Whittlesey Manor Concerns
At a meeting of the Whittlesey Town Council (20th October 2022), Cllr Boden was challenged by the Mayor to justify why he had withdrawn a time sensitive agenda item re spending £455,000 within the parish. Cllr Boden took almost an hour to justify his actions including dire warnings (unfounded) about the viability of the Manor Leisure Centre and the potential pool closure on the basis of energy costs rising.
A ’shopping list’ had been created, including £110,000 for additional PV on the swimming pool building. I have views on the rest of his shambolic rush to obtain funds for projects that were not put to WTC Councillors for consideration. However, it is the additional solar panels that I wish to highlight.
Photovoltaic (PV) panels are used to produce electricity directly from sunlight. The energy generated can be converted from Direct Current (D.C.) to Alternating Current (A.C. through an inverter. The resulting electricity is just like the power everyone takes from the National Grid and can be used for any purpose, such as heating, lighting, TV, Computing, tools and appliances.
When the PV generation does all that and is still being generated more than demand. The surplus is usually fed back to the ‘Grid’ at a substantially lower price than a customer would buy energy. Some surplus is gifted to the Grid for nothing but is assured that when the flow is from the grid to a customer, full charges apply.
Back to the Manor: In 2017, Fenland District Council spent £236,700 changing lights to energy-efficient fittings, new boiler controls (and I understand a heat pump was included) plus the installation of 120 PV panels on areas of the pool building facing South. The publicity provided by the Head of Leisure Services is the same officer that Cllr Boden asked to assemble the ‘shopping list’, therefore this officer was aware that these improvements had been made five years previously. In 2017 the annual saving by PV panels was estimated at £21,000 per year PLUS £3,000 credit from the Feed In tariff from the transfer of surplus generation – fast forward to current prices, and the savings should be much higher now.
We all know that electricity cannot be stored other than in a battery (like an electric car, for example). Batteries were available in 2017, but none were installed, to my knowledge. Cllr Boden confused the PV panels with Thermal panels, a very different technology. His passing comment was that he doubted hot water heated in summer could be used in Winter. This is a typical tactic – sounding well-informed but actually misleading.
The shopping list of £110,000 budget entry was for about another 100 panels (some would not be facing in the optimum direction) and without battery storage which is very much cheaper in 2022, there would be more energy gifted to the Grid.
I am a great fan of PV panels, and I have an array on my home and battery capacity that supplies us when the sun goes down. The Manor wants to provide modern facilities such as floodlit training areas and a gym where some equipment is not switched on to reduce energy consumption. However, there are no panels on the main building from where floodlights and the gym can be supplied. The profitable evening sessions could benefit from energy harvested during the day.
I wonder why the officer responsible for the excellent work in 2017 appeared to forget that the swimming pool has been modernised and that the issues have moved from immediate use to energy planning.
Could it be that the real shopping list will eventually include a report that will cost £250k to look into a Southern Relief Road to attract even more HGVs into the Fens when sustainable energy and pollution concerns uncover other ways of solving modern problems? After all, fears that the Kings Dyke crossing would create havoc on the A605 appear unfounded. As a sportsman, I consider that the members of public speaking at the WTC meeting about their concerns for the ongoing support of their sports and recreational activities were well made.
