The mission of the Bristol Power Coop (a community interest company, or CIC) is to develop community ownership of renewable energy.
In the first instance, we’re focusing on encouraging the massive uptake of solar energy in Bristol through:
- Bringing together potential solar end users (home owners, tenants, community buildings, commercial users) and the renewables supply chain (promoters, installers, wholesalers, and finance providers).
- Fully de-risking the uptake of solar energy by providing 100% finance from commercial and other sources. One of the reasons that the uptake of solar installations has been slower than expected is that most people don’t understand the numbers, or the risks, and in the midst of a credit crunch, most home-owners haven’t got the money to invest.
- Installing at scale. For domestic properties, this means one street at a time.
- Sharing with the community the economic benefits of making their assets (roofs) available. Commercial companies like British Gas and Sainsbury’s are offering “free” installations and electricity, whilst making a handsome return from the guaranteed government Feed in Tarrifs. Unlike these commercial companies, the Bristol Power Co-op will share this return with member roof owners (as well as the free installation and electricity).
Bristol Power is the organiser of the Lockleaze Streets of Solar project, which aims to install a first phase of 750kWP of 2-4kWp arrays on privately-owned housing in the Lockleaze ward of Bristol. To date the first pilot phase has been succesfully completed and a share offer is out at present to raise funds for the next Phases of this and wider Bristol schemes.
More information can be found at www.bristolpower.coop