We’re about to launch a new bond offer, this will enable us to repay some of our construction loans and will mean we can give more money to help support more community energy projects. The bonds will offer fixed 4% interest and will launch later this week. What out for further announcements.
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Want to help tackle climate change, support communities in Wales and invest ethically? Then this is your opportunity!
We are offering people and schools in Wales the chance to become a part owner of a community energy scheme, YnNi Teg and win up to £250 of shares by entering our ‘Renewable Energy in Wales’ photograph competition. The overall winner will receive £250 of shares and 11 Runners up will win £100 of shares for themselves or their school if they are under 16.
You don’t have to submit a photo or win the competition to become a member, anyone can invest in and become a member of YnNi Teg for as little as £100. Anyone who invests will become an equal member of our community benefit society and we are projecting a 5% annual return on shares for our members. For more information please have a look at our Share offer document and join the movement for cleaner, greener, community owned energy.
We will be looking for photos which are of projects in Wales, and which match one (or more) of the following three themes:
There will be 3 age categories which are 16 and over, 12-15 and 11 and under.
Please note that the grand prize of £250 will only be awarded to photos which fall under the theme ‘Community Energy Project’ as we are keen to promote community owned projects in Wales.
Not sure where the nearest Community Energy Project is to you? Take a look at the Community Energy Wales Members map!
Residents can own a stake in the Welsh community wind turbine which supplies Bristol Energy’s green customers.
YnNi Teg has been supplying customers of council-owned Bristol Energy with clean, green electricity from our 900kW wind turbine since last summer. Now Bristol residents are being invited to buy shares in the project too.
Despite the government withdrawing support for onshore wind, community-owned wind still offers a great investment opportunity. YnNi Teg is one of the last UK onshore wind projects to be underpinned by the Feed-in Tariff.
A team from Bristol Energy recently went to see for themselves how profits from buying the energy are helping support the surrounding Carmarthenshire community. They joined the pupils from nearby Meidrim primary school, a tiny school with only 22 pupils, on a visit to see the wind turbine in action.
As 11-year-old Meidrim pupil Leo said: “Instead of polluting the air and causing global warming, renewable energy can help the planet. It will be easier for animals, plants and people to live on.”
As well as working with local schools, surplus revenues will go to Community Energy Wales, a Social Enterprise that helps and supports community groups across Wales to get community owned renewable energy projects off the ground.
Jeremy Thorp, Director, YnNi Teg, said: “The wind power we’re generating here in Wales is already helping to supply Bristol Energy customers with clean electricity; Bristolians can also support community energy projects like ours directly by investing in our share offer and benefit from a triple-bottom-line return: making a difference to climate change, a fair average annual return of 5% and generating additional funds to support similar future community energy projects.”
Simon Proctor, Origination Manager, Bristol Energy, said: “Bristol Energy was set up to reinvest profits back into the local community, so we are very proud to be working with community energy projects like YnNi Teg, who are using their profits to set up a community energy fund, as well as supporting community energy projects across Wales.
“Recently some of the team were invited to get involved in some of the work that YnNi Teg are doing with the local school. We loved visiting and seeing the positive impact the project is having on the local community first-hand.”
The turbine is generating enough renewable electricity to power the equivalent of 650 typical homes, and, thanks to the windy weather, it has been generating well above its forecast levels.
To download a share offer document please click here.
As a special incentive, all applications for shares in Ynni Teg received before 8 July 2018 will receive a unique item of ethical, sustainable merchandise, a pair of YnNi Teg pants/ knickers sourced from Ethical Consumer best buy supplier Greenfibres.com.
Ethical Consumer recently highlighted the problems associated with the production of clothing, highlighting issues such as conditions for workers, pesticide use, and pollution. Underwear is a particular problem as it is the one type of clothing that you need to buy new, whereas you can get outerwear from charity shops etc. YnNi Teg have so far refrained from producing merchandise, because usually merchandise is one of the worst culprits for creating unwanted throw-away trash, but this Ethical Consumer article gave us the idea for some unique ethical and sustainable merchandise. We have therefore teamed up with Ethical Consumer best buy supplier Greenfibres to produce YnNi Teg “Powered by Wind” pants.
As a special incentive, all applications received before the end of April will be eligible for a free pair of YnNi Teg pants/knickers. We are still obtaining supplies and arranging the printing, but all applications from today will be eligible (we will contact you to find out your requirements). Ladies and gents versions available.
You will also shortly be able to buy additional pairs from our website ynniteg.cymru.
There are many reasons to support YnNi Teg and become a member, and one of our favourite reasons is the help our surplus funds are able to provide to other organisations within sight of our turbine.
It’s now a little over three months since we launched our share offer, and in that time we’ve had applications from three different groups for a grant from our community fund. These organisations were all successful in their applications and will be starting work on their respective projects in the coming weeks.
Here’s a little information about each of the applications we’ve approved.
Ysgol Meidrim is a tiny primary school in Carmarthenshire with only 20 pupils. The school approached YnNi Teg for a grant to help build an outdoor learning area for its Foundation Phase class and an enclosure for this ‘outdoor classroom’, to help build a greenhouse, and to develop pupils’ physical skills outdoors.
The school was built over a hundred years ago and only has four classrooms, three of which are indoors and one outdoors. The school plans to use the grant received from YnNi Teg to build a further outdoor classroom, with direct access from the Foundation Phase classroom, for Foundation Phase pupils. This enclosed area will provide a safe outdoor environment for the children to study and play.
The school also requested help to buy the materials to build a frame for a greenhouse. The children will then build the greenhouse using recycled materials, and grow plants and vegetables which will be sold to parents and supporters of the school to help develop the children’s entrepreneurial skills.
The final part of the project will see a playground being built on the school grounds, with climbing equipment which will help to develop the children’s physical, academic, social and problem-solving skills.
The Llanwinio Community Association (LCA) represents a number of community groups in the Llanwinio parish, including the Women’s Institute, Merched y Wawr, the Indoor Bowls Club and the Young Farmers Club.
LCA’s application is for funds to carry out repairs to Llanwinio Hall, a community resource which the group owns having successfully raised funds locally to buy the building when it was put up for sale by the local parish church group in 2017.
Repairs to the hall, which is used by many different community groups for a variety of events, will include replacing the kitchen roof and repairing and redecorating where roof leaks have caused damage inside the building. New disabled toilet facilities will be built, the kitchen facilities will be extended to create a drop in cafe/shop, new storage and office facilities will be built, and broadband will be installed for the use of the office and the community.
The church hall at Meidrim is a community asset with performance and audience space, a kitchen and toilet facilities.
The building’s heating and electrical systems are antiquated and in urgent need of upgrade, which will involve rewiring, a new distribution board, new panel heaters and thermostat, and new lighting.
Carrying out this work will help to ensure the building meets health and safety regulations and can continue to be a valuable community resource.
If you’d like to know more about the YnNi Teg Community Fund, please click here.
Please can you help us with some market research? We are planning a new marketing exercise for Ynni Teg Cyf – a welsh community energy society that has just built a 900kW wind turbine.
We are currently selling shares in the society, and are planning a new marketing idea to promote the share offer. This is to produce something fairly unique – some ethically produced merchandise that you actually need and will use.
A recent article in Ethical Consumer (an essential read for everyone) discussed underwear, something everyone needs to buy, and most of which involves excessive use of pesticides, exploitative labour, habitat destruction and water pollution. We intend to produce branded pants/knickers (ladies and mens), sourced from one of the suppliers recommended by Ethical Consumer that operates best industry practice. We will give some away with share applications, and offer them for sale too. (Will they become collectors items and swap hands for vast sums on eBay?!)
Because Ynni Teg operates a wind turbine, there is scope for some corny puns. Our question to you is as follows. Would you wear underwear printed with our logo and a wind related message along the lines below:
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Which do you prefer of these possible strap lines: (or please suggest better ones. If we use your suggested strap line we will give you a free pair of pants)
I love wind power
Powered by wind
I co-own a 900kW wind generator
900kW of sustainable wind power
And please do remember that the share offer is open. Please do apply via our website ynniteg.cymru (if you make an application now, you will be able to claim for your free pair of pants if our market research convinces us to go ahead).
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We’re delighted to announce that YnNi Teg has won an award at Cynnal Cymru’s national Sustain Wales Awards 2017.
In a ceremony held at the Senedd in Cardiff Bay on 30th November, YnNi Teg was presented with the award for Sustainable Social Enterprise.
The awards ceremony, which was hosted by actor Rhodri Thomas, celebrated the efforts of organisations and individuals from around Wales who are carrying out the amazing work of helping to achieve Cynnal Cymru’s mission of making Wales a sustainable nation.
There were 27 finalists in total, and the full list of winners is as follows:
Sustainable Business of the Year – GriffithsIt’s a real honour to receive such a prestigious award so soon after launching YnNi Teg, and we’d like to thank everybody who took the time to vote for us.
Did you know that buying YnNi Teg shares can help you offset your electricity carbon footprint?
For every £1 you put into shares in our YnNi Teg turbine, we’ll generate just over 1 kWh of zero carbon electricity per year. Our total construction costs were just under two million pounds, and we expect to generate just over two million kWh per year.
So, if you buy £1000 of shares, that’s the equivalent of owning your own wind turbine producing 1000 kWh per year. That’s about 38,000 cups of tea, or about 1,800 miles in an electric car.
The national average for electricity use is about 3,300 kWh per home per year, but if you’re reading this you probably use electricity more economically than the national average. Depending on your household consumption, 1000 shares could cancel out half of the carbon from the electricity you use at home.
Have a look at your electricity bill and find out what your annual consumption is. If you buy that many shares in YnNi Teg, you’ve offset your electricity carbon footprint.
We know carbon offsetting is controversial, but that’s because often there is no guarantee that the carbon savings will happen. But with YnNi Teg, you can see exactly what your money is doing and will do for the next 20 years.
What’s more, you should get an average return of 5% on your shares – so for once, taking the ethical option is also the sound financial one!
The turbine has now been commissioned for four months, and so far availability and output are showing good promise. Data from these first four months as follows:
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| month | kWh | availability | Performance relative to P50 target | Monthly average wind speed relative to 10 year average (UK national data) |
| Aug-17 | 78,122 | 92.6% | 49% | 102% |
| Sep-17 | 162,134 | 98.3% | 94% | 98% |
| Oct-17 | 193,137 | 98.6% | 104% | 113% |
| Nov-17 | 171,285 | 99.8% | 86% |
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This data indicates that the turbine has got off to a good start, the “teething” period was very short with very little availability dropped even in August, the commissioning month (the turbine commissioned on 2nd August). This even includes the period immediately following the official commissioning date during which EWT carried out various commissioning tests.
In other news, we won the award for best Sustainable Social Enterprise at the Cynnal Cymru awards on 30th November. Rob attended the event in the Senedd in Cardiff and collected our award for us.
Jeremy Thorp, accompanied by Wyn Roberts, our marketing agent, plus camera crew, visited the primary school in Meidrim on November 21st. The 11 children in the upper class were given a brief lesson about the turbine and then taken up to the site. In the afternoon Jeremy and Wyn helped the children to build a couple of model turbines using a construction kit. The responses from the children (and the teachers) was very positive.
We have had five applications to our request for interest in the initial £15,000 community fund that we are ready to distribute in the local community. The board have engaged with the community council in Meidrim and agreed to determine how to distribute this fund via a joint committee including Meidrim council members and YnNi Teg board members. We are hoping to determine this very soon so that we can distribute these funds in the community very shortly.
We have just included an extra option for people wishing to buy shares – we have just made it possible for someone to purchase shares as a gift for someone else – the ideal ethical gift. There is a separate link on the website for this, and the recipient gets an attractive gift token that they can use to register their membership and shares. We will be promoting this option in our various marketing channels on the run up to Christmas.
The share total stands at £164,750, please continue to tell your friends and family about the share offer. If you use Facebook or Twitter, please do promote and share our Tweets and Facebook posts.
If you’ve already invested in YnNi Teg, we’re extremely grateful – but could you help us out even further by helping to promote the work we’re doing?
We need to raise £1.8m to cover the costs of our beautiful turbine, which means we need to reach a lot of potential investors. If you’re on Twitter or Facebook you can of course share our posts with your own followers, and that’s an excellent way to help spread the word so we very much encourage it!
But we’d also like to create some content that we can post on our own social media accounts, and that’s where you can really help!
You could, for example, send us a photograph of yourself with a couple of sentences explaining why you invested.
Even better, you could film a short (say 20-30 seconds) video of yourself talking about your decision to invest.
You don’t need to be an expert cinematographer to make a video, nor do you need any specialist equipment; a quick video on your smartphone is all it takes, and you can send it to us by email.
If you don’t have a smartphone, or aren’t confident filming yourself, we could even arrange to film you. We’re trying to make it as easy, and un-scary, as possible for our investors to help; as you’ll appreciate, it’s really important that we tell the world about YnNi Teg, so we’re happy to make it as easy as possible for our investors and members to get involved.
If you’re happy to be a ‘talking head’ for YnNi Teg, please email info@ynniteg.cymru and we’ll get the ball rolling.
