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Climate change film: Bro Dyfi Community Renewables

The Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) in Machynlleth offers solutions to some of the most serious challenges facing our planet and the human race; climate change, pollution and the waste of precious resources. They demonstrate practical ways of addressing these problems. Leading by example, CAT aims to show that living more sustainably is not only easy to attain but can provide a better quality of life. The projects and displays at CAT address every aspect of the average lifestyle - with key areas being renewable energy, environmental building, energy efficiency, organic growing and alternative sewage systems.

All of CAT's energy is generated onsite, it is not connected to the National Grid. back in 1998, as the Centre grew they realised that they needed to generate more power. With the site's mountain side location, on a disused slate quarry, the idea was borne for a wind turbine and, later on, the establishment of Bro Dyfi Community Renewables.

Duncan Kerridge, a member of the Bro Dyfi Community Renewables management committee, has been involved for seven years: ‘The project came from the community. A group of local people that live in the valley just below where the wind turbine is located got together to develop a wind energy project.

‘Over the years there's been quite a variety of people from the local community many of whom are already involved in the renewable energy industry, but also people who have brought other skills.’

Judith Thornton has lived in the area for eight years: ‘Having no technical knowledge in wind turbines, my role in the project has been to work on the website, admin, organise meetings, that sort of thing.’

‘You need people with a wide variety of skills,’ adds Judith, ‘people who can write feasibility studies; write business plans; people who understand legal things like land registry agreements, licences and leases; and of course you need people with experience in renewable energy.’

‘The people that first put the idea together set up an association and a lot of people from the valley joined,' explains Duncan, 'we managed to get some funding to do a feasibility study to look at the potential for a small wind power project. Then, once we got the go ahead, went out and looked for further funding for the capital expenditure of the project.’

The association set up a loan share scheme which was quickly oversubscribed. Judith comments: ‘There were more people wanting shares than shares available. We wanted everybody to get at least some shares. The way it works at the moment is about 70% of the people owning the shares live in the Dyfi Valley area and the rest are from the rest of Wales and England as well.

‘We pay an annual dividend according to how much electricity we've generated - that depends on how windy it's been over the course of the year.’

The benefits are felt even more in the local community too: ‘We felt that it was really important that even people who didn't own shares in the project could benefit from it,’ adds Judith, ‘so money from some of the shares goes into the Community Energy Fund to pay for things like free low energy light bulbs and a community transport project.’

‘We discovered there's actually a thriving market in second hand wind turbines from sites in Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany,’ says Duncan, ‘we found a 75 kilowatt turbine with a very good pedigree.’

The wind turbine is connected via an underground cable to a grid connection point. Effectively you've got a three pointed star: power that's generated by the turbine either goes to the CAT when they need it, or if it's not being required at the Centre it's exported out to the grid.

As Duncan explains: ‘CAT had outgrown its onsite electricity generation capability and needed extra power. If we hadn't been able to set up the turbine they would have had to connect to the grid and import regular electricity.’

Following the success of the turbine, the community have set about installing a second. Duncan explains: ‘We learnt a lot of lessons in the first project. But as a result we realised that a lot of money and effort goes into setting up a small project and in fact to do a larger project doesn't take that much more money and effort.

The first turbine could provide enough electricity for the equivalent of maybe 20 or 30 houses. There was a site that had a prototype machine on it, also connected to CAT, with the potential to generate up to a third of the electricity demand of the houses of Machynlleth.

Judith adds: ‘We've got a big problem with climate change and we need to do something about it. We need everybody to do things like install low energy light bulbs and make sure they've got enough insulation. But some of us would like to help other people to do more as well. Here's the opportunity.’

‘What I hope we've managed to show is that it is possible for people to actually take control of the situation themselves and generate their own electricity, their own power, be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.’ adds Duncan.

‘A key thing to take on board is to be really positive about the project and to keep your determination,’ says Duncan, ‘pick something that you can achieve a realisable result in a reasonably short time and then build on your success. When you get there it is a very satisfying result.’

Judith agrees: ‘It's definitely worth it in the end. So yeah, go for it!’

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