Grange solar project cuts bills by €1,000 and inspires schemes across Cork

Residents of Grange recently joined forces to install solar panels and make substantial savings on their electricity bills — and they’re now helping other communities across the city to follow suit.

More than a third of the homes in Newtown Court, a 74‑house estate built in 1975, have installed solar panels, with households saving around €1,000 a year on electricity.

Oliver Deasy, who serves as projects co-ordinator for the Sustainable Energy Community (SEC) committee, told The Echo that he was initially looking into retrofitting just his own house. However, his research made him realise the savings that could be made when communities worked together.

“I’d been working overseas for 40 years. When I returned here I found that the house needed a deep retrofit, and I got in touch with one of the one-stop-shops to do an assessment of the house. The quotation came in around €70,000, with a grant the net cost to me would be between €45,000 and €50,000.” 

Mr Deasy started looking into other types of grants through SEAI and came across the idea of Sustainable Energy Communities, of which around 1,000 were established in Ireland last year.

Electricity, heating, and transport were the three main costs to households. 

He decided to start with electricity, specifically solar panels.

He looked into business models for solar panels and found they were “not very conducive to efficiency — I thought it was a little bit fragmented, solar installers were one day in Clonakilty, the next day in Macroom, the next day in Youghal, so a considerable amount of time was spent on travel and set up.” 

He approached the residents’ association in Newtown Court and they decided to look into the cost of a group solar scheme in the estate. 

Mr Deasy researched sourcing supplies elsewhere, as well as shipping and getting an installer who was approved by SEAI so they would qualify for the grant.

“This was in around October 2024. Having worked in South East Asia for some time, using my contacts there I found that it was about 50% cheaper if we ordered panels directly from China.” 

The residents set up a Sustainable Energy Community, as a subcommittee of their residents' association, with Finbarr Buckley serving as chairman and Siobhan Hayes as secretary and treasurer.

They put together a detailed proposal and created an expression of interest form. The cost per household would be around €2,000, they told neighbours, approximately 60% cheaper than the open market price, and the form took 30 minutes to fill out.

They got a high percentage of residents who were interested, 21 out of the 74 total homes. They tendered to local companies and selected Wizer Energy in Little Island, who took over managing the shipping from China and installed all the panels.

The estate was awarded a total grant funding equating to €51,250, which represented 55% of total costs, and the 25 households provided on average 45% of total costs.

Means of financing was enhanced when Elevate Credit Union Douglas Branch was willing to provide loan funding at favourable interest rates. For the duration of the project Elevate Credit Union became the account holder for Newton Court SEC for collection of funds and payment of invoices.

In January 2025, their container left China, and in April it arrived in Cork.

“Installation work commenced and it was all finished by the last week of May, so it was very efficient. Economies of scale and competitive tendering means that installers can come to a designated area and set up and just move from house to house.” 

That was the first phase. The group put up a notice during the installation phase to inform people what they were doing, and neighbouring estates took notice. 

Fine Gael councillor for the area Shane O’Callaghan picked the idea up and helped the group organise community meetings with other estates, who set up their own schemes.

They are now in their seventh scheme, with 300 houses in Cork South Central set to have solar panels this month. These schemes source solar panels from the Irish companies that install them, but the net savings per household is still about €3,000 in installation costs, plus €1,000 per year on electricity.

“The net benefit to the 300 houses is about €1.2m. By my calculations, we have 42,000 houses in Cork South Central, if we move to 20% of them having solar panels by 2030, up from the current 6%, I estimate that the cost benefit to households would be around €840,000 per year, money put directly into the pockets of householders.” 

The majority of the estate are retirees with just one or two people in the house, and their electricity from June to December last year was completely free. 

Mr Deasy has an app on his phone which showed that on one sunny day, his solar panels provided 14.1 kilowatt hours of electricity.

He said: 

“The return on investment means that after 20 months, the residents will have free electricity for the next 20 years.” 

The group is working on other sustainability projects; setting up a community garden with trees, flowers, and herbs, and creating an energy masterplan for the estate, looking at grants for new windows and doors or attic installation through the same economies-of-scale model.

The third scheme they are working on is surrounding electric vehicles (EVs). Around 60 of the 74 houses do not have off-street parking, but the group is working with the council to put in a gully system under the footpaths to allow them to put in EV charging at kerbside.

Two other residents of the estate joined the =committee to manage the garden and the EV charging plans, as they had experience in these areas from their careers.

Mr Deasy said: “The modus operandi for these projects is based on learning, planning, and doing.

“Of the thousand SECs around the country, they spend a lot of time on the learning and planning, but not much focus on the doing. I come from a background of action-centred learning, so we were learning, planning, and doing at the same time, and that’s why we were so successful.” 

The group has branched out to the northside and outside the city, holding recent presentations in Mayfield and Kinsale.

Green party councillor Oliver Moran, who helped organise the Mayfield meeting, told The Echo: “There's even stronger interest now after the meeting. A definite outcome is that I will next organise a follow-up meeting to establish an energy community on the northside of the city.

“There are some exciting ideas already about the form that should take, unique to the northside. In particular, linking in with existing community organisations that can add unique value.

“That meeting should be in the next short number of weeks to maintain the momentum that has people inspired.”