Hello everyone.
My name is Anthony Woolhouse and I am chairman of West Solent Solar Cooperative. This project has kept me rather busy for the last year!
I am absolutely delighted to welcome so many members of the coop, bondholders and those who have worked with us to make this project a reality.
This project started as a vision about 18 months ago. I was looking for a suitable site to create a solar farm. I was shown a possible site near here but it was not suitable. Then the estate agent said that there was another field that was available although it was not on the market yet. So he took me to this field. As you can see it is flat, south facing, and quite hidden from public view. It was, as most of this area has been, a gravel pit and so we were not taking any land out of food production. In two words; quite perfect.
It took some time to persuade the vendor that we did not want to build houses here. We talked to the neighbours before we applied for planning. This helped as nobody objected to our planning application.
Cathy Cook, Jonathan Blease and I created the Cooperative. Energy4all helped us with their standard rules approved by the FSA. This saved considerable legal fees.
We then invited Patrick Andrews, Kate Chapman and Rob Dewing to join the board. Happily they all agreed. John Malone is also on the board representing Energy4all.
We tried to obtain grants to help with the initial costs. We applied to Defra’s Rural Community Energy Fund to be told we did not qualify as we were in an urban area. Another fund told us we did not live in a deprived area so did not qualify.
We applied for the grid connection. When the offer came we had to find almost £100k to secure the capacity. All this before the fund raising started.
Energy4all again came to the rescue and their linked fund Energy Prospects lent us the money.
We then invited friends, family and the 50 or so initial members of the cooperative to subscribe for shares under the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme. This was before we had planning permission, or the grid connection offer, or a lease. So quite risky. Here the tax benefits of the SEIS scheme helped and we raised the maximum £150k, and were over-subscribed.
We applied for planning permission and the support given by our friends and personal networks really helped. We had to employ consultants to do the ecological study and the landscape plans and we received permanent planning permission. We told everyone that we wanted this project to be owned and managed by local people and others who support renewable energy. This was as true then as it is now.
We worked with Energy4all and their lawyers Bates Wells Braithwaite to produce the main share offer. This is the same process that mainstream companies go through in raising funds and took time and money. However it was about reducing risk for you wonderful people, who by investing have made this community energy project possible.
It took about 8 weeks to raise the money we needed. Once again we were oversubscribed and had to return some money.
So we now have 494 members of the cooperative and 51 bond holders. About 200 of you will be here today. I hope you are pleased with what you can see.
The site opened on the 27th June and starting supplying electricity to the grid (point to pole) on that day. This was fortunately 3 days ahead of the end of June which we had to do in order to qualify for the Feed in Tariff that prevailed at the end of December last year. We did it! This was a great credit to our contractor Solarcentury and their contractor Arun Construction.
I would like to express particular thanks to Jason Arnold and Wolf Dietrich of Solarcentury and Colin Freeman of Arun Construction. No challenge was too great and we experienced great teamwork and a good sense of humour. It has been a pleasure to work with them.
I am also very grateful for the role that the board has played throughout the project, and also by Steven Chapman who has acted as our representative during the construction phase.
I have mentioned networks and a number deserve particular mention: the New Forest and Lymington Transition movements, The Hampshire Renewable Energy Coop, various Quaker networks and the Energy4all network of those who have invested in their previous projects.
West Solent Solar Cooperative is a true Community Energy Project. Almost 53% of the money was raised locally. All the bond finance was raised locally. Thank you.
So we are an operational coop. What has happened? We are selling our electricity to Coop Energy, a division of Mid Counties Coop. They have just introduced a scheme called User Chooser where their customers can choose to link their consumption with the electricity produced West Solent Solar Coop or other of their renewable energy suppliers. You do need however to choose Coop Energy as your electricity supplier.
In July we experienced a major transformer failure and lost probably the 3 best weeks of the summer. However with compensation from Solarcentury and from our insurer we hope that our income will be protected.More happily August production was perfect. We generated 318,151 kWh which was above our budget for the month. In August the site started generating electricity at 5am and was still generating at 8pm.
Days are growing shorter so there will be fewer hours generating but September looks promising so far. We agreed with planners that we would implement our landscape planting plan. We started with the new hedge (over there). We have placed a contract with the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust to plant 9 acres of wildflower meadow. This will start soon.
We have also been given some wildflower seeds from Friends of the Earth who have a campaign to create more bee friendly meadows. These will be planted around this hill.
We will place some bees in the bee enclosure over there next spring. It is probable that some sheep will be grazing here later on this year as a trial. We already have a number of schools keen to visit the site. We are looking for volunteers to guide visitors to the site. Full training will be given. If you are interested please give your contact details to any of us wearing these high visibility vests.The Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust will monitor the animal, birds and plants that appear in our solar field over the next 5 years. We are confident that our site will blossom in every sense.
We said to the Lymington and Pennington Town Council that we wanted to create a community energy facility that the local community – and the wider community of supporters of renewable energy – will be proud of. We think we are well on the way.
Thank you.