Our Own Community Energy
Working with Sleat Community Trust, we managed to persuade Scottish Water to take the reservoir out of the auction to allow us time to put in a Registration of Interest in Land under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003.
Many months of hard work later, we had succeeded in jumping through all of the hoops required of a community using the legislation and bought the reservoir in October 2010 with funding from Awards for All. HIE covered our legal costs.
During this process, we commissioned a feasibility study into the hydro potential of the reservoir, with funding from Community Energy Scotland. Click here for the Hydro Feasibility Study, which was undertaken by RD Energy Solutions.
We have also written an interim Biodiversity and Cultural Management Plan for the reservoir.
In April 2011 we successfully secured funding from the Climate Challenge Fund to conduct a detailed Design to Planning Study. Synergie Scotland undertook this work on our behalf.
Renewed energy and interest in this project in 2017 resulted in the Proterra Report.
It remains one of our hopes for the future to develop a hydro scheme, allowing us to power the community building with electricity generated by the community-owned reservoir. We also feel that An Crùbh and the hydro scheme could be used as a powerful educational tool, raising awareness about climate change, carbon emissions and the need to develop more sustainable lifestyles – both as individuals and as communities.
