This year’s AGM took place at Victoria Hall (Norfolk Street, Sheffield) on the 2nd February 2026, and was well attended.
Sheffield Renewables has now generated 1.6 million kWh of green electricity, equivalent to powering 590 homes for a year or 50 – 60 homes / year over the past 10 years.
Our schemes are operating well. The strong solar irradiance for 2025 compensated for an inverter failure at HGDT Campus (fixed) and only impacted its output by 4% compared to 2024. Analysing our historical solar generation data from our five schemes this year has shown the robustness and reliability of solar PV technology in the UK over the past 12 years and the value in leveraging such data to model more accurately new schemes in a post-FiT era.
The projects ran during 2024-2025 were presented:
• Supporting local NHS GP practices to NetZero 2050 (funded by Northern Powergrid Foundation)
• Our Cow Molly (funded by North East and Yorkshire Net Zero Hub)
as well as current and up-coming projects.
As a community energy group, our organisation has also proven to be financially viable and strong, repaying over £163,000 to our shareholding members in capital and interest. Our renewable energy schemes have allowed our partners to save over £90,000 in electricity costs over the past ten years (currently £2000-£7000/year). Our activities have also contributed over £31,000 in community benefit funding.
This year, our members agreed to distribute funding to:
– Heeley City Farm to help the farm renew its solar PV installation.
– Sheffield Energy Hub to help with the cost of a video projector and window displays.
This year, our international donation will go again to the tree planting activity of the Mbedza charity in Malawi.
While we are actively looking for new directors to supplement our Board, we thanked Erin Lachs, our former Chair, for his service and expertise over the past few years.
Message from Sheffield Energy Hub
The Sheffield Energy Hub is a collaborative and community-driven project to bring together energy efficiency, decarbonisation and warm homes projects, information and services in an accessible, city centre space, connecting people with relevant support and information. The project is supported by Sheffield City Council who have provided a space on a meanwhile licence but is without core funding.
Our primary intention is to buy a projector suitable for showing films with your donation, but as you have been so generous we will put the remainder to the design costs for the window display. This has been a great success, its increased our visitor numbers by 75% or so on our previous premises and has drawn considerable public praise. Thank you for your contribution to our work.
We’ve hit the ground running and hosted meetings of both the Retrofit Skills Taskforce and Seeing is Believing in our first week. In the second week we opened the doors to the SYMCA/Yorkshire Water ‘Connected by Water’ initiative and they provided two days of children’s activities in our premises – which also helped with our footfall.