Community Power wins EU Award for Community Owned Electricity Supplier

Ireland’s first community owned electricity supplier, Community Power, have won the Citizens’ Award at the EU Sustainable Energy Week for their Community-based Virtual Power Plant Project (cVPP). Aran Islands Energy Co-op is a community partner in the project.

What is a Community-based Virtual Power Plant? Basically, it’s about putting communities in charge of their local renewable energy generation. The project is looking to empower small-scale local renewable energy producers and revolutionise the way electricity systems work. This community generation project takes into account the interests of community-based renewable energy producers, or ‘prosumers’, like a small group of village-owned wind turbines or rooftop solar panels.

Community Power wins EU Award for Community Owned Electricity Supplier

Gregg Allen, CEO Community Power said ‘We are delighted that Community Virtual Power Plant (cVPP) has won the Citizens’ Award as part of the EU Sustainable Energy Awards. It is very pleasing that the combined efforts of our Irish partners in this project has been recognised by Europe as a practical demonstration of how communities and citizens can engage in the electricity market at a local level and facilitate greater citizen participation in the energy transition.

The consortium of Irish Partners include; Community Power,  Templederry Windfarm, Tipperary Energy Agency (TEA), Friends of the Earth, Smart M Power along with our community partners, Energy Communities Tipperary Co-operative (ECTC), Aran Island Energy Co-op, Claremorris Energy Co-op and Tait House Social Enterprise Limerick all of whom have been actively promoting community energy initiatives in their local area’.

Householders and businesses are being urged to switch their electricity supplier to Community Power to further enable the work being carried out to assist communities and citizens to generate their own power. Anybody can switch via the website www.communitypower.ie or phone 067-56005.

Our Story – Templederry Renewable Energy Supply t/a Community Power

Community Power is Ireland’s first community owned electricity supplier.  We are a partnership of community energy groups working for a sustainable energy future for Ireland.  We grew out of Ireland’s first community owned wind farm, Templederry Wind Farm in Co Tipperary, and now are working with Irish communities to develop more renewable energy projects owned by people!

It took us almost 12 years to build our first, and only wind farm, and it has been operating from the foothills of Slieve Feilim since 2016. Our two turbines are generating about 15 GWh of electricity every year, which is about the amount of electricity used by the town of Nenagh.  Now we are buying renewably generated electricity from a handful of small and micro hydro and wind generators across Ireland and selling it to our customers to use in their homes, businesses, farms and community buildings.

Our mission is to support Ireland to run on clean, renewable power, but as if that’s not enough we also think people should also have a real stake in it, and own it for themselves.  We recognise that Ireland’s energy system is in crisis, with over 90% reliance on climate polluting fossil fuels, but many people are struggling to pay high energy bills in cold homes.  That’s why we are working to make sure the many benefits of generating renewable power is shared by the people and communities of Ireland.

We are grateful to be supported by some fantastic groups including the Tipperary Energy Agency, Friends of the Earth and Smart M Power.

We are excited to be working with excellent community energy organisations, Energy Community Tipperary Co-operative, Aran Islands Energy Co-operative, Tait House Community Enterprise, Claremorris and Western District Energy Co-operative. You can read more about each one here.

Community Power is a trading name of Templederry Renewable Energy Supply Ltd. The Registered Office of Templederry Renewable Energy Supply Ltd is Friary House, Friary Street, Nenagh, Co. Tipperary. Registered in the Republic of Ireland No. 477115.

This project is supported as part of the European Regional Development Fund through Interreg North-West Europe

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