MorVolts Update - September 2024

With thanks to the MorVolts Chair, Nick Tordoff, for writing the following update:

After all the drama of last winter’s storms and collapsed timber roads, things have been moving along reasonably smoothly.

The turbine and generator have a number of safety features that will keep the turbine and generator safe if there are problems with the wider power grid. The system is designed to stop generating and, if necessary, stop the turbine if there are power surges or connection problems. These are designed so that, if possible, the system will either restart automatically or can be restarted remotely. However, if the problem on the grid is severe there is a physical breaker switch will trip and break the connection to the grid. This requires someone to drive up to the powerhouse at Barr and physically reset the switch. This is supposed to be an exceptional case. One of the bugbears from the beginning of operations has been the number of times that problems on the SSE power grid have caused these trips. Glen Hydro arranged some specialist monitoring kit to find out what is causing these problems. Fortunately, or unfortunately, we had quite a few events and this has allowed Glen Hydro to arrange some tweaks to the system which seems to have enabled the system to handle more of these problems without needing to travel out to Barr.

The MCDC Board has asked the Directors of MorVolts to lead the MCDC work on renewable energy and carbon reduction in support of the Live, Life, Morvern Local Plan. We have now agreed a remit for that work and will be focussing on

- Finding ways for the community to benefit directly from the power we generate

- Looking for opportunities for developing more renewable energy both through MCDC directly but also through working with other community groups

- Looking at where we can reduce the communities carbon footprint through carbon reduction initiatives

In financial terms the scheme is doing well. Our costs have gone up due to inflation and due to part of our debt being linked to Bank of England base rates. This has been balanced by the Feed in Tariff rising at the same rate as inflation and the very good prices we got when we signed the Power Purchase Agreement two years ago. The overall effect of that is that we have been able to transfer £250,000 to MCDC in the first months of this year with approximately an additional £200,000 later in the year.

As always our monthly data report prepared by Glen Hydro, our consulting engineers, can be found here on the MCDC renewables page of Morvern.org.