TAMAR Energy Community (TEC), a local energy co-operative owned and run by the community, has secured a £20,000 Rural Community Energy Fund (RCEF) grant.

The money will enable TEC to pay for the detailed feasibility work for its solar roofs project.

TEC aims to use the money to install solar panels on roofs across West Devon and East Cornwall.

RCEF is a £15-million programme, delivered by WRAP and jointly funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). It supports communities in England to develop renewable energy projects which provide economic and social benefits to the community.

A spokesperson for TEC said: ‘Our solar roofs project is TEC’s first community scale project to generate energy locally, funded and owned by the community. The project will install solar panels on a number of roofs across the area from Callington to Buckland Monachorum, including four local schools and colleges and three community facilities. If successful, the project will have a capacity of just under half a megawatt hour of power — sufficient for over 130 homes (equivalent).’

The project is hoped to benefit the community by providing local people with an investment opportunity with a competitive rate of return; reduced cost electricity to the organisations who have the solar panels installed on their roofs; a community benefit fund to support local projects; part time employment for a TEC administrator; support for learning about local energy generation as part of the school curriculum; a reduction in the amount of energy that needs to be imported from outside the community; a contribution to local and national electricity generation needs and work for local businesses who will do the installations and ongoing maintenance.

Transition Tavistock’s study on the local energy economy, the Tavistock and District Local Economic Blueprint, estimated that £40-million per annum is spent across Tavistock and its southern linked parishes on heat and power. Transition Tavistock said with much of this being spent with national and international companies, the more that can be generated locally — as well as reducing the amount used — the more that can be kept within the local economy.

TEC’s professional partners helping to deliver to detailed feasibility work are Communities for Renewables and Plymouth Energy Community. The TEC team is led by Kate Royston and Kate Dibble.

Kate Royston said: ‘A lot of people have invested a lot of time to help make this project happen and we’re excited to see it getting off the ground. We’d like to thank Devon County Council and Regen SW for their help from the Devon Accelerator Fund which helped pay for our initial work in the autumn and, importantly to WRAP and the RCEF fund which will help pay for the next steps. We hope that as many people as possible locally are able to benefit from this community project.’

TEC will keep people informed of the progress of the project, through Facebook (Tamar Energy Community) and Twitter (@TamarTec) or interested people can visit the Transition Tavistock food and growing event at Tavistock College on the afternoon of March 5 and have a chat.

For more information contact Kate Royston at [email protected] or 07969 569444.