The School's Energy Cooperative

Following the success of the Wey Valley Solar Schools’ Energy Co-operative in 2011, more schools across the country were getting in touch with Energy4all and the WVSS coop to join up to the scheme. The original WVSS financial model did not work for new projects following changes to the Feed in Tariff so Energy4All helped to write a new financial model that fit with the new FIT regime. In 2013 E4A helped to set up the Schools’ Energy Co-operative to help deliver more renewable energy projects for schools throughout England, helping the schools and local community tackle issues surrounding energy security and climate change. The co-op was also designed to help the schools financially with profits paid back to the schools and through energy savings. The first solar PV project was delivered in September 2014, a 150kW solar PV array on a primary school in Bexhill. At the time this was the largest community owned solar PV array on a primary school in the UK. In September 2015 when it was announced that the community FIT pre-registration process was to be removed, Energy4All project managers helped the SEC co-op to pre-register 52 potential project sites for the feed in tariff. In the following 12 months Energy4All helped project manage 24 of the pre-registered solar PV installations for the Schools’ Energy Co-operative and submitted a feed in tariff applications for each one before the deadline of 30th September 2016.The Schools’ Energy Co-operative now owns and operates 1064.7 kW of solar PV on 26 school sites. Energy4All provides the ongoing monitoring of the systems and co-operative admin to help with billing the schools for the renewable electricity used on site. All site locations can be found on the map on the SEC website. Energy4All helped the Co-operative to raise £1.29 million over 3 share offers. Whilst there was a lot of effort made to promote the share offers locally in areas where the schools were located, E4A were able to promote the share offers to their database of existing customers too which helped to raise the bulk of the money.

www.schools-energy-coop.co.uk