The Co-operative is issuing new shares to provide long-term funding for the recently installed solar panels at St Paul’s Church Addlestone. At this stage, it looks like all the new shares will be taken up by Church members so we are not sending out invitations to apply for shares.

Details of the issue 

The maximum investment offer is 13,500 shares at £1 each.

The Shares will have a target interest rate of 4.5% and are intended to be repaid over the life of the contract to supply electricity to the St Paul’s Church (20 years). The closing date for applications is 29^th March 2021.

The offer document and application form are available below:

Offer document

Application Form

Co-operative Financial Documents and AGM Minutes

In the 12 months to the end of June 2020 our solar panels generated over 500 megawatt hours of electricity, our second highest total in this 12-month period since we started. To put this into context this is equivalent to the electricity consumption of about 172 households which are not on the Economy 7 tariff. Average household electricity consumption has been gradually dropping since the co-operative started trading, increasing the number of households our generation supports.

Between January and October of 2018 our panels generated over 487,000 Kilowatt hours of electricity. With 2 months still to go, we have already surpassed our highest yearly generation (of 472,000 KWh). We are optimistic that this will provide a healthy revenue surplus to share with the schools.

There have been no new installations this year, but we are still hoping to bring new schools on board before the feed-in-tariff closes to new registrations. Sites need to be registered by next April to qualify and there is then a 1 year period to install the panels and go operational.

If you are aware of any schools who have an interest, please put us in touch with them

Between January and October 2016 we generated a fraction under 450,000 kilowatt hours compared to 245,000 kilowatt hours in 2015, an 83% increase. However the reason for this was the additional panels installed in late 2015 and early 2016 at George Abbot School, Boxgrove Primary School, Beacon School and Jubilee High School at Spelthorne. Like for like generation was actually down 3% on 2015 due to poor weather conditions, particularly in June.

Sadly, our proposals to install an array at Green Oak School, a Church of England primary school, have not been successful. While the Guildford Diocese has been very supportive the roof structure has proved to be unsuitable, which is a shame and the Co-op members working on this are very disappointed with this outcome.