Helping to bring community energy to Rye

In May local community benefit society Energise Sussex Coast (ESC) helped the Tilling Green Community Centre in  Rye to install fifty-two 450W solar panels on its roof. A second installation in Rye – this time on the roof of Chapman’s Fisheries – should be taking place soon. Energise Sussex Coast’s Gabriel Carlyle reports.

Since 2019 ESC has helped to install community-owned solar panels on 10 local sites, including Baird Primary School and St Leonards Academy, generating over half-a-million kilowatt-hours of electricity every year and saving local schools £82,000 a year. Current projects include a biodiversity solar farm in Crowhurst and a community-funded solar installation on the roof of the Edgerton Park Indoor Bowls Club in Bexhill.

The two Rye installations will be funded (or, in the case of the Centre, part-funded) by a community share offer from ESC’s sister co-op Energise South.

I spoke to Beverley Smith (BS) from the Rye Partnership and Louise Chapman (LC) from Chapman’s about these projects, in July:

Could you start by telling me about the Centre and the Fishery?

Beverley Smith: So Tilling Green Community Centre is the base for the Rye Partnership – that’s who I work for. The Partnership is an organisation that was developed several years ago, bringing together lots of interested parties to work on regenerating Rye and the surrounding areas.

We’ve got three sites: the Centre, the fisheries site where Louise is, and a site in Rye Harbour where we’ve got a shop and two flats.

The Centre used to be a school. It was derelict at one point, so the partnership took it over and now run it as a hub, providing services to the local community.

Louise Chapman: The Fishery is an export hub. We have a retail shop and a seafood bar and we’re now looking to expand, as well to develop what we have. We’ve been here for about 10 years on this site and we are incredibly heavy users of energy. Obviously, we have fridges and freezers everywhere and are producing a couple of tonnes of ice a day.

The Rye Partnership are our landlords here and the Environment Agency owns the land itself.

BS: So the Partnership are the head leasee and then we re-lease to Chapman’s.

Why did you decide to have solar panels installed?

LC: I started looking at solar panels because we are an incredibly heavy user of power. When the energy crisis hit our bills went up by £1,000 a week, but we were already thinking about it before then. After about a year of investigating and planning for this the Partnership took it over, as they decided that they would be the lead person on it as the landlord.

BS: The Center was part of of the Village Halls Energy Project run by Rother District Council. We had a really good report done on how we could improve our carbon footprint and energy efficiency.

So we had LED lighting installed throughout the building – that was priority number one – and the solar project came as a spin-off from that.

There were certain village halls that were identified as really good for solar and we were one of those. So that’s how we got linked-in with it in the first place.

It’s always been on our radar to do it at some point. But the scary thing for us was not understanding the technology or how it works. Who’s the right person to pick to do the project? Would we know if we’d got a good contractor or not? Obviously payback was a consideration but we were even more concerned about how we’d manage the project and what would happen if it went wrong.

So the whole model with Energise South – that it will find community investors and that it has to make the project work because otherwise it can’t repay them – made it a win-win for us.

We were very supported throughout the whole process.

Was climate change and reducing greenhouse gas emissions also important for the Fishery?

LC: Yes, certainly. Everything we do, we focus on sustainability. We have no wastage. So that is all important. Obviously as a business, our bottom line is that it will save us a lot of money. So that was our main focus but the other things were brilliant to go along with that.

Energise South is going to be raising part of the money needed to pay for these two solar installations through a community share offer. Can you say a word or two about that?

BS: For us it’s a really good model. The fact that we didn’t have to to put up an initial outlay but we were still able to move forward with the project was a significant advantage and the same will be true for the Fisheries site.

If we had to put up the capital to get the solar panels installed, I think Louise and I would be having a different conversation, wouldn’t we, about this?

It allows us to move forward with the solar. It reduces the bills. And obviously it’s a green energy source.

Have you encountered any obstacles?

LC: I think it’s difficult because the fisheries were the leasee, the Partnership were the leaser and then the Environment Agency (EA) own the land. So we’ve got a three-way conversation going on – or even a four- or five-way one if we include the different solar people. So it it’s just been slow and I think the EA do drag their heels.

BS: The EA needs certain agreements put in place and they’ve been stalling on various things. It’s not just about the solar panels. We’ve got a lot of discussions going on with them and it is incredibly slow – we’ve had two changes of personnel!

There were almost two years when we had nothing from them on various things but we’re now at a point where we’re making progress.

We’ve agreed the fee for the agreements to be done. So in theory it should now be moving quicker.

What do the people at the Centre think about the solar installation?

BS: We haven’t had a lot of feedback yet. We’re hoping to put a board up in the reception area to publicise what we’re generating from the panels to create a bit more excitement about it.

We’re also hoping to have some sort of launch event, once we have a bit more information about how much energy we’ve been generating.

And we’ve got plans to work with Energise Sussex Coast to help local social housing tenants access solar through the community energy model.

Is there anything else you’d like to say?

BS: Doing the project through Energise, literally everything has been taken care of. The whole thing’s been organised.

We’re only a couple of part-time staff as well, so it’s just taken that huge weight off of our shoulders. The project’s happened but we’ve been guided along the route, everything we needed to do.

And I feel quite comfortable that it’s been done properly – you know, everything’s in place that needs to be and I don’t have any concerns about it. Whereas if we’d picked a contractor to do it ourselves, we’d have been trying to manage them but without any idea as to what we were trying to manage, to be honest.

So I do feel in safe hands, let’s say, in terms of the way the project’s gone so far.

Find out more about Energise Sussex Coast’s work here.

Also in: Green Times

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