The Energy group is helping to reduce energy use in Tollesbury and nearby communities by spreading awareness on energy saving measures and encouraging residents and businesses to install low carbon solutions such as solar panels, batteries and heat pumps.
Our group works closely with Community Energy South who have received funding from Essex County Council who are keen to support the establishment of groups like ours. We meet and exchange ideas with similar groups based in Danbury, Colchester, Saffron Walden, Maldon & Heybridge and recently, additions in Brightlingsea and Jaywick.
Our flagship project is the de-carbonisation of Tollesbury Primary School, for more information and an update of this project please see our latest news article.
This is the third winter that we have run our camera loan scheme. Get your name on our waiting list if you are interested and we will send you a helpful explanatory presentation. You will receive further instruction when the camera is delivered how to use the camera to find cold spots, draughts etc. Loan periods are for 48 hours.
We did not repeat our Energy Café’s this winter since, although they resulted in more than £100k of measures installed free of charge to households in Tollesbury, we think there may be a better way. In any case, the government scheme we were using has been replaced by the Great British Insulation scheme, ECO4 and HUG2. A key component going forward is to have someone local who can properly assess how a home can be made more energy efficient, advise the homeowner what are the best steps to take, and then help guide the process to completion. We now have someone in Tollesbury training to do this. This is fantastic news but they have to be able to make a living and it is not yet clear how. The goal is to be able to offer a full PAS 2030 assessment, which is like a better version of the EPC, (Energy Performance Certificate), which many will be familiar with, and then, if required, to help plan and steer the work.
How much might you be willing to pay for such a service? Please tell us.
If you can’t wait to start lowering your emissions and saving on your energy bills then Maldon District Council still have their 2024 scheme open for registrations. You can sign up without obligation at Solar Together | Maldon District Council. Whilst you wait for the next step you can research solar PV and batteries before you commit. You can also talk to us. Several Tollesbury homes have used this scheme and can tell you about their experiences.
Early on we wondered how the large expanses of roof on the industrial estate might be used to benefit the business whose roof it was and/or nearby businesses and homes. Most of the heavy energy users already have plans to harness this source of energy. To use a roof for others means you need to jump through some legal and technical hoops and, of course, find a fair way of pricing so that users get a good deal plus sustainable energy and the business gets a payback on it’s capital investment and a good price for the energy it then exports. We had hoped to be going to the village with proposals in November 2023 but uncertainties in the energy markets and more volatile interest rates have made it less easy to come up with robust proposals over the 20-30 year lifetime of a project.
The Rooftop Solar project would be more inclusive than the MDC Solar Together scheme mentioned above in that those who cannot afford the up-front cost would be able to pay for their installation over the first 10 years from the savings they make. This is not a dead project. We believe that Essex County Council and their partners Power Circle, are hoping to come up with workable proposals in the new financial year.
If sufficient homes are willing, then local energy networks become viable. They don’t have to be close by. So, for example, we could team up with the PACE project around Manningtree, Mistley and Lawford, the proposed Jaywick group and other villages nearby. The required number of rooftops to make it viable is in the hundreds rather than thousands. We have already provisionally identified 976 rooftops in Tollesbury alone, (includes homes, businesses, public and farm buildings), which could be suitable for solar. Energy providers such as Octopus already have what they call “peer-to-peer” trading tariffs in place and Energy Local also run similar schemes. REScoop.EU and ec2project.eu are community energy models used on the continent which we have yet to investigate.
Also to consider, now that the government has relaxed the rules, is onshore wind energy. Might there be a place for this in Tollesbury? In short, there are lots of possibilities and lots of help and guidance available.
