West Auckland Memorial Community Association received a grant of £19,887 to install solar panels and battery storage to the memorial hall.

 The Memorial Hall is now over 100 years old but has been transformed into a modern day resilience centre with a renewable energy system which is enabling the hall to be a community hub during emergency events. The hall is now also reducing their overall reliance on the grid, enabling cost savings to be reinvested into the services offered to the local community.

With the memorial hall now offering community services 7 days per week including physical activity sessions, school holiday activities for young people and their popular ‘Welcome Spaces’ initiative which offers a free home cooked two course meal per week for members of the community who are social isolated or living alone. The initiative sees 20-40 people through the door each week with many of them also engaging with other services offered by the Memorial Hall.

The solar panels installation has seen a total of 24 panels added to their newly refurbished roof and a battery storage system added to enable energy to be stored for use during emergency events including power outages. The hall will remain open with services uninterrupted meaning that members of the community continue to have a safe, welcoming and reliable facility to use when they need it most.

Sharon Proud a trustee for the West Auckland Memorial Community Association is proud of the work and community cohesion they have created via the Memorial Hall and is looking forward to the future with the additional benefit of the solar panel installation

‘As a committee we had been discussing the benefits of solar panels for a long time and knew this was something we wanted to pursue. Thank you to the grant from the Northern Powergrid Foundation we have been able to make this a reality and are already seeing the benefits of having the system installed’  

The Foundation’s Operations Manager; Jacqueline Critchley recently visited the Memorial Hall and was impressed by the range of community services on offer and the time invested by dedicated volunteers;

‘The committee and additional volunteers have worked incredibly hard to ensure this building can remain a safe and welcoming environment for all areas of the local community. They have completed a range of upgrades thanks to successful funding bids which take time to source and complete. The addition of the solar panels ensures that the building has a modern twist keeping it sustainable and reliable for years to come’