Our Electric vehicle is go!

At long last the little Citroen C-Zero electric car is now up and running and available to book for just £4.5 per hour with no fuel charges. You can sign-up and book today via,

The car, which will now be parked and charged at the new Rose Hill Community Centre, is accessible to the whole community and all Co-Wheels members nationwide.

Oxford Times joined us for the launch at the Rose Hill and Iffley Low Carbon Bike and Swishing Day last week. You can read the coverage below:

Andy from Bioregional was out taking visitors for a spin to demonstrate just how smooth and silent the vehicle is.

The car will be charged in part from the 200 solar panels on the roof of the community centre.

Rose Hill School solar goes live!

Last month Rose Hill Primary School boosted the clean people’s power station in Rose Hill as Low Carbon Hub installed a 28.8kW solar PV array on the southern part of their roof.

The 108 panels will provide clean power to the school, meeting almost 20% of its total electricity use and saving the school over £11,000 per year. During the holidays and weekends the electricity will be exported to the local electricity to the grid to power homes and businesses.

This install has been supported by ERIC, but has been designed and delivered as part of the Low Carbon Hub’s ‘Solar Schools’ initiative, part-financed through a £2m community share offer. Rose Hill now joins a fleet of 13 other schools this year who have received solar installs.

In the autumn Sycamore class will receive an additional green energy boost through Project ERIC. Two additional panels will be installed outside the classroom powering LED lights and USB sockets directly from the panels on a Direct Current (DC) circuit. A Maslow battery will be installed in the classroom to store extra power on sunny days and keep the classroom lights during cloudy days.

The installation will form part of an education display in the classroom, bringing green power closer to the pupils, with a simple explanation of how the systems work; saving money and helping the environment.

ERIC out and about for Eid Extravaganza

ERIC team were out in force for the Eid Extravaganza last weekend spreading the localised energy message and also whizzing round of the new solar PV and battery bamboo trailer which illustrates how DC power with LED lighting can work in our homes and communities.

Visitors can charge their phones direct from the USB sockets powered by the solar and batteries, solder their own mini DIY solar charger and see the power and quality of the DC LED lights. A volt and ammeter communicates the power being generated and consumed from the various components.

ERIC and the trailer will be back for the bike and swishing day on the Oval in Rose Hill on the 6th August with Broken Spoke Bike Co-op. We hope you’ll be able to join us!

RH School Crowd funder hits target

We’re delighted that the crowdfunder to raise £2000 to create a ‘zero carbon classroom of the future’ reached its target last week.

A huge thank you to all those in the community who helped spread the word and reached into their pockets to contribute.

Sue Vermes, Headteacher at Rose Hill Primary School said, “we’re delighted that we’ll be getting this technology in the school, and that this has been funded by the community makes it a real community project.”

The technology will be installed alongside information display and graphics that together act as a learning tool for teachers and pupils, demonstrating some of the possibilities of clean, green renewable technologies.

 

 

Join the ERIC team at the Eid Extravaganza this weekend!

ERIC will be launching the first electric vehicle (EV) in Rose Hill at the Eid Extravaganza in Rose Hill this saturday.

The new Citroen C-zero will be managed by Co-Wheels, a social enterprise and leader in EVs in the UK. The car will be available to all members of Co-Wheels and costs just a few pounds an hour to hire out.

The car will be located at RH Community centre and charged in part from the 200 solar panels on the roof of the centre.

We hope you’ll be able to join us at the centre, but you can also sign up to Co-Wheels online and test drive the car for yourself, http://www.co-wheels.org.uk/join.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ERIC Joins Rose Hill Extravaganza

ERIC was on show at Rose Hill Extravaganza last weekend along with the Oxford Surplus Food cafe who were dolling out lashing of delicious food from the Food Bank and other surplus sources.

Well over 500 people came through the doors of the Rose Hill Community Centre to take part in the festivities – to dance, have their faces painted and to find out the latest progress in ERIC.

On display we had our very own mobile demonstration unit – a bamboo bike trailer that we will now be riding to events across the summer. The trailer sports a Maslow battery, identical to those installed across Rose Hill, linked to a solar panel, which charges the battery when its on the trailer and on display at events.

Connected to the trailer are also USB charging sockets so that passers by can charge their phones and gadgets, DC LED lighting that is powered direct from the solar and a DC soldering iron, so that folk can soldering their very own micro panels using energy powered by the sun.

At the end of the day the trailer packs down again and can be ridden home, fossil fuel free!

 

The trailer and ERIC team will be out in force at this years Eid celebrations this coming Saturday where we also hope to be launching the long awaited Co-Wheels electric car. We hope you’ll join us.

ERIC researchers speak at the Rose Hill Renewables Revolution event

Rose Hill has been the focus of several regeneration and low carbon initiatives, one of which is Project ERIC which has brought solar PV and smart electricity storage technologies in 82 households. Not stopping there, the Rose Hill and Iffley Low Carbon Group organised The Rose Hill Renewables Revolution event on the evening of Friday 3^rd June 2016 where the ERIC project team was invited to present the results coming out from monitoring and evaluation.

Professor Rajat Gupta from Oxford Brookes University reported interesting findings from ERIC focussing on the householders’ energy attitudes and feedback on the project. Professor Gupta was accompanied by Dr Adorkor Bruce-Konuah, researcher on the project. When asked about concerns about energy prices, climate change and energy supplies, 75% of ERIC households reported they were concerned about rising energy prices, 72% said they were concerned about climate change and 60% were concerned about energy supplies. As 90% of the ERIC households are social rented households, these particular finding is motivating as there is a common misconception that people in socially disadvantaged communities are least likely to worry about the environment.

Initial results from the performance of the solar PV systems and the smart battery storage also show encouraging results. From a sample of 50 installed PV systems, approximately 91MWh of electricity has been generated in a year, saving approximately 47,000kgCO₂ of emissions annually. Assuming that 50% of the generated electricity is consumed by ERIC households, each householder can save around £120 per year. The Maslow batteries are also helping to increase the self-consumption of PV generated electricity by up to 11% on a household level.

As well as presenting ERIC, Professor Gupta shared insights and tools available from other energy and communities projects, undertaken by the Low Carbon Building Group of Oxford Brookes University. These include the EVALOC low carbon communities project which has created the ENACT toolkit for supporting learning from community energy projects (www.evaloc.org.uk) and DECoRuM carbon mapping which can assess energy use on a house-by-house, identify areas action and calculate potential for energy savings.   These projects are relevant to the aspirations of the Rose Hill and Iffley Low Carbon Group (and other groups in Oxford) as they develop their future plans for community-led energy action.

Overall the presentation was very successful in informing the low carbon group and the wider community on the ongoing performance of the installed generation and storage technologies. The evaluation of household energy attitudes also provided useful feedback to ERIC householders who were also present at the event.

 

Project ERIC shines at the National Energy Storage Summit in London

The ERIC team was invited to present the project approach and emerging findings at the 2016 Energy Storage UK Summit held in Twickenham Stadium (London) on 28^th April 2016. The presentation was extremely well-received and ERIC was regarded as an exemplar case study demonstration of how smart battery storage technology has enabled the Rosehill community in south Oxford, save energy and install more solar photovoltaics on the electricity network.

Debbie Haynes from Oxford City Council spoke about the drivers for getting involved in the project from the local authority’s perspective, as well their experience with installation of battery storage in City Council homes. She emphasised how Project ERIC has helped in reducing their tenants’ energy bills, generating long-term income and increasing a sense of community and positive environmental interest in Rose Hill.

Chris Wright, the Chief Technical Officer of Moixa Technology provided the details about the Maslow battery units, explaining how Maslows work to increase self-consumption of locally generated PV electricity and reduce average peak grid load.

Professor Rajat Gupta from Oxford Brookes University then reported on the findings from the monitoring and evaluation process that is intended to identify the challenges and benefits and to demonstrate whether small-scale battery storage works. Initial findings from the evaluation show encouraging results, which include a 13% increase in self-consumption of solar generated electricity and an 11% decrease in peak grid load in March 2016.

The ERIC presentation was followed by a panel discussion with the speakers. Overall the presentation was successful in informing industry, utility companies, local authorities and end-users about the potential of achieving local energy savings using smart energy storage in our homes and community buildings.

 

Rose Hill Primary School ‘Classroom of the future’

Rose Hill and Iffley Low Carbon Group (RHILC) and Bioregional are raising funds for Rose Hill Primary School to create a zero carbon classroom powered entirely from solar PV with battery storage supplied by Moixa Technology. The classroom will be fitted with interactive displays to act as a teaching aid – communicating how renewable energy works and what an alternative energy system might look like.

We need your help to raise our target of £2,000, which will all go to installing the kit with match-funding from Project ERIC, so please share this exciting project with your friends on social media. The crowdfunder page where you can make a bid is at the following link:

https://hubbub.org/p/classroom-of-the-future

 

The Rose Hill Community centre grand opening

On the 30th of January 2016 the flagship new Rose Hill community centre  will open its doors to the public for the first time!

Project ERIC will be part of the celebrations with representatives, Andy Edwards from Bioregional and Adorkor Konuah from Oxford Brookes University on hand to speak with visitors about the ground-breaking elements of the project and how the local community can get more involved in the project. ERIC will  host a stall and interactive exhibit that demonstrates the benefits of bringing solar PV, battery storage and DC LED lighting to a community.

We will also be offering one-to-one support and advice to residents involved in the project, showing households how to get the most out of their new Maslow batteries and solar systems.

Additionally we will be doing a soft launch of a new car club coming to Rose Hill this spring with an electric vehicle located at the community centre, powered in part by excess solar PV from the solar array on its rooftop – the first of its kind in Oxfordshire. The car club will be a service on offer to all residents in the area. you can find out more about how car clubs work here.

We hope you will be able to join us on the 30th to find out more!

 

The new electric charge post has been installed outside the  community centre, ready for delivery of the first electric car in Spring 2016

The solar PV array on the roof of the community centre will power  lighting and appliances and charge four 2kWh Maslow batteries – ensuring some of the centres power can be provided by solar both day and night. the first  electric car club vehicle in Rose Hill will also be charge by surplus solar power when its available.