Major Changes to the Electrical System at Your Property
These are changes that generate (or have the potential to generate) electricity or add significant electrical load to the Park Ecovillage distribution network. If you plan to make changes to your property check here to find out what you need to do.
The Role of Findhorn Wind Park
Findhorn Wind Park is a generator of renewable electricity and a wholesaler that sells electricity to two main customers:
- New Findhorn Directions Ltd, who then retail the electricity to individual customers at the Park Ecovillage, both residential and commercial.
- A national supplier that purchases our electricity when we export electricity to the national grid because we are generating more than the Park Ecovillage is using.
We also contract with a national supplier that provides electricity from the national grid when our production is lower than on-site demand.
Information on our turbines and their performance is available here and in the blog posts.
Contracts
Since January 2022, our agreement with NFD Ltd. states that we sell electricity to them at the price we pay for electricity supplied to us us from the grid, plus the costs entailed in transforming the power to the low voltage supply used by NFD. Regulations prevent NFD from marking up the price of electricity it sells. NFD are required to use a consistent and justifiable formula to divide the electricity charges made by FWP between its customers.
Our contracts with grid suppliers come up once every year or two, usually in October. These contracts are quite unlike domestic supply contracts and the costs/benefits can vary significantly from day-to-day depending on prevailing market conditions.
In recent years, customers have sought to influence the nature of our main grid supplier, which is entirely reasonable. However, any arrangement that involves a contract based on anything other than ‘best price’ would need to be agreed with NFD Ltd. in advance.
NFD itself does not contract to outside energy suppliers such as SSE. NFD purchases electricity solely from the Findhorn Wind Park based on a commitment to the financial sustainability of our community and in buying renewable, locally produced electricity.
Price to Consumers
Findhorn Wind Park invested in the wind turbines at Findhorn in order to provide increased renewable electricity to Park consumers at a price matching ‘standard electricity’. See our recent posts on electricity prices and the cost of wind energy.
The total price residents pay includes both the cost of electricity NFD buys from FWP and a charge for the distribution and maintenance of the Park’s electric infrastructure. The national grid network stops at the Park’s grid supply point near the Stop Worrying plaza and in order to get a supply from there to each property NFD provides the necessary infrastructure. This is a very costly business and is reflected in the distribution charges on your NFD bills.
Further information is available from NFD’s website.
Privacy Policy
You can find our privacy policy here.