GMCR installed solar panels on the roof of Peel Hall Primary School in summer 2018.  You can see how much electricity the solar panels have generated this week here.

As well as generating clean energy and saving carbon, GMCR’s solar panels have become an educational resource for the school; that’s why we introduce the schools we work with to Manchester Environmental Education Network (MEEN).

MEEN worked with a school team to gather their understanding of climate change and then helped them become educators for the wider community.

For several weeks the team studied information on climate change, played games based on the issues and considered all the angles of climate change and what we need to do to combat it.

The team used their knowledge and understanding to create a huge mind map which included issues such as deforestation, CO2 emissions from transport and heating, emissions from rubbish and waste, food issues such as cows’ burps and farts and the impacts on biodiversity and the jet stream.

See Part 2 for how the students got on at the Mayor’s Green Summit…

In March 2019 over 60 people from community energy groups, public and private sectors, and local and national charities, contributed to the development of a Community Energy Vision and Action Plan for Greater Manchester. This event was organised as part of the European COALESCCE project.

Read our 5 year vision for the sector here:

You can find out about other community energy groups in Greater Manchester on the Greater Manchester Community Energy Pledge website

We’re delighted to announce that we reached our share offer target of £100,000 on Friday evening and we have therefore closed the share offer to new applications.

Thanks so much to everyone who has invested and all of you who made the time to promote the project and share it with your contacts!

What happens next?

We’re still working hard to finalise the legal agreements we need to put in place before we can release the funds, order the equipment and start the installations.

We’ll update you again soon…

Last Wednesday, two of our directors joined the thousands of people who travelled to London for The Time is Now – the largest ever mass lobby of MPs calling for urgent action on the climate and ecological emergency.

One of the things we were calling for was more support for community energy schemes – and in particular for the reintroduction of tax reliefs for investments in projects like GMCR now that the Government has withdrawn the Feed-in Tariff.

Of course, we’ve not been waiting for the Government to act, and we’ve been busy raising the £100,000 we need to fund solar arrays on three more primary schools in our latest share offer.

We’re really grateful to those of you who’ve already helped us get over 80% of the way towards our target.  The deadline for applications is this Friday, so if you’re thinking of applying for shares, the time is now!  🙂

And please do remind your friends and family about our share offer on Facebook, Twitter, or by sending them a link to our share offer page…

Share Offer Update

We’re delighted that we’ve made a strong start to our 2019 share offer, with share applications totalling over £30,000 arriving in the first week!  It was great to receive applications from some of those people who missed out last year and we’re looking forward to welcoming them as members.

We’re now one third of the way to our £100,000 target but we’re not complacent and have been out promoting the share offer this weekend at Didsbury Festival and Mad Pride Salford.

Visit our Invest page to find out how you can help us fund solar panels on 3 more primary schools this summer.

Grid Connection news

Since we launched the share offer, we’ve heard from Electricity North West that we can install the solar array at Chesham Primary School without paying for upgrade works, so long as we don’t export more electricity than the grid in the area can cope with.  As the school uses lots of electricity onsite, we’re happy to proceed on this basis.

Share our share offer

Finally, please tell your friends and family about our share offer on Facebook, Twitter, or by sending them a link to our invest page.

Thanks for your support!

We marked World Environment Day with the launch of our latest share offer!

We’re delighted to invite you to invest in our new community share offer to fund solar panels on two primary schools in Salford and one in Bury.

This will help them save money on their bills, reduce carbon emissions and help the children learn about energy and climate change – as well as funding eco-friendly projects in the local area.

With a minimum investment of £100, you could own a share of this exciting project.and earn share interest of up to 4% each year.

To read our new share offer and apply for shares please visit our Invest page

We’ve previously installed community-owned solar panels at 6 sites and, this year, we’re working with Monton Green Primary School, Springwood Primary School and Chesham Primary School with a view to installing this summer.

By adding these schools to our project, we’ll be able to prevent more carbon pollution, as well as generating an estimated £175,000 of energy bill savings and a £190,000 community fund over the life of the project.

To find out more, please visit our Invest page

Thank you for your support!

Latest installation
Our newest solar array at Broadoak Primary School was commissioned on 21 December 2018 and was switched on in February 2019.

This brings our total installed capacity to around 220 kWp across arrays at 5 schools and 1 community building.

Solar Performance
Our December meter readings show that our solar arrays have generated 237 MWh in total, saving around 75 tonnes CO2, which is roughly in line with expectations. About half of this was generated in 2018.

Changes to the Feed-in Tariff
You may have heard that the Feed-in Tariff is closing on 31 March 2019.  The Government has re-introduced pre-registration so any sites that we register before the end of March will be eligible for the remaining Feed-in Tariff funds if the sites are installed and registered within 12 months of the pre-registration application date.

We’re talking to a number of schools with a view to pre-registering some sites before the end the month.

COALESCCE European Project

In December, we presented to a group of European community energy experts about the challenges GMCR has faced, how we overcame them, and our view of confidence in the community energy sector.  We also contributed our views to the group as they considered recommendations for what Greater Manchester can do to support community energy locally.

Board
Our Board would benefit from a director with legal expertise and a director with experience of community engagement and managing volunteers. Please get in touch if you are interested in joining.

New installation – Peel Hall Primary School

We’re delighted to share a photo of our new installation at Peel Hall Primary School. The panels were installed in the final two weeks of the summer holidays and commissioned in early September.

The installation has generated 3,870kWh clean energy already! You can see the generation for this week here.

Our first four sites
Given the sunny weather we had this summer, our four existing sites – Fiddlers Lane Primary School, Irlam Primary School, Primrose Hill Primary School and The Fuse – have performed very well. Generation meter readings taken in September 2018 show that these sites have generated a whopping 218MWh between them since they were first installed in 2016 – that’s enough to make 12 million cups of tea!

Finance Director
GMCR is looking for a volunteer Finance Director to join our Board. Our day to day bookkeeping is outsourced; we are looking for someone who can support our strategic development with their financial knowledge and enthusiasm. The Board usually meets once a month either in person or by Skype.

Our neighbours, Carbon Co-op, community energy efficiency specialists based in Manchester, are also looking for a volunteer Treasurer. They would love to have someone on board who feels confident to have financial oversight of the co-op, advising the committee on all aspects of finance. There will be a small amount of monthly admin. Their bookkeeping is outsourced.

Please contact info@gmcr.org.uk if you can help with either role. If you know someone who might be interested, please encourage them to get in touch

Big Clean Switch
If you haven’t switched your home energy to a green supplier yet, you can compare prices at our Big Clean Switch page and if you decide to switch, GMCR will receive a small commission payment.