GMCR

Hello Today is a special day as we officially open our 2025 Share Offer. In this share offer, our fifth to date, we are seeking £250,000 to fund solar arrays on four sites in Salford, Trafford and Manchester.  Building on the successful track record of our project over the past…

Local social enterprise, Greater Manchester Community Renewables (GMCR), has launched a new share offer to fund solar arrays on two special schools in Salford, a primary school in Manchester and a leisure centre in Trafford. If successful, this will result in the installation of over 600 solar panels. In the…

Wishing you a very happy World Environment Day! We have some exciting news to share… New share offer coming soon We’re thrilled to announce that we will be opening a new share offer later this month!  This round of investment could see us install 350 kWp of solar arrays on…

Hello, we hope you are well in these mid winter months. Spring bulbs are starting to bud and the days are getting longer (leaving the Dunkleflaute behind for a while!). Here’s a summary of what we’ve been up to over the last few months and what to look out for…

You may have heard the term Dunkelflaute in the media. It is a German word used to describe a prolonged period of time with little wind and sunshine (translated as “dull weather”). Days with cloudy skies with low wind can be serious for an energy system heavily reliant on wind…

GMCR currently offers schools and community centres hosting our panels clean electricity at a discounted rate compared to their main supplier. When the solar array is generating, the school has first call on the solar electricity, but if they don’t need electricity at that moment, the electricity is exported and…

In 2024, GMCR applied for a grant from the Government’s Community Energy Fund in collaboration with Middleton Community Power to explore the Energy Local model. Who are Middleton Community Power? Middleton Community Power (MCP) is the energy group within Middleton Co-operating, a community wealth building initiative to help keep more…

At the recent Labour party conference, our director Ali Abbas had the opportunity to address the delegates about the support we want to see from the government. You can find a copy of his speech below. My name is Ali, and in 2015 I helped to found Greater Manchester Community…

In this blog we will go over some of the big questions surrounding Community Energy by looking at the GMCR model. Perfect for anyone starting out or interested in learning more about it. What is “community energy”? Simply, a group of people (community) coming together to manage and run a…

When Greater Manchester Community Renewables (GMCR) was formed, we chose to start out with rooftop solar.  We live in a large urban area, so there were many more opportunities for rooftop solar than ground mounted solar or wind, and the technology was more straightforward to deliver than micro-hydro power. When…

Wellington School celebration event On Thursday 18th April, Wellington School hosted an event to celebrate the successful installation of our new 388 kWp solar array. The new “rooftop powerstation” was made possible by GMCR and of course the wonderful community who have invested over £350,000 to make the project a…

We hope you’re keeping well, have had a good start to the year, and are starting to enjoy the slightly longer and lighter days. We have some bits to update you on since our last newsletter. Our solar panels and our volunteers have still been working away during the colder…