Next wave of solar panels hitsThriplow

Talking to Thriplow residents of Sheralds Croft council houses this evening  - some of whom have their South Cambs and Savills solar panels installed, others are about to have them, following a survey to make sure the house is well-insulated.

This is a new govt requirement, which does make sense, because there isnt any point in putting solar panels or heat pumps or whatever into a house if its basic insulation is poor.

Climate change or not, I do wish it would stop raining every evening. 

Bring me sunshine!

I've contacted the people at South Cambs council running the roll-out of the solar panels onto roofs across the district, and a further 200 are in the next batch, so I am hoping that a decent number of those will be going up in Whittlesford and Thirplow.

Clearly some roofs, because of their direction, are not suitable as they won't get enough sunlight for it to make economic sense. 

no light, no light

No, not Florence + The Machine ..but the installation of solar panels in Sherards Croft at Thriplow.

The south cambs council deal with Savills means that even tho' the government pulled the rug on feed-in-tariffs before Christmas, 250 of our council houses will still get solar panels and start to get the benefits of low-carbon energy.

But maybe one house won't, because when the surveyors did the initial assessment, the neighbour's tree cut out the light over the roof. The neighbours cut the tree down, and they want to make sure their good neighbour gets his solar panel. But the paperwork now needs to catch up, so we are chasing the Communities and Local Government Department to see if this can be done, otherwise cutting the tree down will have been in vain.

Will one solar panel in Thriplow make a difference - dunno - but its good to see people getting behind sustainable energy and looking out for their neighbours.

solar street lights

looking to see if we can fund and install street lights in a poorly lit area using a wind and solar combo to provide the energy - then no need to connect to mains with huge costs of digging up roads etc. This sort of thing seems to work:
http://www.wirefreedirect.com/green_column.asp

Whittlesford solar panels are go!

The hard-working Whittlesford Memorial Hall committee have managed to get the panels on the roof of the hall and also sort the paperwork with EON (which was always the tricky bit, because if the energy company didn't certify us then the favourable feed-in-tariff would not have applied.)
But they did it!
The South Cambs district planners did their bit by getting the planning permission sorted.
Also had a session with the South Cambs climate change team and they reckon they can help Cambourne Parish Council with their plans for low-carbon energy sources on the major buildings at Cambourne such as the new sports centre. The revenue from these will not be huge, but it will give them enough to fund some sustainable activities.

solar panels go ahead for village hall

Made a tough decision not to go ahead with solar panels for South Cambs district office roofs, but the numbers just didn't stack up after the tariff was cut. Went on BBC Radio Cambs to talk it through last evening. Interesting discussion with presenter Andy Burrows who seemed pretty well informed.

Closer to home, the village hall is further advanced as a project (and a bit smaller) so parish council this week took decision to ask village hall committee to press ahead. The panels need to be on the roof by December, and connected up - so all systems go!

panels, panels everywhere

Following on from the Government decision to cut back on the feed-in tariff for solar panels on buildings. It was bound to happen - and I understand why - but now there is a lot of work going on to see if the panels on the village hall roof in Whittlesford can be in place by the December deadline, and William Westley school are trying to get their scheme sorted too - I've asked the district planners for advice for the school and it may be possible.

South Cambs itself is looking to see if the panels planned for the Camborne council offices are also doable in time. The poeople losing out are the tenants of council properties, because that scheme looks now to be a non-starter. Govt Minister Greg Barker says there will be a community tariff for that sort of scheme - bring it on and lets get started.

What will Energy Minister Greg Barker say?

Energy Minister Greg Barker will be in Cambridgeshire tomorrow - stopping off in the morning to spend time meeting residents at Rampton Drift, who are part of a pilot scheme run by South Cambs and commercial developer partners. The scheme is retro-fitting insulation onto mainly 1970s houses, and it is incredible the scale of the insulation going on, in, and around these houses, built before the early 70s oil crisis when fuel was dirt-cheap.

Later in the day he will be giving a talk.

Hope it isn't to announce that photovoltaic panels on roofs, if not installed by end of the year, will not qualify for the high feed-in-tariff, which is a rumour going round on green websites and blogs.

More likely he will be making a very strong link between insulation and feed in tariffs. This does make sense, because there isn't any point in having all this alternative energy if your house or your school or the village hall or whatever rattles about and loses heat every time the wind blows.

We'll have to see - if the tariff does go down, it will be a challenge to make the numbers stack up for South Cambs who are putting panels on council-owned properties, and here in Whittlesford, where we want to put the panels on the village hall, Duxford Imperial War Museum, panels to go on one of the hangars, and William Westley school, who are thinking the same.

The village hall and the school are reasonably new buildings, so their energy efficiency rating should be good.

Just off to stuff some paper in the cracks in this house....

Whittlesford when global warming really kicks in ...

Seriously though, glad to see that in my absence on hols the parish council approved the proposals to put solar panels on the roof of the village hall.

This is the sort of community "green payback" initiative that the government's energy incentive schemes are supposed to encourage, so good that we are leading the way. Well done to the Memorial Hall Management Committee for doing the maths and putting together the bid.

Whittlesford Sustainable Parish Energy Partnership

...needs to regroup now that Adam, who kick-started it all, has moved on.

As climate change portfolio holder, I had a good meeting with Cambs County climate change lead, including going through how we can help people take advantage of all the things that the government is launching next year, like the Renewable Heat Incentive - good if you are off-gas and looking at better ways of heating than a tank of expensive oil, and the Green Deal, which is all about insulation.

After next week's climate change meeting at the district, where we hope to adopt an action plan, I will need to see what can be done more locally.

Meanwhile, keeping it sustainable, my courgettes are coming along nicely, and flowering, good enough for a plate of fiori di zucchini ripieni as we say in Whittlesford.

village orchard - and nettles!

The possibility of a village orchard in Whittlesford is growing. We had a site meeting with Rob Mungavin, the ecology officer at south cambs, who is really enthusiastic and knowledegable about lizards, butterflies, moths and all sorts.

So spent a very hot afternoon trying not to get stung by nettles or fall down rabbit holes (got any magic mushrooms, Alice) as Rob, parish cllr Ann Beeby and I explored the site. I can't say where it is as the site isn't yet safe, but if it is can be there it will be incredible, and there are old fruit trees and elms, so it would look good right from the start, rather than having to wait ten years for the trees to grow.
What it will mean is some volunteer labour in the autumn to help clear the nettles and fill in the rabbit holes! We'll know more next month - there are some legal issues to sort.

thinking about tomorrow's services, and keeping today's up to scratch...

Every now and then I have a day more or less totally given over to district council and parish work, and last Thursday was one of them…

0715 Up and around Whittlesford delivering leaflets containing the reports for the Parish Council annual meeting the following evening. Nice and peaceful across the Recreation Ground at this time of the morning

0815 Quick bowl of shreddies and granola (home-made, thank you very much) then off to Heathfield to meet up with some residents complaining about the numbers of cars parked up and being repaired. As I leave the house the phone rings. A fellow parish councillor asking for details about street naming, which is a district council task. It is important in this case to get this right as we want to name a new road in Whittlesford after the village lady whose generous will has made possible the affordable housing being built as part of the development.

0945 After the Heathfield meeting (of which more later) I arrive at South Cambs offices at Camborne. I’m chairing the climate change working group at ten, but I just have time to check with one of the lawyers at the council about a planning application that has gone to appeal. Thriplow Parish Council want to write to the planning inspector and I need to to get some details. Helpful quick word and then in to the climate change meeting at ten. We work through the draft of an action plan for the next three years, setting out how the council will support local people, and local businesses, make sustainability work, and in particular try to help people make savings by being more energy conscious. We also go through some ideas by two of our working group on how the council’s own buildings rate in terms of sustainability and how we can put our own house in order.

1230 Working lunch with a group of officers and councillors to go through options for improving the council’s customer contact centre. Part of the discussion about social networking methods as a means of delivering customer service. Interestingly, I already get text message reminders about appointments from both my doctor and dentist.

2.00 Finish the customer session and check a numbers of points with the district’s planning team so that I am ready for the parish council meeting – there is growing concern about the scrapyard operating at the end of Station Road in Whittlesford. Pass on the concerns about parking in Heathfield to the Planning Enforcement Officer. He has visited the area once about this, but perhaps another visit at a different time may be needed.

3.00 Leave Camborne and decompress, but I’ve got to be back in a few hour’s time for a group meeting of councillors.

8.30 Collect one of my boys from Whittlesford Station. As I’m waiting I notice that the phone box has been vandalized. After all the policy and strategy thinking I’ve been doing earlier today, I reckon there is still the old-fashioned need to make sure services are delivered properly and things get sorted out. So we need to get BT to do the repairs, and hope that the rail station is not going through another of the bouts of vandalism that have impacted it and its users in the past.

KWS: new glass house at Thriplow

Did you know that nearly half the cereal crop in the UK, covering some 20,000 hectares, comes from varieties bred at KWS, the plant breeding site at Thriplow? Now planning permission has been secured to erect a new glasshouse on the site, to support development of new strains of wheat and barley. The glasshouse will replace some polytunnels. Just the sort of new science industry that we need.
You can now see more details of planning applications, including links to maps, at the Scambs website.

solar farms - not quite so much subsidy

The proposal for a solar farm on fields between Thriplow and Whittlesford may not be built after all. The subsidy for solar power that made these schemes viable is being quickly reviewed by the government, and could mean the feed-in tariff rate paid per kilowatt (over a 25 year period, guaranteed) cut from over 30 pence to 8 pence for large schemes of over 5 megawatts.

This means that household and school/village hall solar panel installations will still get a good rate of return, but the schemes for 250 or so panels in a field will not. I think this is a good move, and I was on the very listenable andy harper show on radio cambridgeshire yesterday morning to say why. This will take the edge of a market that was in danger of rapidly over-heating (no pun intended).

But watch this space for government plans to make putting up with wind turbines more attractive, by giving the business rate paid by the turbine company to the local community. No easy answers on energy at the moment.

Solar farm proposals at Thriplow drift - background

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Suddenly there is all this activity to spread solar panels across packets of countryside. These are not community schemes for putting panels on school roofs, but industrial scale proposals backed by investors, who are taking advantage of the favourable rates for electricity that the government has offered. They may be a really good idea, but we need to have the debate now about something that will still be there a quarter of a century later? Who gets the best deal out of this – the people, the planet, or the investors? Click here for an excerpt from my radio cambridgeshire interview

We are now into double figures in terms of sites across Cambridgeshire, with planning decisions having to be made soon about Bourn and Chittering. There are also proposals for Croydon near Royston, and at Thriplow, near Wilburton and at Ickleton. With the exception of Cornwall, where proposals are about nine months further ahead in terms of planning applications, there is nothing like this any where else in the UK. I guess we have both the spots of low-grade farmland (between the generally pretty high-grade fields) and, more critically, the good connections to the National Grid that these people are looking for.

I think the reason for this surge of activity is the money these schemes will make for their backers by supplying electricity into the national grid at a rate guaranteed for the next 25 years. That fixed price, called the feed-in tariff (FiT), is currently set at just under 30 pence a kilowatt for these schemes generating up to 5 megawatts. But anything built after March 2012 gets 5p a kilowatt less. So for an investor seeking a maximum return, guaranteed for 25 years, this all has to be up and running in the next 12 months – which isn’t a long time in planning terms.

The government has said what it calls “clean energy cashback” will allow many people to invest in small scale low carbon electricity, in return for a guaranteed payment both for the electricity they generate and export. And the cost of paying for this tariff will be met out of our electricity bills. Should we in Cambridgeshire be doing something equally quick to build our own solar parks – after all it is our county. The problem is the up-front cost. It could be £50 to 100k to put panels on a school. These solar farms are costing more like £12million to build, and typically need about 35 acres of land.

Solar farms may have great potential – Kevin McCloud from TV’s Grand Designs is a supporter so they must be a good thing. But we do need to understand the returns for everyone involved. How much profit over the 25 years will the investors make compared with the payments they are offering local landowners and support for communities? Is it a fair return or not?

Will this activity drive down the cost of building solar panels – in other words, a price worth paying because of the knock-on benefits? If most of these developments are about putting up panels in a field, then how much technology and know how will be transferred to putting panels on school roofs?

How much employment will these solar parks provide? The solar industry talks about tens of thousands of jobs being created. Once the panels are in place – a six month build – then how much more is there to do for 25 years apart from maintenance and mending the fences round the site? 

Update for 2013: I read recently about solar panels installation on Trinity College, Cambridge, and it reminded me of the meeting I chaired last year with conservation officers at South Cambs District council. We were trying to work out how to strike a balance between the need to keep buildings representing the reason they were listed in the first place, and recognising that different energy sources can keep buildings useful and functioning rather than just museum pieces. That's not always easy, but it is worth trying to find that balance.   

solar farm proposals at Thriplow drift

Went along to Thriplow Village Hall to find out more about the proposal for a solar park along the drift to the east of Thriplow. (The area marked in red on the map) About 50 people came along during the course of the afternoon.

This is a bit of a first, as there are currently about six applications in with south cambs seeking to put up solar panels, and a similar number down in Cornwall, but nothing actually up and running yet. So uncharted territory. Obviously far less impact on the countryside than a wind turbine - but less electricity generated.

It was helpful to understand more about the proposal, how it would work, and what impact there would be on the environment from the panels. For example, the panels don't require full sun to operate, so even on a dull winters day they generate some power. Thriplow Parish Council intend to hold a public meeting on this proposals - date to be advised.

solar farm proposals at Thriplow drift

Just had a letter about a public meeting at Thriplow village hall next Friday, 28th Jan, from a firm wanting to put an unspecified number of solar panels on the Russell Smith Farms fields on either side of the drift path between Thriplow and Whittlesford.

The panels would be over six foot high and be two feet off the ground, so eight foot in all.Well, we've had plenty of wind farm applications - another meeting about the Heydon Grange Wind Farm coming up in mid-Feb - so I guess it was only a matter of time before this popped up.

Community Orchard - a possibility?

Went along to a district-council sponsored training day with the East of England Apples and Orchards Project. There were people from about ten local groups there from villages across south cambs all interested in setting up a community orchard.
Cambridgeshire is one of the least wooded counties in the UK, with only 2.1% woodland cover. Its orchards are both valuable wildlife
habitats and important landscape features, even though they are dwindling.

The day-long event covered ideas about planning, design, site selection, and technical stuff on cross-pollination and rootstock selection. The pic on the right is of us all shivering round an apple tree at Melbourn's community orchard taking in the finer points of pruning, and the pic next to it is the aspiration!
We will discuss at the parish council next week, but this will take some organising to grow it from a seedling into a Thoday's Quarrenden or a Huntingdon Codlin!

South Cambs Village Energy Show Sat 27th November

Going to try to get along to the The Village Energy Show 2010 which takes place tomorrow, Saturday 27th November, from 1pm to 5pm at the Comberton Leisure Centre next to Comberton Village College.

There will be over 25 different stands covering different aspects of sustainable living. The main aim of the show is to invite everyone who lives and works in South Cambridgeshire to find out more about sustainable living – bringing more sustainable energy into our lives whilst reducing our carbon footprints and tackling climate change – it will be realistic demonstrating what CAN be done NOW and LOCALLY!

There will be talks throughout the afternoon covering issues of sustainable home energy, food and transport. We're catering for all the family with a real world, real South Cambs and real people focus. I'll report back.

Blue bins discussion

At the parish council meeting there was general approval for the newdistrict supplied blue bins, and some discussion about what happens to the green bin, and if a group of people could if they wished club together to keep fewer bins rather than having the full three-bin set. Also discussion about the amount of paper in the new caddies.

It is making a difference though, in terms of what can be recycled, and is such a change from when everyone just put black bin liners out (for the foxes to tear open and snack on the contents!)