Volunteer David Still at the site of the proposed solar farm, photo by Andy Cooper
A community energy scheme – which will produce enough energy to power half a village – is poised to announce it has the £1.8 million funding required to complete the project.
It’s been a long and sometimes frustrating road for Humshaugh Net-Zero, which was set up four years ago by a group of enthusiasts, including one of the country’s leading energy engineers.
David Still, who helped establish the UK’s first off-shore wind turbines at Blythe, described securing the funding as “fantastic news” and a reward for “everyone’s hard work.”
Humshaugh, a picturesque village which sits next to the North Tyne, near Hexham, aims to achieve net zero by 2030, involving as many of its 1800 inhabitants as possible.
At the centre of the plan is a one-megawatt solar farm on a tucked away patch of unused farmland to the north of the village. It’s hoped formalities for the funding will be completed in the next few weeks, and work on the farm can be finished by January next year.
David Still hopes other villages, and possibly towns, will follow Humshaugh’s success and set up their own community energy schemes – deploying solar panels, or turbines, or both.
Already a scheme at Acomb, another village near Hexham, has gained planning permission for a solar farm on a site close to its village school.
At Humshaugh the aim is to fund its loan, secured from a Scottish based community investor, by selling power to the National Grid; but also, to then provide discounted energy for villagers in Humshaugh who sign up to the scheme.
In addition, it will help generate a return to local investors who have already pledged to support up to ten per cent of the cost of the project.
“This is a really positive thing for Humshaugh. We will be able to show how it can be done; be an example for other communities. This will be a great achievement at the end of my career and on a par with providing the UK with its first off-shore wind turbine,” said David.
He believes that community energy schemes are a ray of hope in what often seems to be a losing battle against climate change. The Labour government agrees. They’ve set up Great British Energy and are in the process of establishing a community energy fund which will provide grants for feasibility studies and ultimately loans for schemes like Humshaugh.
“It’s good,” said David “But for us they’re not ready yet, which is frustrating. So, we have had to find our own independent investor which has managed to raise several million pounds.
“Local schemes like ours can’t hope for grants. We’ve tried the north-east combined authorities, the mayor, Northumberland County Council, all useless. They’ve got not money. You have to go ahead on a commercial basis or it’ll never happen.”
But building a solar farm is only part of the answer to reaching net-zero in Humshaugh. And here is where it gets really interesting.
The net-zero group encourages villagers to invest in solar panels on their roofs – the local school and the village hall are on board too – and invest in batteries, heat pumps and electric cars.
Not everyone can afford to do this, of course. But a housing association which owns social housing in the village has already made the necessary investment.
The eventual idea is to build one large network across Humshaugh where electricity is generated by both the solar farm and by individual households, stored in batteries and shared between properties. Even electric cars can contribute using their batteries overnight to store low-tarrif power
New technologies and regulations, which are about to become available to ordinary homes, will enable this two-way flow between domestic properties. Any surpluses will be sold to the national grid.
“The important thing to do is get each household as energy efficient as possible, then you trade between households with an energy management system,” said David. “We hope, at the end of the day, to be offering something like a 10% discount on electricity to our solar farm customers.”
David Still is an inspiration and not every village or community will have a version of him. But he truly believes that Humshaugh’s net-zero project can be adopted by anyone:
“All you need is a few people to get together and have the enthusiasm to make it happen. Once it’s set up the system will pretty much run itself.”
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Andy Cooper is a freelance journalist and writer living in Northumberland. He was formerly the Editor of BBC Look North based in Newcastle for eleven years. Before that he worked for ITV in Southampton for over twenty years where he ended up as Head of News. Andy began his journalistic career in local newspapers.
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