In 2024, GMCR applied for a grant from the Government’s Community Energy Fund in collaboration with Middleton Community Power to explore the Energy Local model.

Who are Middleton Community Power?
Middleton Community Power (MCP) is the energy group within Middleton Co-operating, a community wealth building initiative to help keep more of local residents’ money circulating in the local economy. MCP felt that the Energy Local model may meet these objectives.

What is the Energy Local model?
In the Energy Local model, communities form Clubs of community energy projects (e.g. a solar or hydro site) and local residents and businesses who use energy. The Energy Local Clubs allow the community energy project to sell locally generated clean electricity to residents at lower prices than their main supplier.

Community-owned solar arrays on schools could be installed and electricity the schools don’t need could be supplied to local people to reduce their bills.

What did we find out?
We engaged Energy Local to assess the feasibility of setting up an Energy Local Club in Middleton. Their report concludes that a club could be beneficial for both GMCR and the local residents IF it could be set up with an energy company offering a standard tariff.

Currently, Energy Local is working with a single “deep green” (renewables only) supplier who charges slightly more than a standard tariff and in this scenario the model was not viable. You can read more in the report.

What did we conclude?
We felt there were some drawbacks to the Energy Local model:

Complexity – the report indicates that the directors of the Club do not need to have an in-depth understanding of how the numerous MPANs^[1] of the generators and consumers are set up. We would always want to have a thorough understanding of our business model.

Dependence on the Energy company partner – The report identifies that the export contract provides protection for the length of the contract. The key question is how long that export contract would last and how long the energy company would continue to buy from the generators and sell to the Club members at the agreed price.

Labour intensive – For Club to be successful, you’d need to persuade c. 250 local households to switch supplier to the Energy company partner. This would require a large and enthusiastic co-ordinating group with close local community connections.

Lack of additional benefits to schools – While schools want to support their local communities, it is difficult to see the schools switching their import contract to the Energy company partner as it is not clear that they would achieve financial benefits above those provided by the existing rooftop solar model.

What next?
While we don’t think an Energy Local Club in its current form is the right thing for Middleton, the idea of community energy generators selling their electricity to local residents is a brilliant one. That’s why we support the campaign for the right to supply, which we will write about in a different post since this one has been sponsored by our Government grant! 🙂

^{[1] Meter Point Administration Numbers, which identify electricity supply points}