Community solar park comes to Bristol

Bristol, European Green Capital of 2015, has opened first community-owned solar park.

The 1.8MW solar park, at Moorhouse Lane, was built by local company Solarsense UK Limited and was funded and is owned by Low Carbon Gordano Ltd, a co-operative whose purpose is to help the local community to reduce energy costs and become more sustainable.

The Moorhouse Solar Park will deliver 1,780MW hours of renewable electricity into the grid each year– enough to power around 430 homes each year. In addition, the financing arrangement means that every community investor receives a return of 4 per cent a year above RPI, with additional income retained by Low Carbon Gordano for more renewable energy projects. The Solar Farm will also deliver carbon savings of 850 tonnes per annum, meaning that 77 Low Carbon Gordano investors can now regard themselves as 100 per cent carbon neutral.

Commenting on the opening, Mayor George Ferguson (right), said:  “The world is looking at what we are doing and later on we’ll be setting up our own energy company. That gives a real sense of making sure everybody in Bristol will take part in our battle against climate change. But it’s not just about climate change. What’s absolutely great is that the emissions here are zero and that means we are cleaning up the air in our cities for our children.

“With this project, Low Carbon Gordano will inspire a lot of people to think a lot more about how we can harness the power of the sun in a much more practical way and I will do everything I can to encourage the new government in Westminster to support renewables and other alternative forms of energy,”

Thanks to the success of the Moorhouse community-funded project, Low Carbon Gordano and Solarsense have already identified a second site at Ham Lane. This would be half the size of the Moorhouse scheme here, but at 0.9MW would still produce enough green electricity to power a further 200 homes.