Several Climate Action Networks and Third Sector Agencies have us running training workshops for community groups in their parts of Scotland, with more of a focus on rural and community asset transfers than we had before. For these groups, we’ve started suggest they make it possible to connect an emergency generator to the building during power cuts.
Community premises are a key part of Scotland’s resilience planning. Local community buildings may be expected to open, for instance, to provide accommodation to those stuck on the roads because of snow, or to provide hot drinks and meals to householders suffering from power outages. I’m told there’s no financial support for doing this, but many groups decide they can afford to support their local communities in this way anyway. Unfortunately, these needs arise when the building itself might not have power.
Storm Éowyn has brought this into sharp focus for many of our groups, but they aren’t always aware that it is illegal to just run a cable from outside through a window. There has to be a safe electrical connection that’s wired into the building’s electrics instead. It’s good to get this in place when other electrical work is being done or as part of a major retrofit. Groups don’t necessarily need to have a generator themselves – during our Helensburgh workshop, one of the participants described how they have an arrangement to borrow one when they need it.
Our programme, which helps community groups think about how to avoid wasting energy in their buildings, has a card game that covers many different actions they might take. We now include adding a generator connection point as an example of how to use our wildcard. Although this isn’t about energy efficiency, it does fit the overall focus of the programme – making sure the building fits the community’s needs and while it does that, uses energy wisely.
Image credit: Jakob Barfod, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported and sourced from Wikimedia Commons,