North Kensington Community Energy was born in 2018, with the aim of making Kensington & Chelsea a greener and fairer borough by installing community-owned solar panels.
In March 2019, we installed 86kWp of solar panels, enough to power 30 London homes. We installed the panels on Avondale Park Primary School, Thomas Jones Primary School and the Dalgarno Community Centre, with the support of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council and the Mayor of London. That year, we raised £83,000 from the community to purchase and install the panels. We’re happy to say they are all working well and generating clean electricity sold at a discounted rate to the sites.
As well as installing panels we’ve hosted Repowering’s Youth Training Programme in 2018 and held the borough’s first Greener Living Day in 2020. We’ve hosted assemblies at local primary schools, taught people how to build solar panels and taken part in the Clean Air Day.
We’re proud to say our work has been recognised nationwide. We were awarded the Community Renewable Energy Project Award in 2019 and the Climate Coalition’s Inspirational Community Project award in 2020.
The project on the Westway Sports Centre is our fourth solar array, second community share offer and will increase the NKCE Community Fund to a massive £70,000!