Harvesting the power of solar in Birdhill
Innovative project in Birdhill
The first community initiative in the area to harvest solar power has been commissioned close to the national Tidy Towns winner of Birdhill and is now fully operational.
The powering of the parish Community Centre, a short distance from the village, by solar has been undertaken by Birdhill Energy Group working with the Community Hall Committee and with support from ECTC (Energy Communities Tipperary Co-operative).
The system installed comprises of 22 PV panels generating up to 8.2 Kw of electricity and is backed up with 9.6 Kw of battery storage.
It is envisaged that the system will meet the full requirements of the community centre and the excess electricity will be exported to the grid, generating additional income for the running of the centre.
The venture has been completed at an overall cost of close to €24,000, of which the SEAI grant of 50% came to €11,917 on completion of the installation.
The organisers have expressed their thanks to each of the services involved in the project, including the Co Kildare based company who carried out the installation, and there was particular thanks to Energy Communities Tipperary Co-op Project Co-ordinator, Marcella Maher-Keogh for her assistance.
Terry Griffith, Birdhill Energy Group, said that the initial objective is to fully power the requirements of the community centre and the surplus power will be fed into the grid for which they will receive around 21 cents/kw.
“Once the batteries get charged up to full, and that has now been completed, the electricity is going to flow to the grid and on a good day that would be significant,” he said.
“At the moment there is huge demand for PV panels and they should be cheaper, but the availability of panels and the cost is not down where it should be,” he added.
“In the future that will definitely change. Every factory manufacturing solar panels is currently working flat out and the demand is there. The company that installed our panels are now finding it very hard to get sufficient panels to meet with the demand,” he explained.
He said that the technology on PV is moving so fast that the efficiency of the panels installed will be probably surpassed with panels of a greater efficiency within five years, because the technology is improving all of the time.
However, one of the deficiencies in the move towards more harvesting of solar energy is being caused by the lack of clear information and an overload of complexities in the process of linking into the national grid to sell surplus to requirements.
He said that there are fundamental issues between community groups interested in solar power installations and ESB Networks and Electric Ireland, which would greatly benefit progress by being sorted out.