News and blogs

There is surprising – even shocking – good news: Our ability to convert sunshine into usable energy has become much cheaper far more rapidly than anyone had predicted. The cost of electricity from photovoltaic, or PV, solar cells is now equal to or less than the cost of electricity from other sources powering electric grids in at least 79 countries. Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-turning-point-new-hope-for-the-climate-20140618#ixzz354d1yz5U

The Partnership’s Renewable Energy Opportunities Study is underway. Communities for Renewables has been appointed to help identify suitable locations for community owned wind, solar and hydro projects.

Government has published a consultation on changes to financial support for solar PV. The full consultation is available here. The consultation document proposes to: close the Renewables Obligation (RO) to new solar PV with capacity above 5 MW from 1 April 2015. Projects under 5 MW will remain eligible for the RO but projects over 5 MW will have to apply for Contracts for Difference (CfDs). split the current ‘degression band’ for projects over 50 Read more…

B&Q appear to be marketing an interesting combined thermostat and programmer that seems to have some good reviews. Have any of you seen this before or know anything about it? In fact it seems there a number of people selling it including John Lewis. And the company NEST is owned by Google. Here’s the link to an article in The Guardian

Newton and Noss Environment Group, Transition Tavistock and Transition Town Totnes have been successful in bidding for support from the Energy Savings Trust to hold Open Homes events. For more details see Events

Information sheets are now available below on Energy Assessors and the Green Deal. We’re all spending, on average, more than £1000 per household on energy – for every 1000 households that’s over £1,000,000 per annum. Most of this is lost to our economy, paid out to one of the Big 6 energy companies. We have an opportunity to work together, as a community, to reduce the amount we’re spending. Reducing the amount we’re using in Read more…

The South West Devon Community Energy Partnership’s (SWD CEP) Stage One Energy Study has been made publically available today. Further details, the press release and the report are available here. “The SWD CEP quickly realised that in order to influence policy and guidance within our area we needed to establish a robust evidence base. Therefore, to focus our future working we commissioned the University of Exeter to provide a study of South West Devon. This is an Read more…