Isles of Scilly

Smart Islands is a programme of interconnected projects aiming to support the community on the Isles of Scilly towards a low-carbon future through sustainable energy, water, sewage and waste management. The overall ambitions of Smart Islands include a 20% reduction in energy bills by 2020, new energy efficient homes and smart businesses; 40% renewable energy production by 2025; 40% of electric vehicles by 2025.

 

The Council of the Isles of Scilly (IoS) commissioned a technical survey to evaluate the energy infrastructure and propose practical solutions to increasing renewables and making the IoS more resilient. This study contract was awarded to Hitachi Europe Ltd with Challoch Energy supporting and undertaking the Energy Infrastructure Plan. Two major framing assumptions were made for the work. Firstly, there is no expectation that IoS energy demands will not dramatically increase or decrease. Secondly, it will not be possible to net export (backfeed) electricity from the IoS to Cornwall some of the time. A mix of PV, energy efficiency, heat pumps, electric vehicles and either wind or tidal was proposed.

Subsequently, Smart Energy Islands is being run by Hitachi and will deliver a ‘smart grid’ to manage the island’s energy demand and supply as well as to improve efficiency of homes and businesses. Challoch Energy has been involved since the beginning of this project on a number of levels.

Working closely with the Council of the Isles of Scilly, Challoch Energy aided in the preparation of the bid for funding from the Growth Deal, focusing on 3 key projects to support the Smart Islands programme, specifically:

  • The implementation of a smart electric vehicles

  • The installation of Building Energy Management Systems (BEMS) and renewable energy solutions in Islands businesses and their accompanying in order to make them prosumers within the Island’s smart energy system;

  • The construction of Energy-from-Waste Anaerobic Digestion and gasifier plant, to generate controllable renewable energy generation for electricity and heat.

In addition, Challoch Energy has been involved in proposals to deliver energy efficiency support to 200 businesses on the Isles of Scilly as well as prioritising sites for renewable generation installation including looking at business cases for each of the sites.