UK solar energy firm offers ‘shared’ scheme that could save £200 a year

theguardian.com:

I f you would love to have solar panels but don’t own your home or can’t afford the outlay, how about investing in Britain’s first “shared” solar park that is promising cheaper, zero-carbon electricity, direct to your energy bills for the next 40 years?

With two successful community energy schemes already behind it, Ripple Energy is looking for investors for its third: the construction of a 42MW solar park in Derril Water in Devon, not far from the Cornish town of Bude.

Once up and running in the summer of 2024, the project, which is being built by one of the world’s largest independent renewable energy companies, RES, will produce enough electricity to power 14,000 homes across Britain.

Ripple says this co-owned venture – which will have about 70,000 panels – will be the first solar park in the UK to share its green electricity among its thousands of owners.

Householders can invest as little as £25, although most people will probably want to put in a typical £3,000 to £3,600 – the amount required to buy enough generation capacity to cover up to 120% of their home’s annual electricity consumption.

The company says this should result in average savings of at least £200 a year. Instead of paying the market rate for their electricity, they will in effect be paying the wholesale cost – the price the solar park would have got in the market. Of course, a lot depends on what happens to energy prices in the future.

Ripple says it has designed the scheme to be similar to a consumer investing in their own rooftop solar panels – except that the panels just happen to be somewhere else in the country.

An investment of £3,000 is significantly cheaper than buying your own rooftop solar panels. Home solar system installations start at about