community solar panels?

community solar panels? Created

In our community, there is a tiny village which would like to have invest in generating their own electricity. Because planning is so difficult, they've given up on the idea of wind, but how might it work with solar PV? Of course, they could do it as an investment for the feed-in tarrif, and the electricity could just go back into the grid, but would it be very impractical and costly to have it so that the houses also share the electricity to their homes? Are there any examples of this? I know there's one example in the Green Streets project, where the electricity will go from one side of the road to the other (town hall to school, I think), but would multiple properties be impossible?

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The answer to your question is yes and no. On a grid tied pv system, and I believe that's what you talking about, any excess electricity that is not consumed by a particular property, say property A, will be exported into the national grid and will therefore be available to neighbouring properties, say property B. Unfortunately there is an electricity meter that will record all incoming electricity on property B whether it has been created by next doors PV system or not. In essence property B will be charged for Property A's excess green electricity. The only true way a community could achieve shared green power is to go off grid which is a battery based system that normally involves a considerable amount of solar PV, wind turbines and a backup generator. Off grid systems have a reduced feed in tariff, 21p per Kwh generated if memory serves me right. Hope that helps.

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