Funded Energy Redress Projects

OVESCO is developing the Ouse Valley Solar Farm (OVSF) a 17MW ground mounted solar project North of Lewes in East Sussex. The solar farm has planning permission, a land agreement and a grid connection offer. Funding from the scheme, will enable the project to meet the planning pre-conditions and other costs associated with preconstruction.

The solar farm is expected to generate an annual community benefit fund of £50,000, which would provide energy advice to the local community. A significant part of the project is expected to be community funded by local investors keeping the returns from their investment in the local community. The Biodiversity Net Gain assessment shows that the project will bring a 230% increase in biodiversity along with a saving of 6,800 tonnes of CO2 pa. 

The solar farm will add to local energy security, make a significant contribution to achieving the carbon reduction targets of the Lewes District, and the UK, as well as provide a long-term annual fund for the benefit of the community.

The project will help install solar panels and associated battery storage into a range of community buildings across Northumberland. As part of the project, they will undertake initial feasibility and design work at each building to ascertain the optimum solar/battery installation. Then progress appropriate planning and other permissions and establish a lease with each building, including Power Purchase Agreement, to enable each installation to take place. 

There will be no cost to the community building in installation, maintenance or other running costs. Each lease runs for a period of 20 years and includes a fixed price for the energy utilised, currently standing at 15p per kwh. This income is used to cover the running costs of the installations and payback any loans.

The project aims to install solar/battery at 100 community buildings over 5 years. All the community buildings act as focal points for their local communities and the base for delivery of a wide range of services and activities to local people including, for example, Warm Hubs, health services and employability support for vulnerable and isolated residents.

The project will investigate plans to install rooftop solar on seven blocks of social housing flats in Wandsworth, and aims to get cheaper energy into people’s homes as a direct financial and environmental benefit.  They will explore how to achieve this in one of a few ways, using solar sharing software and hardware from Energy Local, Emergent Solar (Solar4Flats), Allume (SolShare).

The project will take a holistic approach, with the solar panels as just part of the overall plan to help people in these blocks and the surrounding area to save money, be part of the energy transition and have an opportunity to invest in their community. Learnings from the project will be shared with neighbouring councils to replicate this across London.

This project will deliver a portfolio of 2 MWp of investment-ready community-owned rooftop solar sites across the organisation's family of co-operatives, focusing on four boroughs with established community groups or growing co-operatives in Southwark, Hammersmith & Fulham, Newham, and Barnet.

The project will assess the technical and financial viability of a pipeline of sites that have already been identified for community-owned solar, whilst building social infrastructure and viability through the organisation's award-winning programme of inclusive community engagement.

By developing approximately 500 kWp of rooftop solar capacity that is ready for investment across each of the four boroughs listed above, this project will establish the foundations for the long-term sustainability of inclusive community energy co-operatives in each of these boroughs, enabling them to develop into more holistic community energy service providers led by and for local people. This project will benefit local communities through financial returns, training and development for those underrepresented in the sector, energy efficiency support, and community fund distribution.  

This project will appraise and develop the best option for the communities of the Cowal Peninsula to develop their own community wind farm opportunities in order to address social need and tackle previous opportunity imbalance. Community ownership will create a significant sustainable income from their own natural resources, which will be used fairly and inclusively to tackle fuel poverty. 

New opportunities for community ownership are known and this project will enable the organisation to progress them; Cruach Mhor, a 30MW windfarm, is likely to repower in the coming years, opening up the opportunity to negotiate a novel shared ownership repowering deal – and/or it may be that a new, wholly-owned/community-consortium arrangement would have greatest benefit. This stage of the project will map out and appraise the routes and wider feasibility of the different options.

This project aims to bring forward local energy for local people, where the benefits are felt by all in the community but specifically the most vulnerable. The project will work closely with communities where energy generation potential has been identified and will accelerate at least 3 of 5 sites from stage 1 to 4 (investment and build ready). All developments will be at least 50% community owned, and income from energy generation will be targeted on those most vulnerable in the community.     

Community capacity will be harnessed and developed, enabling greater community ownership, empowering them to have influence over energy generation and share in the economic benefits from it. They'll provide training and mentoring to give people the confidence and skills they need to engage in meetings and action groups and manage projects and events.

The project will scope for a selection of potential sites, taking forward the most viable sites, leaving a pipeline of potential projects communities could take forward after the project ends.  

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.

This project aims to move three community heat plus energy projects towards being investment and shovel ready.

The project will investigate ways to match community energy generation with heat demand, to cut the costs of decarbonising both heat and energy at household, community and systemic levels. The work will develop three site-specific community projects, exploring different ways of delivering clean, affordable heat and energy for different communities, urban and rural, and using different combinations of clean technologies; and will also explore ways to remove key barriers to the successful delivery of these three projects by exploring local supply and matching mechanisms. By doing so, the project will create learnings and develop replicable models which will also be useful to other community energy projects.

The project will help three communities either facing or at risk of energy poverty and unaffordable energy bills, or which may be left behind in the transition to clean energy due to a lack of the resources, time and expertise required to seize opportunities offered by community energy projects.

The organisation aims to scale the existing portfolio of NHS sites from 1.2 MW to 2.89 MW across 14 sites (20 rooftops) in 5 NHS Trusts and Primary Care Networks. This project will enable them to carry out detailed feasibility studies, financial modelling, forge new partnerships, and raise finance; ensuring the upscaled project is ready for implementation.

This expansion will enhance carbon reduction, alleviate fuel poverty for vulnerable groups, and reduce hospital admissions, easing pressures on local NHS services. 

The project aims to generate over £1 million for fuel poverty initiatives by funding local charity, Beat the Cold, through solar energy sales, enabling a proactive model that benefits patients and shifts from reactive to preventive care.