December Newsletter

Happy Christmas and best wishes for the New Year to all our members and bondholders.

Energy Generation As we approach a wet mid-winter, it’s a good time to remember that we had another sunny summer which our solar arrays made the most of. Following a strong spring quarter, irradiance levels continued to surpass long-term projections by 5.7% across the July – September quarter. This led to generation across the HECE’s solar arrays being 2.8% above the long-term average projections. Electricity prices crashed in early 2020 due to the Corona crisis and the oil and gas market slump in late 2019. Whilst two of our three solar farms benefit from a minimum export price, the third does not. Prices had recovered in September and we were able to enter into a 12-month price fix at a good rate.

Bondholder and Shareholder Payments

Bondholder interest was paid at 5% in May and shareholder interest at 6% in July, meeting our intended interest payments in full for the second year. Following the successful refinance in 2019 we are planning to launch a further community share or bond offer. This has been delayed due to the Corona virus crisis and will launch in 2021.

AGM

Our online AGM in June worked well. If you were not able to attend you can find the presentation and minutes on our website.

Local News

2020 has been a challenging year for many of us. Heart of England continues to support local energy charity Act on Energy to help local households struggling with fuel poverty. We have provided funding to Citizens Advice South Warwickshire to help their vital support services to those hit hard by the Corona virus crisis and recession. We have made another donation to Solar Aid and, in the build up to Christmas, we made a donation to Stratford Upon Avon Foodbank towards Christmas hampers including Christmas puddings/cakes, tinned potatoes and personal hygiene products. The donation helped the Foodbank to complete 40 hampers.

Queries relating to your share or bondholding

Ethex Registry are the key point of contact in relation to any matters of member shareholdings and bondholdings. Ethex store your share and bond certificates in a digital format and you are able to access your records online and print out certificates at any time via the Ethex Registry Portal - https://registry.ethex.org.uk/ . Or if you have any questions at all about your holdings, please don’t hesitate to contact the team at Ethex for help either by email at registry@ethex.org.uk or by phone on 01865 403304. If you have any queries about your shares or need to change your email or bank details please contact our share registrar Ethex as above.

We hope you have a happy winter break and we look forward to life starting to become more normal in 2021!

Best wishes

John Stott on behalf of the HECE board