Update – 3rd November 2016
Click on the link to download a pdf copy of the mid-year-bulletin
The biodiversity improves on our site day by day. Board members and other Coop members spent last Saturday morning protecting the new composting toilet from petty vandalism which seems to have happened after small dogs managed to get stuck under the toilet.
So we have put chicken wire around the base and secured this with gravel. We also put weed suppressant fabric under the access ramp to stop weeds growing through.
Here we see Kate Chapman and Rupert Cook at work. Cathy Cook and her son Stephen, Patrick Andrews and Anthony Woolhouse were also there.
We were delighted during this work to discover 24 newts, in small groups mainly. Here are some photographs.
We relocated the newts to a safe place.
Other matters
Electricity generation – as at the close of play on Monday 31st. October we had generated 201 MWh of electricity during the month against our target of 164 MWh, some 23% better.
To date this year we have generated 2.5GW.
Netley Marsh project – we have significantly reduced the size of the project while still making Ramboll the site owner carbon neutral by producing more electricity than they use.
Challenge from FCA – difficult times and challenging. Thank goodness for our brilliant legal team.
We are running a tender for the next five years of Operations & Maintenance cover.
We renewed our sales contract with Cooperative Energy, just for one year as wholesale prices had reduced by c.30%, reflecting the low oil and gas prices. However we then discovered that Cooperative Energy had forgotten to pay us the embedded benefit (payable as we do not use the national grid) so that made up the price shortfall.
Anthony Woolhouse
Chairman
3rd. November 2016