydro | Comments Off
DECC have finally announced what should be the final values of the Feed-in tariffs, here:
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/pn10_010/pn10_010.aspx
Overall this looks like very good news for our projects, with a few caveats. Most of the tariffs have gone up by 10% or so, with a few changes of ‘banding’ which may make a big difference to some of our projects. A few headlines for you:
- Hydro bands changed so the cut-off point is at 15kW, not at 10kW. Below this point tariff is up from 17p to 19.9p, above it tariff has jumped from 12p to 17.8p. This will have a major positive impact on schemes in Kington, Leintwardine, Ludlow, Neen Sollars. Above 100kW the rate is 11p (up from 8.5p) which is a boost for the proposed project in Shrewsbury.
- Wind bands have also changed. Some of the sites where we were needing to stick to 500kW machines under the old proposals could now be suitable for larger machines (which are easier to source and maintain) with a new band of 500kW-1.5MW at 9.4p. We campaigned for this during the consultation and it may well be a step change for single community turbines. For sites where 100-500kW machines are more suitable the FiTs are slightly improved to 18.8p (from 16 or 18p).
- The situation with AD is less clear. The 9p FiT has been retained but a new band has come in for sub-500kW generators (which would include all our schemes). Rates currently blank on the DECC site, hopefully they are offering more for smaller schemes as per other technologies
- PV rates have also gone up, which may open up the possibility of community-owned PV…Bewdley are investigating this at the moment.
At the same time the initial rates for the Renewable Heat Incentive consultation have been announced. These are only initial rates and if the FiT consultation is anything to go by they could change quite a bit. Still working through but the headlines are:
- Biomass. Rates of 9p up to 45kW, 6.5p above are proposed. This will help our projects in Woolhope and potentially also Bewdley.
- Biogas. A rate of 5.5p might apply to our schemes in Leominster and Cleobury
- There is also a propsoed rate for biogas injection directly into the gas grid, which might be possible in Leominster, although it is doubtful if the proposed rate of 4p/kWh would be enough to make it financially viable….need to get lobbying again!
February 1st, 2010 | Category: featured, renewables | Comments Off
