The AURORA Forest of Dean team supported Forest Community Energy (FCE) volunteers to host a Drop-in Solar Energy Information Day at The Main Place – a community centre in Coleford, in September 2024.
The event was held in a ‘marketplace’ style format, to provide residents with a one-stop-shop for learning about solar energy, at whatever stage of their solar journey. Highlights included:
Solar Wizard – the Centre for Sustainable Energy demoed their free Solar Wizard Tool whereby using lidar data; members of the community could find out the feasibility of their roof for solar panels, how much they could generate and how much money they could save.
Solar Stories – Forest of Dean residents shared their real experiences of installing solar PV on their homes.
Severn Wye Energy Agency – a local energy advice charity provided information about government grants available for solar PV.
Meet the installer – Upon arrival,visitors were given a ‘questions to ask a solar installer’ workbook. During the event, Gwent Energy CIC and Green Team One were both on hand to walk attendees through the process of a solar PV installation, and answer any technical questions. [MB1]Goodwill Energy Consultancy talked residents through the solar PV maintenance process.
Members of the community also had the opportunity to speak with FCE volunteers about their plans to launch a community share-offer, and to develop local community owned solar projects in the Forest of Dean.
Event Impact and Next Steps
Most attendees reported back that the peer-to-peer learning element of the event was engaging and useful, some attendees also remarked that an event involving charities was a refreshing surprise and felt like a more meaningful alternative to a typical commercial event. Others mentioned it would have been helpful to speak with a representative from the council planning department at the event as planning can be a big barrier to installing domestic energy measures in the UK. This is something the team will explore how to build into future events.
The importance of community events such as this was demonstrated in our attendee survey. Approximately 45% of visitors rated their knowledge of energy efficiency building measures as ‘good’ prior to the event, this increased to 57% after the event.
This event also served as a capacity building exercise for Forest Community Energy members. We are hoping that this event model could be replicated for other technologies and topics, such as heat pumps.
Watch this space!
