REIC SUCCESS STORIES

Bro-Dyfi Community Renewables Ltd - a highly successful community-led, community-owned wind turbine project in the Dyfi Valley.

Bro Dyfi Community Renewables developed a community-wind turbine project providing an opportunity for people of the Dyfi Valley with the opportunity to purchase one small 75kW wind turbine to be located on the hill above the Centre for Alternative Technology, Mynydd LLwyngwern.

The project will provide numerous community benefits and provides an opportunity for local investment. Bro-Dyfi Community Renewables is a co-operative.

Bro Dyfi Community Renewables (BDCR) initially approached REIC earlier in 2001 to be a pilot project for REIC. A business plan was presented to REIC and a format for the share offer was provided following a simplified version of the share offer document used by Baywind for Haverigg II. REIC invited its members to a presentation of BDCR’s share offer in mid-October 2001 and the share offer closed on 16th November 2001. Members had the opportunity to invest in the project and the share offer was open for four weeks. REIC distributed the share offer document to all of its members. Within the 4 week period Ł54,000 was raised from REIC members - the share offer was over-subscribed by Ł17,000!

Of the 50 investors in the project, all except 2 were from the Dyfi-Valley. The minimum investment was Ł100 and the maximum was Ł1000 to allow as many people as possible to invest in the project after being over-subscribed.

Construction of the single wind turbine has commenced and Bro-Dyfi anticipate the turbine being operational by the end May 2002.

For further details on Community schemes in the UK including the Bro-Dyfi Community Wind turbine and on how to engage local people in a local RE scheme you can read the following papers:

N.B: PAPERS 1 AND 3 ARE LARGE FILES AND MAY TAKE SOME TIME TO DOWNLOAD, YOU MAY PREFER TO RIGHT CLICK ON THE SELECTION AND EITHER 'OPEN IN A NEW WINDOW' OR 'SAVE TARGET' TO A LOCATION ON YOUR HARD DRIVE

1. OVERCOMING BARRIERS TO ENABLE GREATER ACTIVE COMMUNITY AND LOCAL INVOLVEMENT IN WIND FARMS IN THE UK by Vicky Leaney, Rod Edwards, Ruth Stevenson and Annette Heslop presented at British Wind Energy Conference in Durham in 1999

2. Empowering the Community by Vicky Leaney, D JENKINS, A ROWLANDS, R GWILLIM and D.SMITH presented at the British Wind Energy Conference in Brighton in October 2001

3. Developing successful community incentive schemes to engage local people in your renewables project Powerpoint presentation. Presented at IIR conference in London in March 2002 entitled ‘ Successfully Financing and Planning your Renewable Energy Project’.