Question
Decentralising renewable energy generation is key to us decarbonising energy in order to reduce demand on the grid. We’re pleased that this Council has agreed with the Lib Dems and enacted the requests made in the Lib Dem motion supporting the Local Electricity Bill, which is a start.
More needs to be done, and we need to help residents install solar PV on their own properties. Many households don’t have large amounts of disposable income and it’s quite daunting with many cowboy installers out there.
Local authorities up and down the country have been working with an organisation called Solar Together. Solar Together is a group-buying scheme for solar PV and battery storage. It helps make this technology more accessible and more affordable. Local authorities work with Solar Together to promote the scheme in the area. Homeowners register their interest; the company organises a reverse auction and installers are pre-vetted. Residents then get their personal recommendation and are asked if they wish to accept the recommendation or not.
This is a simple thing to do to enable more of our residents to generate their own renewable energy. Will this Council commit to enabling a scheme like this for our residents?
Minutes:
Question:
Decentralising renewable energy generation is key to us decarbonising energy in order to reduce demand on the grid. We are pleased that this Council has agreed with the Lib Dems and enacted the requests made in the Lib Dem motion supporting the Local Electricity Bill, which is a start.
More needs to be done, and we need to help residents install solar PV on their own properties. Many households do not have large amounts of disposable income and it is quite daunting with many cowboy installers out there.
Local authorities up and down the country have been working with an organisation called Solar Together. Solar Together is a group-buying scheme for solar PV and battery storage. It helps make this technology more accessible and more affordable. Local authorities work with Solar Together to promote the scheme in the area. Homeowners register their interest; the company organises a reverse auction and installers are pre-vetted. Residents then get their personal recommendation and are asked if they wish to accept the recommendation or not.
This is a simple thing to do to enable more of our residents to generate their own renewable energy. Will this Council commit to enabling a scheme like this for our residents?
Answer
Thank you for your question, Sarah and in short, subject to due diligence, the answer is yes.
The Council has been exploring the Solar Together scheme since June 2021 as an opportunity to encourage residents to install solar panels and solar batteries in their homes. Residents living in one of the participating council areas and who own their own house can register for the Solar Together group-buying scheme. This increases the bargaining power to ensure the most competitive offer from the pre-vetted suppliers available. The scheme also guarantees the quality of the suppliers as they have to go through a detailed assessment process. The scheme thus provides a more affordable price for good quality installations, reduces energy bills and carbon emissions of residents taking part, while increasing the number of PV’s across the Borough.
However, for the scheme to be viable, it must be delivered by partnering with other local authorities to achieve the demand needed to attract a suitable and competitive offer from providers. Essentially the scheme operates on a direct marketing approach to homeowners and requires in the region of 100,000 homeowners to be targeted to generate the take-up required. This means that to take advantage of the scheme the Council will need to work with other local authorities to achieve the critical mass to make the scheme viable. Officers are currently engaging with the Energy Hub and with Berkshire neighbours to identify opportunities to collaborate and set up the scheme. There is significant interest in taking this forward, but it will take some time to align timescales and approval processes in each participating local authority.
Over the last year, the Council has been exploring other schemes that will help us address the challenges of future energy capacity, retrofitting, and generating more renewable energy locally, to mention some:
· We have spoken with Lendology, a not-for-profit lender that works with homeowners to fund home repairs and improvements;
· We have also spoken with Retrofitworks;
· I have had initial conversations with an organisation called Raleigh and another call In Range, and we have also worked to set up a Community Energy Fund.
Supplementary Question:
Thank you for saying that this will be taken forward. It would be good to be kept updated on the progress. Have you got any plans specifically for low-income home owners that would like to look at reducing their energy costs through having their own renewable energy?
Supplementary Answer:
We have a trial in place at the moment in one of the social houses across in Stuart Munro’s ward, Riseley. That trial is ongoing at the moment. There are residents living in the house. We have installed solar PVs. We have installed an air source heat pump and batteries. We are using it as a test bed and other authorities are interested in the trial results. We need the trial to run a little bit longer at the moment, as we need to see how it impacts energy use over the winter, and what the net impact of solar generated over the summer has to offset energy use over the winter.
We are also looking at what we can do with the housing stock that we have. We have 2,500 owned houses across the Borough, and we are looking at opportunities that we can do with them. Some of the organisations that I have spoken to, Raleigh in particular, have a scheme that is live at the moment, particularly focused on housing stock for low-income families.