Bangala Community Power Plant

The project aims to enable urban communities to be part of a community-owned ‘Virtual Power Plant’, (VPP), to generate, store and control their own renewable power, directly reducing energy costs and carbon emissions for all participating households. 

The project, led by Ynni Teg in partnership with the Bengal Dragons Foundation (BDF), will support minority Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities in South Wales conurbations with the transition to Net Zero. It builds on existing project work developing the Community Centres and mosques at the heart of these communities as local energy hubs and greatly expands its scope to include the largely low-income (fuel poor) households in their locales. 

The VPP will include 1MWp of rooftop solar PV and 3MWh of battery storage, distributed over approximately 300 properties including vulnerable households, located in Cardiff and Newport. The assets will be aggregated and controlled through a specialist software platform to optimise their use and enable energy to be supplied to households at a reduced cost. 

The VPP will operate as a large-scale single entity, with ownership of the assets retained in a community energy company, thus making it more attractive to prospective funders and imposing no/minimal cost barriers on participating households.

The project outcomes will be a new community-owned energy entity, delivering reduced energy costs to participants and reduced carbon emissions. It will provide learning and capacity building for the partner organisations and will provide a model that can be scaled up and replicated to support other communities in their transition to Net Zero.