EU accolade for Nenagh's Community Power

Nenagh-based electricity supplier Community Power have won the Citizens’ Award at the EU Sustainable Energy Week for their Community-based Virtual Power Plant Project (cVPP). Community Power is Ireland’s first community-owned electricity supplier and is fully licensed by the CRU.

What is a Community-based Virtual Power Plant? Basically, it’s about putting communities in charge of their local renewable energy generation. The project is looking to empower small-scale local renewable energy producers and revolutionise the way electricity systems work.

This community generation project takes into account the interests of community-based renewable energy producers, or ‘prosumers’, like a small group of village-owned wind turbines or rooftop solar panels.

Gregg Allen, CEO, Community Power, said: "We are delighted that Community Virtual Power Plant (cVPP) has won the Citizens’ Award as part of the EU Sustainable Energy Awards. It is very pleasing that the combined efforts of our Irish partners in this project has been recognised by Europe as a practical demonstration of how communities and citizens can engage in the electricity market at a local level and facilitate greater citizen participation in the energy transition."

The consortium of Irish partners include: Community Power, Templederry Windfarm, Tipperary Energy Agency (TEA), Friends of the Earth, Smart M Power along with our community partners, Energy Communities Tipperary Co-operative (ECTC), Aran Island Energy Co-op, Claremorris Energy Co-op and Tait House Social Enterprise Limerick, all of whom have been actively promoting community energy initiatives in their local area.
Householders and businesses are being urged to switch their electricity supplier to Community Power to further enable the work being carried out to assist communities and citizens to generate their own power. Anybody can switch via the website www.communitypower.ie or phone 067-56005.