If you are considering installing solar photovoltaic panels, or any other renewable electricity technology on your home then you need to act quickly as the Feed-in Tariff will close to new installations on 31^st March 2019.

Of course you can install solar photovoltaic panels without the Feed-in Tariff, but to get the best return from your investment you will need to use the electricity when you generate it, i.e. in the day-time!  The Feed-in Tariff is designed to reward you for feeding electricity into the grid.

We are intending to hold our AGM in July 2019, date and venue to be confirmed.

The DCE AGM was held in Bridport on 17th July 2018. If you would like to read the papers, you will find them listed on the Members page.

⦁ A chance to visit the recently re-opened Literary and Scientific Institute.
⦁ We’ve organised a finger buffet from 18:30 – 19:00
⦁ You get to vote on the interest payment and to elect your Directors, or even become one yourself.  (If you can’t come do use your proxy vote that we have e-mailed to you).
⦁ You’ll hear about the work we are doing to investigate new renewable energy projects in Dorset.

The AGM will be held at the Literary and Scientific Institute at 51, East Street, Bridport, DT6 3JX on Tuesday 17th July, from 19:00 to 20:30 with finger buffet available from 18:30.

AGM agenda

On 25th May during a visit to Dorset, Prince Charles officially opened the new Literary and Scientific Institute building in Bridport. Tim and other local people have spent several years raising funds for the historic building which has been refurbished to a high standard.

The Institute now includes a spacious café , office accommodation and meeting rooms for local businesses/ community organisations.  During his tour of the building Prince Charles met Tim and discussed local community-led initiatives including Dorset Community Energy and the Bridport Co-Housing project.
Prince Charles mentioned that he supports solar panels on schools and industrial buildings and Tim explained that Dorset Community Energy has supported educational activities including at Damers School in Poundbury.

Thank you to those of you who completed our recent survey into attitudes about renewable energy in Dorset.  We are currently applying for feasibility funding for two new projects in Dorset. The first is to investigate the possibility of setting up a micro-grid for renewable energy in a co-housing project in Bridport, the second is to put more solar panels on Dorset schools.

Find out more at the AGM.

Are you enjoying the sun? It’s been fuelling the arts in Bridport.
This graph shows that on 26th June – Bridport Arts Centre was completely powered by DCE solar panels between 10:30am and 6:00pm.

On May 25th 2018, the new General Data Protection Regulations came in, tightening the law on how personal data is collected, stored and used.  We sent out two mailings to our mailing list in April and May asking people to opt in to continue to receive our newsletter. 75% of you did, thank you. Those who didn’t opt in but who have shares in Dorset Community Energy will continue to receive communication by e-mail relevant to their shares but will not receive additional news. We also wrote a Privacy Policy which is available on the website.

Do you like fancy chocolates – then read on!

To date Dorset Community Energy has raised nearly half a million pounds from community share offers and installed 420kW on 16 schools and community buildings across Dorset. We are currently paying our members 5.5% interest on their investment, and will shortly start paying back the capital.

DCE have not installed any new PV for 2 years now, as the Feed-in tariff subsidy diminished and the tax incentives for community energy were removed.
However, installation costs have reduced, the Low Carbon Dorset programme have grants on offer to help fund installations, and energy storage options are now available.

Hence we are considering further share offers, and are interested in your opinion regarding the options. Any new projects would be legally and financially separate from current projects, so they would not add any risk to existing investments.

Click here for a short survey (less than 5 minutes!)

Your response will strengthen our chance of securing grant funding for a feasibility study. Please reply by 23:59 on Sunday 20th May, and you will have a chance to win a box of locally produced high quality chocolates.

To date Dorset Community Energy has only been able to provide monitoring equipment and educational activities for schools where we have installed solar panels. Now, we have secured a grant of £1,750 from the Postcode Local Trust (a grant-giving charity funded by players of People’s Postcode Lottery  www.postcodelocaltrust.org.uk) for Damers First School in Dorchester.

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