Derbyshire community energy project plans networking event as more potential solar sites revealed

Derbyshire Dales Community Energy (DDCE) is staging the event at Cromford Mills on Tuesday, March 21, with attendees including representatives its community partner groups and county and district councils.

The meeting will feature a presentation by Noel Lambert, the national coordinator for Big Solar Co-op, which DDCE has teamed up with to deliver on plans for large-scale rooftop solar farms on buildings across the district – with the first two potentially installed this year.

DDCE support officer Daniel O’Connell said: “This is a fantastic opportunity for the growing number of community energy organisations that we are engaging with.

“There are limited resources within groups and therefore expending time and resources on complex tasks including fundraising, technical design and procurement is not always possible to progress projects at the required pace.”

He added: “Big Solar Co-op who have already raised nearly £850,000. A proportion of these funds will ramp up decarbonisation activities in Derbyshire.

“The knowledge, experience and agile systems Big Solar Co-op have will provide effective support for the installation of solar photovoltaic on roofs.”

The sites at the most advanced planning stage are engineers’ merchants Twiggs of Matlock, on Bakewell Road, and fresh produce wholesaler John Palin in Tansley.

But talks are also currently under way over the John Smedley knitwear factory in Lea Mills, district-owned leisure centres in Matlock and Wirksworth, Ashbourne manufacturer Nenplas and, further down the Derwent Valley in Erewash, Derby College’s Broomfield Hall campus.

Altogether, DDCE hopes its first phase of projects will generate 1 Megawatt of electricity at peak capacity, roughly equivalent to the household consumption of 250 homes a year.

Combined they will form one of the four initial ‘nodes’ in the non-profit Big Solar network, which is aiming to install 100 Mw of rooftop solar nationwide by 2030, creating ten jobs in the process and claiming to potentially save more than £300,000 annually on fuel bills for community buildings and social housing in Derbyshire alone.

The networking meeting begins at 6pm. For more information, see derbyshiredalesenergy.org.uk or contact [email protected].

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