As I begin to write this at 19:25 on Sunday 15th March 2020 the UK’s national electricity grid is being powered by: 31% renewables (mainly wind & biomass), 11% nuclear, 44% CCGT, and 11% from the inter-connectors via our close friends and allies in Europe. I’ve chosen a random time, my guess is that a Sunday evening is a time with a fairly high electricity demand – and with 37.8GW currently being drawn that seems to be the case, and yet there is no coal required by our grid at all.
This week we are celebrating the announcement of a multi-million pound award from the National Lottery to Abney Park Cemetery in Hackney, a part of which will enable the Borough’s first park-based renewable heat scheme to be installed.
Scene is looking for a skilled researcher with an interest in the community and locally-led approaches to renewable energy. The role will be based in our Liverpool office working with a small research team, primarily focused on conducting community energy research between January – May 2020. The role will include stakeholder engagement, surveying and outreach, data management and analysis and contributing to a number of high-profile research reports.
This piece was originally posted by the HEED project here.
Following the installation of the micro-grid in Kigeme refugee camp in Southern Rwanda, the HEED team returned to the camp on the 28th of November 2019 to host a workshop to hear from the community on the current and potential use of the micro-grid and to showcase the user interface designs.
In the final week of October, Scene went to Uganda’s West Nile region, ready to host the second series of participatory workshops for the REFRUIT irrigation project before the start of the pilot trials in December. Begun in June 2019, the solar-powered precision irrigation project provides a unique product and business approach for irrigation solutions in East Africa, combining the expertise of its four project partners Scene, Farm-Hand, Futurepump, and the Gulu Agricultural Development Company (GADC) in Uganda.
Scene is delighted to be selected to develop an operational pilot for the Perth Smart Energy Network project. We will continue to work alongside Perth and Kinross Council and develop and pilot a smart energy management platform for two of its buildings, and install new solar PV panels and smart IoT devices at a local primary school.
This post forms part of the SDG series at Scene Connect, contributing to Global Goals Week in which governments, businesses, and civil society representatives gather at the UN Headquarters in New York for the Sustainable Development Summit 2019.
In this blog, Dom describes the broad benefits that community-based energy projects can generate for the local economy, regional decarbonisation contributions, educational schemes, and involvement in local governance. Despite the enormous value, however, the community energy sector is currently in need of far more support.
This post forms part of the SDG series at Scene Connect, contributing to Global Goals Week in which governments, businesses, and civil society representatives gather at the UN Headquarters in New York for the Sustainable Development Summit 2019.
Ryan, electrical engineer at Scene, describes the challenges to energy access in the rural Global South, and explains how Scene’s EMBLEM project can support the growth of mini-grids by unlocking income for poor households through evolving grids with inclusive, gender-balanced governance models.
This post forms part of the SDG series at Scene Connect, contributing to Global Goals Week in which governments, businesses, and civil society representatives gather at the UN Headquarters in New York for the Sustainable Development Summit 2019.
In this post, Vijay describes HEED, a collaborate project between Scene, Practical Action and Coventry University which seeks to address the low levels of energy access experienced in refugee camps and displaced communities. Drawing on his visits to Rwanda and Nepal, Vijay shares his lessons learned so far, demonstrating how through engineering expertise and sociological research, we are learning how to energy provision can improve in displacement settings.
This post forms part of the SDG series at Scene Connect, contributing to Global Goals Week in which governments, businesses, and civil society representatives gather at the UN Headquarters in New York for the Sustainable Development Summit 2019.
Dom, Project Coordinator, explains how Scene’s ZUoS project is helping to push our electricity infrastructure in the right direction. Where our current electricity grid is outdated, inefficient, and reliant on fossil fuels., the grid of the future will be characterised by flexibility, renewable generation, local energy trading, and lower bills.
