On Saturday 6th May the Brixton Energy interns lined up at the Remakery on Lilford Road to solder, heat and glue their way to producing three 18V solar panels.
Tunes were played whilst the panels took form and 4 hours later we were able to start charging batteries.
The panels will be donated to the Remakery where they will form a phone charging station for visitors and spread the word about what the Brixton Energy interns are doing!
This Wednesday the Brixton Energy Interns met up for an energy consultation session with Brixton Energy veteran Martin Abraham from Green Skills Partnership Education and Training. The focus was on fuel poverty, how to calculate energy use and manage energy bills.
At the start of the session, to get into the saving state of mind, the interns took an Environmental Awareness Quiz to see what they knew about saving energy and how recycling can protect the environment. You can take the quiz below and see how you score, it’s not as easy as you think!
On Monday April 3rd, 12 UCL masters students squeezed into the cozy top room of Brixton Impact Hub. It was a warm spring evening, and the international group buzzed with friendly chatter. The students were there to learn all about their upcoming role in the Brixton Energy project; namely, door-knocking to carry out surveys of the residents at Elmore House in Loughborough Estate.
These comprehensive surveys were created to figure out how best individual residents can lower their electricity consumption and bills. These surveys and the corresponding energy advice will all be provided free of charge, and will hopefully help local people save money on their electricity and gas bills. This is a key part of the community outreach aspect of the Brixton energy project, and will be a great way to re-engage with residents who were part of Brixton Energy 1 – the first solar rooftop installation successfully carried out by Repowering London.
This particular open meeting at Brixton Impact hub was led by Repowering London’s own Felix Wight and Afsheen Rashid, and was also attended by the projects director, Andre. The UCL volunteers present asked lots of questions about the survey, the purpose of collecting results, and the project in general. They themselves are preparing for their own research trip abroad, and will be getting great experience from being a part of the Brixton Energy project. We look forward to our next meeting with them when we can practice role-playing the survey, and get ready for the real thing – which is to come in a couple of weeks time.
Brixton Energy open meetings happen every two weeks as part of the Impact Hub Open Projects night at Pop Brixton. They are open to all, and we’d love to see you there!
Since our most recent completed projects – Brixton Energy Solar 1, Solar 2 and Solar 3 – we’ve focused our attention more inward, strengthening the existing energy co-operatives that we established. Now, with these successful projects under our belt, we are excited to explore new opportunities to develop community energy in Brixton.
Our partner, Repowering London, has been awarded a grant of £125,000 from community business fund ‘Power to Change’, which will support the expansion of community energy in Brixton. Working with Repowering we aim to create social and environmental benefits, as well as an additional source of revenue for the community.
We have identified at least eight future project sites, with a total solar energy generating – capacity of 465kWp, saving roughly 170 tonnes of emitted CO2.
But, apart from solar PV, we are also keen to explore other technologies, such as battery storage, LED street lighting, supply of locally generated electricity, combined heat and power, and anaerobic digestion (AD).
To kick-off, we held an open meeting on Monday 3rd October, 2016, at the Impact Hub in Brixton. Fourteen people attended – from engineers, artists, students, volunteers – eager to learn how they could get involved, and excited to explore these options. Anaerobic digestion (AD) technology was most popular, and we were curious to see how we might work to collect food waste around Brixton Market, and convert it into valuable biogas to generate heat and electricity and fertilizer to be reused by homes and businesses in the local area.
The next event will be on Monday 17th October, where we will discuss the potential for AD technology in Brixton in more detail.
Do come along – all input is welcomed! Help us to develop our future community energy projects in Brixton!
For more information please get in touch on info@repowering.org.uk.
Saturday 22nd November 2014
11am – 3pm
@ The Loughborough Centre, SW9 7PD
Lunch provided
Everyone welcome
Brixton Energy has installed solar panels on
Elmore House and Styles Gardens at the
Loughborough Estate. Come and learn about
these projects, and learn how you can make
your own solar panels
Repowering’s work with local London communities continues to receive recognition from far afield.
The current affairs programme, PM, on BBC Radio 4 recently aired a segment on community renewable energy. Follow the link or click below to listen to an excerpt featuring Repowering:
Christiana Figueres, the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, praised the Brixton Energy co-ops in her speech at St Paul’s Cathedral on May 17th. Follow the link or click below to see a snippet:
In 2013, Brixton Energy Solar 1 was projected to generate a total of 26,913kWh. In total it generated 32,586kWh (enough to power 10 average UK homes) which represents a yield (system efficiency) of 875kWh/kWp maintaining the same performance as its 1st year of operation. Our original solar generation model which was taken from PVGIS and underestimates the warmer months and overestimates the colder months. This learning will be used to project solar generation in future Brixton Energy and Repowering projects and feedback has also been given to the PVGIS community to improve their modelling tool.
The export meter was installed in August 2013 and by the end of 2013, 7100kWh were exported to the grid, bringing additional £322 income. The export income estimated for 2014 is £1450 which will be a significant boost to BES1 income streams.
Last Monday the first Annual General Meeting of Brixton Energy Solar 2 took place at the Loughborough Centre, Brixton. Thanks to everybody who attended. For those of you who couldn’t make it we recorded Agamemnon Otero giving the director’s report.
We have also made the minutes available online and the accounts available online for anyone who is interested.
It has been a big year for Brixton Energy and we want to thank all of our investors for being part of this groundbreaking project. We look forward to building on the success of Brixton Energy Solar 2 in the next year through the social returns provided via the Community Energy Efficiency Fund and through new projects such as Brixton Energy Solar 3 which is open for investment.
Last Tuesday we had a party to celebrate the launch of Brixton Energy Solar 3.
Afsheen Rashid, Community Energy Project Officer, Lambeth Council welcome the enthusiastic crowd and Agamemnon Otero, Co-founder & Director of Repowering talked about Repowering’s vision and future plans.
Brigid Clarke, Jason Neylon, Andre Pinho, the Directors of Brixton Energy Solar 3, shared their experience of becoming Directors, talk about resident engagement, better financial investment and the special share offer for residents.
Mary Simpson, Chair of Roupell Park Resident Management Committee spoked on behalf of the residents. The highlight of the night was listening to the experiences of the young people of Roupell Park Estate – Isha, Kamel and Nadeane who have been interns on the project.
Best of all Nadeane and Isha made a delicious solar panel cake especially for the night!
There are still shares available if you wish to invest in the project.