Welcome to Wey Valley Solar

Wey Valley Solar Schools Energy Co-operative is an exciting and pioneering venture - a community owned energy co-operative set up by local people.  In 2011 our share offer raised £625,000 from individual investors to put solar panels on the roofs of six state secondary schools in Surrey.  We could have raised more and installed more panels but unfortunately the government's fast track review of the feed in tariff in October 2011 prevented this and we had to close the share offer early and return over £100,000 to potential investors..

We are now generating a total of 238.09kW over the six school sites. This makes us one of the biggest solar co-operatives in the country.

 Our Co-operative provides each of our six schools with:

• renewable energy free of charge or heavily discounted to the school
• the ability for each school to cut their carbon emissions by up to about 20 tonnes per year
• an educational package to explain and monitor the renewable energy being generated by each school
• half the net income of the Co-operative once interest rates to investors exceed 6% and in our first full year of trading to 31 December 2012 this has resulted in over £3,000 becoming available for distribution between our six members schools 

In the year ending 31 December 2012 our investor members have received returns of more than 6% and,those who paid income tax, also qualified for tax relief equivalent to 30% of their investment in the Co-operative. 

We are keen to support other communities to replicate what we have done and they are welcome to contact us.  All our documentation is available on this website to assist other prospective community co-operatives including our  share offer document.