The Great Village Green Crusade

Britain produces very little of its own power.

-NEWS BROADCAST:

-Old power stations are becoming obsolete far faster than new capacity is being built.

We're going to find ourselves in real problems about how we

ensure that we have energy security for the future.

It's a fire at a coal-powered fire station.

We rely on imported coal, gas and oil to power the country.

Many experts believe the potential

for an energy crisis on our shores is huge.

..will significantly strengthen Russia's grip over Europe.

Can science help solve this problem?

One man thinks it can.

Renewable energy fan Robert Llewellyn.

Advances in science and engineering mean that, for the first time,

renewable technologies,

things like solar panels and wind turbines, are actually within reach

of ordinary people, people like you and me.

And I really think that these technologies can help solve

the energy crisis this country's facing.

But can Robert put what he preaches into practice?

He has a grand plan.

His dream is for the village he lives in to engage with the global green

revolution and embrace renewable technology.

All the solar panels underneath the Mandalay Bay. Wow!

This is going to be a two-year mission.

Can he get his village onside?

We've thought of nuclear biosphere, we've thought of community fracking.

We've discussed all manner of things.

It's a big challenge.

So this isn't a hand-wringing,

crying about the polar bears project,

it's about practicalities.

We are facing an energy crisis in this country and I want to know what

we can do about it. We need to learn how we can create energy,

distribute energy, own energy and store energy.

And I think this village could be the perfect blueprint for the rest

of the nation, cos if we can do it in this village,

then it can be done anywhere.

Robert has to navigate delicate village politics...

I personally don't like the look of solar panels.

I'm the naysayer here.

..seek surprising inspirations...

The theory is fine but, in practice, whether or not it'll be acceptable

is another matter.

..and look again at a 200-year-old technology now back in fashion.

Here is a 20 megawatt battery array, which is really significant.

Think of this as The Archers meets The Inconvenient Truth.

-But if nothing happens, then, after all of this?

-We'll have to sell the house and move out.

We'll just leg it in the night,

otherwise there'll be a burning cross on the front lawn.

Robert Llewellyn is fanatical about engineering, and nothing excites him

more than the recent advances in renewable technology.

For the last three decades,

I've been playing a character called Kryten in a science fiction

television series called Red Dwarf.

Kryten is a mechanoid,

so I spend about two or three hours every morning being covered in rubber.

When I'm not doing that,

I've become increasingly fascinated by renewable energy technology.

It's a brilliant example of how advances in science can make

a genuine positive difference to the world.

I try to put my money where my mouth is, occasionally successfully,

so I've got solar panels on the roof of my office.

This is an electric car, this car was charged yesterday when it was sunny,

so we're currently driving along on pure solar energy, so, you know,

I'm doing my best.

For the past century,

Britain has relied on fossil fuels to power the nation.

Coal from mines across the country,

oil and gas from the North Sea.

But these domestic sources have increasingly been replaced by

cheaper fuels from overseas.

To safeguard our future electricity supply,

could British-produced renewable energy provide the solution?

Robert passionately thinks so.

You know, I can't help thinking that there must be something we can do,

the people of this country, to help alleviate that,

to produce our own power and to help keep the lights on, and I really

believe now that there is technology available that can genuinely help us

to do that.

Robert has a plan to see if this is possible.

It involves where he lives.

Temple Guiting is a Cotswolds village nestled in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

It's a village with a very long history.

The kind of place where change barely happens over thousands of years.

That's Temple Guiting down there in the valley.

People sometimes mispronounce it.

Sometimes they call it "Gweeting" or "Gitting", but Temple Guiting is how the locals say it, and

the reason it's called Guiting is because that means torrent,

so there's a river running right through the middle of the village,

and the village has been here over 1,000 years and that's why people

settled here, so they could tap into that power, and I'm hoping now we can tap into

that power to generate electricity for the benefit of the whole village -

that's the plan.

Where better for Robert to refine his plan than here at the village tearoom?

-Oh, thank you, Jo, brilliant.

-OK?

-Lovely, thank you very much.

So, this is Temple Guiting, and it is a village of 62 houses.

Got some little houses here, specially prepared.

And the plan is that we set up a system where we can generate the

electricity that we use in the village, but we generate it in the village.

The most important part of that is that it's owned by the community.

So we're not basically bringing in power from, you know,

a coal-burning power plant in North Yorkshire or a nuclear power plant

in France, we're actually making it here and also having control of it

here - that's a really important point.

So, using renewable technologies,

that is - energy generated by natural resources that are naturally replenished -

I want to put wind turbines on the hills,

water mills in the streams and sunlight-capturing solar panels in fields.

All turning these natural resources into electricity.

But we're not going off-grid. I mean, it's not about going off the grid,

it's about generating that power but also, because we're connected to the grid,

we can sell that electricity to the grid,

which then generates an income for people in the village as well,

which we can use for community benefit - I think that's the correct term.

Now the technology is available to make this not only economically

possible but technologically possible.

It's really changed in the last few years.

20 years ago, you couldn't have done this at all,

it would have been impossible, but now we can do it,

so I think, if we can do it here in this village,

then that means you could do it in any village.

It is an ambitious dream and, if it is to become a reality,

the other villagers need to share Robert's vision.

But will they?

There's no better place to observe the residents of Temple Guiting

than in their natural habitat, at the annual harvest supper.

Hello. Hello. How you doing? Nice to see you.

Temple Guiting has been here since the Domesday Book, and so have many of the families.

That's Guy, the dry-stone waller.

Well, my link to this wall is a continuation of my dad's wall.

He built this bit along here in 1982...

..and this bit I'm doing now, well, it's got to be Victorian.

Yeah, so I'm just continuing his work, I guess.

-How are you doing?

-Very good, yeah. A bit tired today.

'Sitting next to me is Val.

'She's married to Paul Hughes,'

whose family has been farming here for centuries.

Family have been here for a good many years, 100,

100 years, I suppose, plus.

And that's Kate. If you want anything done in this village,

it's always good to have Kate on your side.

I love living here.

I've lived here for 18 years, my husband lived here before we got married.

His mother lives opposite the church, not to say we're inbred,

but we like living here. We are rural.

It is rural. We only have a bus through twice a day so, if you miss that,

you've had it.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

I've got a couple of very brief announcements to make first.

The first one, which is the most vitally important one, is

on the 12th of November in this very location is the village hall quiz.

Normally, there's leaflets on the tables to tell you of it, but we don't have them.

As many people who've been to it before know,

it's an extremely competitive evening, it's challenging quizzes,

you need to get your teams ready, it's a very exciting evening.

-We've got to beat Naunton!

-We've got to beat Naunton.

Yeah, it's about time we beat Naunton, they always win.

HE LAUGHS

Temple Guiting is a close-knit community of just 366 people.

Robert treads carefully as he raises what is still rather an alien concept.

The other quick thing I want to mention is we have been trying to

develop a community renewable energy project in the parish.

We're having an evening here in the village hall this coming Friday.

-What time?

-It's in the evening, so after school.

After tea.

And we're going to leaflet, there's going to be leaflets and things.

Yes, we'll tell you what time cos it's...

as you can tell, extremely well organised.

So, please do come along if you can manage.

Robert's passion project began some time ago.

It's been heavy going.

'We had a meeting.'

We are facing a growing crisis...

'And another meeting.'

It generates all the electricity for a very small

hamlet of 27 houses...

'And more meetings.'

The next step which I feel woefully inadequate to carrying out but, I mean,

some form of e-mail stuff.

Not everyone in the village is a fan of renewable energy.

I personally don't like the look of solar panels on roofs.

They stick out like a sore thumb.

We do live within an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and that curtails

a lot of possibilities.

If we could produce two thirds of the energy we're using here,

it would make an enormous difference.

In ten years' time,

technology would have moved on so far

that we will no longer need panels on roofs.

What I'm trying to say is, who's interested in pursuing the whole project?

There have been many meetings but not much action.

So, Robert decides to head to a place that is investing in renewables on

a massive scale.

He wants to understand how they've been able to do it and how they got

their community on board.

It's a place many might not expect.

Las Vegas.

A city synonymous with waste,

excess, greed and dazzling lights has,

with typical boldness, committed itself to using renewable technology.

Reducing reliance on the energy providers and taking back control over its power.

Not by some far future date, but now.

My dream is to be able to say to the village, look,

if they can do it in Las Vegas, which is a massive city,

we can do this in teeny tiny Temple Guiting.

The burning question for Robert is just how Las Vegas went about taking

back control over its energy.

Last year, three of Nevada's largest casino companies, MGM Resorts,

Wynn and Las Vegas Sands announced plans to buy and produce renewable

energy at their hotels,

slashing their dependence on state electricity utility companies.

At the Mandalay Bay,

they are replacing 1.3 million light bulbs with low-energy LEDs, but that's not all.

Cindy Ortega, the hotel's chief sustainability officer,

shows Robert another result of this renewable energy drive.

Look at that. It's amazing.

-Oh, my God, there's more!

-The biggest rooftop solar array in America.

It is amazing, isn't it?

It's 26 acres in Las Vegas.

That would be a neighbourhood of 100 homes.

So you look down over this array, and it's a gigantic building.

And how many megawatts does that represent, then?

It could generate eight and a half megawatts of electricity,

enough power at noon to power a town of 1,700 homes.

Wow, that's a huge amount of power.

It's a huge amount of power.

So what were the big challenges, then, in installing this?

Putting this array here was very,

very difficult because it isn't the limitation on the technology or even

the availability of the technology, but it's usually on regulatory lag.

So it was to get permission to do it, was the...?

It was to get permission and to change the rules a little bit, and so MGM Resorts

went through a process to split our utility and to control our own

sources of electricity,

so that was our biggest fight in getting the array actually done.

-Right.

-I think that the evolution of thought in your village is exactly

the evolution of thought in large corporate America.

You wouldn't think there would be a connection, but there clearly is,

-I can see it.

-It is. You may think that you're a little village in England

but, in fact, your trajectory is exactly the same as MGM's.

What would you think about going and actually seeing the array?

-Yes.

-OK.

-Oh, I'd love to go and have a look, yeah.

-Let's go see.

-Yeah, OK.

So this array could power a whole town, but how does it actually work?

It's the changes going on at quantum levels

in the cells that make up these solar panels

that are responsible for the electricity creation.

Each cell has a sandwich-like structure,

usually made out of silicon.

Atomic differences in each of the layers creates an electric field.

When a photon of sunlight hits the silicon sandwich, it disrupts these

atoms, knocking electrons free.

The electric field then pushes these free-roaming electrons out,

flowing down the wires as electricity.

It's millions and millions of these electrons being knocked free that

transform the sunlight beating down on the Vegas strip into enough power

to keep the casino lights on.

To grasp the full enormity of the array,

Robert has to fly over it in a helicopter.

But there's just one problem - he's terrified of heights.

So Cindy from the MGM Resorts told me that the best way to see all the

solar installations in Las Vegas is to fly over it in a helicopter,

which is what I'm going to do. A helicopter with no doors on.

So, you know, that makes enormous amounts of sense.

See what this feels like.

I think bloody terrifying would be a good description.

I'm not going to look down, I'm just going to look that way.

That's now all the solar panels down there underneath the Mandalay Bay.

Ooh, that's windy! We're going right over them.

Fantastic, wow.

Just an amazing sight to see them from up here.

To find out more about how the city got motivated to adopt renewables,

Robert's managed to get a meeting with the mayor of the city of Las Vegas.

To give him credit, he's nothing if not pushy.

-Hi.

-Hi there, Robert.

-Very nice to meet you.

Carolyn Goodman has been mayor of Las Vegas since 2011.

Under her watch, the city of Las Vegas can now claim that 100% of

electricity used to power all its municipal buildings, fire stations,

city parks and streetlights comes from green and renewable sources.

It's the largest city in America to achieve this.

This cuts our energy, these solar trees,

by about 30%, and that's just a piece of all the things we've been

attending to.

What encouraged the city of Las Vegas to adopt renewables?

You know, everybody thinks of us as the entertainment gaming capital of

the world, but the reality is that we're a very modern, contemporary

city that's very, very concerned about the future generations.

So I'm trying to encourage the residents of the very small village I live in

in England to adopt renewables.

-Have you got any tips?

-As with anything, it's all about marketing.

-Yeah.

You've got to sell what you're trying to do and show them why you need to be doing it.

And then, at some point, get down to the children in the

schools because it's great to get them on board first.

-And anything we can do, we welcome you back.

-OK.

My business card is a 1,000 poker chip.

-That's fabulous!

-So I give it to you as good luck and good health.

Thank you very much, that's very, very kind of you.

And we can't wait to be invited to your town.

And also, it's our dream, one day, to twin Temple Guiting with Las Vegas,

that's what we want on the sign on the outside of the village.

-That's our dream.

-Beautiful, we would like some pictures.

-Thank you.

Very intriguing and what a formidable lady, and I've now got my 1,000 poker chip,

which is just fabulous.

Never thought I'd get one of those!

To see some of the changes to city life,

the mayor has advised Robert to see these renewable transformations on

the ground or, as it turns out again, at height.

Oh, my goodness.

Always three points of contact, guys.

Yeah!

Oh, wow, oh, right.

It seems impossible to believe that renewable technology can power all

of the city's municipal buildings, fire stations,

city parks and streetlights,

particularly such an energy-guzzling city as Las Vegas.

I mean, just look at this city, it's bonkers.

They use so much electricity,

even these fountains are going to use megawatts every time they're

running, I'm sure.

But if a city the size of Las Vegas can be run on renewables,

it really proves that renewable energy does work,

anyone can do it.

Temple Guiting now really has to step up to the Vegas plate

and do as well as Vegas because what

they're doing here is remarkable and it's been really brilliant to see it.

To find out how renewable technology alone can provide electricity on a city scale,

Robert's heading 180 miles into the desert,

over the Nevada state border, into California.

He's heard about the sun's rays being harnessed in a different way

than solar panels.

Stretching over 1,765 acres of the Mojave Desert,

this solar thermal plant is the second largest in the world.

1,700 acres of solar thermal panels is a pretty breathtaking sight.

They're doing it at a truly enormous scale.

The solar array on the roof of the Las Vegas casino used the sun in one way

to make electricity.

Here in the Mojave Desert, the sun's rays are being used differently.

This solar thermal plant works like a conventional power station but

rather than using coal or nuclear fuel to heat the water,

it uses sunlight.

The sunlight is captured and concentrated

by solar collector panels to

heat a synthetic oil to incredibly high temperatures

so it can be used to

transform water into steam,

driving the plant's turbines to create enough electricity to serve

91,000 West Coast households.

This solar thermal plant is so huge that,

like the renewable energy projects Robert has seen in Vegas,

the only way to understand its scale is from above.

Which means that Robert, again, has to face his fear of heights.

-You ready?

-Yeah, as ready as I'm ever going to be.

-OK.

Wow. You do get the...

-You get the enormity of it.

-..the enormity of it, it's so huge, isn't it?

That is really high, I'm about to freak out.

-That's about as high as we can go.

-That's good. I'm very, very happy.

Sorry, I'm going to swear, because that's what happens

when I'm really about to shit myself.

All this part in front of you is what we call Alpha Plant and then it

stretches back over there as well.

Well, I'm really impressed with the technology I'm seeing but it's mixed

with sheer terror of being up a really high crane.

I had no desire to come up.

You're all right with all this?

-Yeah.

-Every day job. And you come from Cornwall, are you originally from Cornwall?

-Cornwall, yes, originally.

-From Cornwall to the Mojave Desert.

-Yeah, what a step.

-It's very like Cornwall in many ways.

Yeah - brown, no green, no sea.

I think we should go back down now.

Yeah, let's go down really nicely and gently.

Let's go down.

-Terra firma.

-Terra firma.

-Thank you very much.

-You're welcome.

-Thank you.

This is proper big industrial scale electricity generation.

It's big boy electricity, this is.

Just amazing. I mean, it's not going to work in the UK.

We don't have enough sun, but there's loads of deserts

all over the world that this is ideally suited to.

It's a fantastic idea.

In Temple Guiting, Robert wants to share how solar panels work,

how effective they are at turning the sun's energy into electricity.

To help him, he's enlisted his old friend and engineering whiz,

Hadrian Spooner.

I just love going to visit him, because his workshop is

just a fantastic cornucopia of amazing stuff.

He's built an amphibious snowmobile,

he's in the middle of building a steam engine

and he's even got a vortex cannon that can

blow smoke rings at 300 kilometres an hour.

I mean, it's amazing stuff, so I'm really excited to see if he can help me out.

Ah, that sounds like Mr H.

Hey, Rob. How's it going, all right?

Robert is targeting the youngest members of the community first,

with a hands-on toy racing car demonstration at the school.

Well, the idea is that we're going to harness some of the energy from the sun here,

and we've got a couple of slot cars which we can use,

-so they can actually play a toy using the energy of the sun.

-Right.

-You all right, H?

-Yep.

We're good there.

Class, can I have your attention just for a moment?

Hadrian has wired up the solar panels together and on this board are a load of light bulbs.

They're not working at the moment, I wonder what happens when he joins it together.

Ah, look! Look, look, look!

-Yeah, they turn on.

-So they're not very bright at the moment,

-are they? Are they getting brighter when I take these out?

-Oh, wow.

Look at that. OK, so now, four or five of you just and in front of the panels

and just be as wide as you can. Look at that.

Look at that. Now, OK, so all of you go but one of you stay there,

so you move away now.

Wow, you can really see it, can't you?

-So do you think there's enough power and there to make the cars move?

-ALL:

-No.

You don't think so?

Will solar power be enough to drive these toy cars?

The children don't think so.

To see if they're right, there's a small matter of assembling the racetrack.

Child's play, surely.

What does the picture on the box look like?

We don't need the box!

-We need that bit.

-That doesn't go down there.

And then it goes round again and then it comes out there.

We thought electrons and protons were complicated, but that's nothing,

that's easy in comparison with putting the track together.

Do it afterwards.

If the cars are going too fast,

can you think of a very good way of slowing them down?

Stand in front of it, exactly.

Do some... Do a bit of shade. Yeah, that's enough shade.

It's a bit easier, though, isn't it?

It's not flying off quite as much.

In English weather, this was always an experiment that I thought,

"Oh, goodness we're going to get the solar panels out,

"try and get the kids enthused and then it will be cloudy or raining and it won't work."

But actually it's worked amazingly well.

There's so much power going into these cars that they're actually flying off the track.

I think they now know more about solar panels

than most adults, so, you know, that's good.

Thank you very much, children, you've been lovely.

-ALL:

-Thank you!

-It's like kids, isn't it?

-It is just like kids now we've got to clear up.

It's really fascinating how much energy

or electricity has been produced

by the solar panels.

I would love to go and get some solar panels because I've just seen how

useful they could be and how much electricity you can get so easily.

How do you know how to do that? It's so annoying.

There we go, there's a clue, I've got it, I've got it.

After winning the hearts and minds of the village children,

Robert now tackles their parents.

He decides to hijack a village event.

Yeah, we've got eight rounds tonight.

We're going to do six before fish and chips.

He's found the perfect occasion.

Question number one,

which English king was defeated at the Battle of Hastings?

Quiz night. He wants to test how much the residents know about energy.

The village hall quiz night, it's always the most exhausting gig of the year for me.

I mean, I enjoy it, it's great fun and it's lovely to see everyone, but it gets very competitive.

It's quite stressful. Sometimes if people disagree with the answers...

Hoo!

OK, can we get the scores now?

Hello, my name is Robert and I used to be famous.

LAUGHTER

Thank you.

And what is your score? Two!

CHEERING AND LAUGHTER

Just to explain, for the people that don't know,

there are moves afoot to try and install some renewable energy in and

-around the village, solar panels and wind turbines.

-Nuclear power station?

We thought of nuclear power stations, we thought of community fracking, that was very popular.

Outside the village shop, let's have a quick fracking well.

We've discussed all manner of things,

but it's actually starting to take shape now to be quite a plausible...

So how much do the villagers know about the energy they and the country consume?

Robert fires some questions at them.

So the special energy quiz.

-CROWD:

-Ooh!

So, here we go, the first one is,

how many kilowatt-hours of electricity does the average UK household

consume in a year?

So is it 2,000 kilowatt-hours,

is it 4,000 kilowatt-hours or is it 8,000 kilowatt-hours?

And the average is actually 4,000 kilowatt-hours.

How many terawatt hours does the entire country consume in one year?

Is it 100 terawatt hours?

Is it 300?

Or is it 500?

-What do you reckon?

-Three.

Three?

Any more offers on three?

-Five?

-Ten!

-Ten.

It is actually 300 terawatt hours.

300 terawatt hours a year.

There are some LED bulbs here.

I think you all deserve them but there's not enough for all of you.

Just put your hands up if you got all of them right.

-Yeah!

-There might be just about enough bulbs.

Can we go on with the quiz now?

CHEERING

Hijacking quiz night to quiz the residents about energy consumption

has shown Robert that many here, like most of the country,

don't know the basics.

Energy doesn't have to be complicated.

We do get confused when we hear all the technical terms like volts and

amps and watts and kilowatts and megawatts and gigawatts,

but they're simple physical measurements of units of energy

and that's really what I want to explain to people in the village.

I want them to physically understand what that means.

Robert thinks that to get more villagers to engage with his project,

they need to understand more about the energy they consume.

So he wants to demonstrate what power feels like,

actually, physically feels like.

Which means Robert makes another trip to Hadrian's workshop,

this time to create a device that can help explain power.

We've got a hub out of a turbine and we've put a display on there of lights.

It's a perfect thing to feel what power is because I don't really

think people understand just what it takes

to get electricity in their house.

-No.

-Each one of these is 50 watts.

I've attached this hand crank

so that you can physically feel what it takes to illuminate a light bulb.

-Right.

-Your energy will travel through that lever and then the energy will

be absorbed when I hit a switch and it turns the light on.

-Right.

-As I turn the switches on, you will have to increase your input...

So you can feel the load building.

So every time that someone switches a light on, you're going to go, "Oh!"

If you were an amazingly fit athlete,

you could probably do four rows

at full brightness and that's 600 watts,

but as you're not an athlete...

I mean, you know, I've got an athletic streak.

I've watched athletics.

-So, if you start turning that.

-I mean, there's nothing, it's very easy.

-It's very easy.

-Oh my goodness! Instantly.

Yeah, you can feel it instantly. So there's that one light.

But one light is not hard to turn on. Oh, Lord.

There we go. That'll cure you.

-It needs to go a bit quicker than that.

-All right, God!

I'm not as strong as you!

That's where somebody who's really fit would have those bright.

So that's all of them now, Rob, that's a kilowatt of energy there.

They're like embers in the morning, there's nothing there.

-Wow.

-You got some macho guys in your village?

There is one or two people who are quite strong

and they'll think they can do it. And they probably can,

which will be really annoying and I'll be the weak one that can't.

Hand-cranking Hadrian's turbine contraption means the villagers will

understand just how much power is required

each time they switch a light bulb on in their homes.

-That is heavy.

-That is proper heavy.

Every aspect of Hadrian's contraption requires hard labour.

Even shifting it into the village church.

That way round. Sorry.

Each one of these bulbs is 50 watts.

And as you put more on now, that is now...

Robert demonstrate his own personal power output.

That's Robert that's pulsing. OK.

And it's not a lot.

ROB STRAINS

Nearly there, Rob.

The average human, he chucks out 400, if he's fit, for a few minutes and

that drops very quickly down to 270, 300.

Clearly, Rob's about 150 watts.

LAUGHTER

One by one, everyone has a go.

That is annoying, isn't it? Look how good he is.

That is bright. Oh, OK.

-OK.

-That's a clear winner.

That was good. There's your winner.

Robert's hands-on power demonstration is converting the villagers to his cause.

More and more residents are interested in his crusade to install

renewables in the village.

That was very good, I thought.

Very informative, I am all for it.

Oh, I think there's a lot of enthusiasm in the village.

There wasn't a terribly good turnout today but I suppose it's because it's a Saturday.

The theory is fine but in practice,

whether or not it will be acceptable is another matter.

Well, I've had a go winding the crank handle.

It's extremely difficult. And we all know that we use a lot of kilowatts

but what I really want to find out now

is exactly how many kilowatts a year the village consumes

and whether we can supply that demand with

renewable energy in and around the community.

Robert has to calculate just how much energy a year the village uses on average,

to give him an idea about the number of renewable resources

he needs to find within the parish boundaries.

I know there are 62 houses here.

The average consumption for these houses 5.5 megawatt hours a year.

So if I multiply that by 62, we get 341 megawatt hours a year.

Sounds like quite a lot.

341 megawatt hours a year.

To put that in some sort of perspective,

one kWh will boil 12 pints of water.

So what Temple Guiting is doing is boiling about four million pints of water

a year, which is enough for about eight million cups of tea.

But that gives some idea of the power consumption of the whole village.

So that's quite a lot of energy to produce.

Having calculated that the 62 homes in Robert's village consumes on

average 341 megawatt hours a year,

Robert wants to investigate what options the village could explore.

Which renewable technologies, if installed, could generate an amount of

electricity equivalent to that the village consumes?

Robert travels to see working examples of renewable power in Britain.

Temple Guiting's fast-flowing streams join the Thames as it flows to London.

Robert heads further down the river to Mapledurham.

Here, a water mill is using 2,000-year-old technology in a very

21st-century way.

-Nice to meet you.

-Nice to meet you.

-After you.

-Oh, thank you.

Robert wants to find out how it works.

Oh, my lord!

That is remarkable.

This beautiful piece of engineering is called an Archimedes screw.

Historically, Archimedean screw pumps were used in irrigation to lift

water to a higher level by turning a handle at the top.

When used as a hydro turbine, the screw acts in reverse.

The weight of the falling water causes the screw to rotate and this

kinetic energy can be extracted as electricity by a generator.

The greater the flow and fall of water,

the more electricity it can produce.

So I've just noticed the figures over there.

That's our output at the moment. That's what we are actually putting

into the grid at the moment.

So we are putting 20 kilowatts in there at the moment.

An Archimedes screw like the one at Mapledurham produces around

500 megawatt hours of electricity a year.

More than enough for Robert's village.

The problem is Temple Guiting is a lot further upstream,

so it's unlikely that a hydro turbine on this scale could be installed in the village.

The further back up the Thames you go,

the closer to the source,

your flow rate of the Thames is going to reduce.

-Yeah.

-So although you could still make power,

-the amount that you will make...

-Is much less.

-..will probably go down as well.

Water isn't the only source of renewable power.

Robert pays a visit to a farmer in the neighbouring county

to see how he has harnessed the power of wind.

It's going well today, isn't it?

It's good, yeah.

It's best facing south-west.

Right. That's when it gets the most, is it?

That's when it performs the most.

The south-westerly wind is the most effective.

When the wind blows farmer Chris' turbine,

it turns a central driveshaft.

A gear system then converts this low speed rotation

into speeds fast enough to drive a generator.

Here, this moving energy travels into

a magnetic rotor that spins inside

loops of copper wire, causing electrons to flow,

creating electrical energy, or electricity.

It might be simple science,

but it wasn't as simple

getting the permission for this wind turbine to be built.

It took something like 18 months to get planning permission.

Right, that's what I was interested in. Because that must have been quite...

-It was a hell of a battle.

-Was it? Right.

-Planning has been just nasty over the years.

I'm interested in what the local people that live around here thought.

The people that live on the estate were very much in favour.

Oh! They were for it?

-They were for it. It was the people in the distance that thought they didn't...

-Yeah.

I mean, they can't see it now, most of them.

Robert wants to find out

whether something similar can be installed in his own village,

so he needs to know from Chris how much power his turbine produces.

Now you've had it that long,

you've got a rough idea of how many kilowatt-hours it produces a year.

In a year... What, money?

-No, kilowatt-hours, electricity, first of all.

-Kilowatt-hours, at the moment, in a year,

we would produce between 20 and 30,000.

So 20 or 30 megawatt hours.

-Yes.

-So that's a lot, isn't it?

-Yes. Yeah.

-That is going to be more than all the houses on the farm

and the farm buildings would use.

I would think you're producing more than you consume.

-Oh, yes.

-Yeah.

Farmer Chris' turbine alone produces enough electricity to

power six homes in Robert's village.

The success of solar panels in Vegas, the water turbine at Mapledurham

and farmer Chris' wind turbine is all down to location.

For these technologies to work in his village,

Robert needs to find out whether there are suitable sites within the parish boundaries.

KNOCKING

Hi, Chris. Hi, how are you? Nice to see you.

Robert has enlisted a renewables expert to help him

scope the area.

Alarmingly friendly as always.

Yes, one is a bit too friendly.

This is known as a feasibility study.

So, Chris, this is a map of the parish,

which gives us a fairly good idea of what we are dealing with here.

The simple way to think of it is a sort of a sweep across the whole parish.

We need to be asking what are the candidate technologies that we

might be able to fit in the parish,

and the ones we are talking about most obviously

will be solar photovoltaic generation.

Very small-scale hydro generation opportunities as well.

We need to ask ourselves the question about wind.

And in this context,

I think those will be the main ones that we would be looking at.

Robert hopes to find a range of options for renewable technologies within the parish.

If installed, renewables could generate

the equivalent amount of electricity that the village consumes.

And electricity could be uploaded to the National Grid to provide its residents an income.

The first location Robert and Chris visit

is the stream that flows through the village.

A tributary of the Thames,

the river that powers the hydro turbine at Mapledurham.

A slightly higher flow than normal, I would say.

The challenge we've got is to measure the flow rate, basically.

Robert and Chris need to calculate if the water flows rapidly and drops

far enough for a hydro turbine here.

OK, so that is 3.6 metres.

Whilst it looks like there's a nice flow, this is actually very shallow.

It's very shallow, yeah.

So, you are 21.5 metres away from me.

And you are six degrees below me.

It's a small river and the calculations reveal only a modest amount of

power can be produced from its flow.

Could there be more power from harnessing wind?

So, this is the field, Chris.

The potential field, yeah.

Robert takes Chris to the hill he thinks would be perfect for a wind turbine.

I love how they all watch us.

-I know.

-Not quite sure what is going on.

-Yes.

-I think we are pretty much at the summit.

-This is pretty much it, isn't it?

Pretty much where we are standing

-is round about where you would want it to be.

-Yeah.

On the leading slope of the hill,

as the wind comes up the hill,

you actually get a concentration of speed of the wind, as it rises up.

If the wind speed was to double,

then the amount of energy contained in the wind speed goes up by a factor of four.

Robert's local knowledge means

he's found a good spot for a wind turbine,

but what about harnessing the sun?

Finding locations for solar or PV panels proves to be tough.

There are plenty of houses in the village,

but their roofs are under the tree canopy

or the properties are listed,

making it tricky to install solar panels.

Robert scouts for unlisted new buildings nearby in open spaces.

Luckily for him, Temple Guiting is a farming community and he's heard some new barns are

being built down the road at the Cotswold Farm Park.

The new buildings are going to go from where the old stable block is

down there and go back in this direction.

It couldn't be much more perfect, could it?

There's nothing in the way for about 90 miles!

-We have now got the planning permission.

-Right.

I mean, although the building going up, we are tenants,

and if we wanted to proceed with this on the basis that it might be

community funded and they would be panels owned by a third party on a roof...

-Right.

-..rented by us from a landlord...

Yes. There are still some more layers of complexity there.

It could only progress with an agreement with the landlord,

-but I think that's a conversation that sounds like it would be worth having.

-Yes.

So that is fantastic news.

They want it on there, they want us to do it.

The tiny, tiny, and I think it is genuinely a small potential

bit of grit in the oyster of perfection, is the landlord.

You know, we've got to get the landlord's permission for it to be a community-owned thing.

Robert and Chris's survey of the parish has revealed plenty of potential

for generating renewable energy within its boundaries.

Possibly a small water turbine,

a wind turbine and a solar array on the barn at the Cotswolds Farm Park.

Combined, this would generate enough power to offset the village's energy consumption,

and by uploading this electricity to the grid,

it might even provide the village an income.

Before plans go any further, Robert gets a call.

There is a problem that could jeopardise the whole project.

So we're going to go to a substation, one of the

grid substations just down the road from the village.

I'm meeting a couple of people from Western Power, who are the company that

distribute the power in the grid in this area.

Because I think we've got a bit of a problem.

This local substation is one of thousands across the country,

a crucial part of Britain's National Grid.

The National Grid is the network of wires and cables that carries

electricity across the country.

It was designed for the electricity to flow one way - from big power

stations producing electricity, down to the customers using it.

When a current flows through a wire, some energy is lost as heat.

The higher the current, the more heat is lost.

To reduce these losses,

the National Grid transmits electricity at a low current.

This needs a high voltage.

These high voltages are too dangerous to use in the home,

so step-down transformers

at substations are used locally to reduce the voltage to safe levels.

What the grid wasn't built to do was to push electricity the other way -

for energy to be generated at the customer's end of the wire.

You can see here our transformer...

Steven Gough is an engineer in Western Power's innovation team.

He wants to show Robert where the problem lies.

Here we have 66,000 volts going down to 11,000 volts.

Wow, so that's what then goes into Temple Guiting,

-into the village, that's what we're getting there.

-Absolutely.

It was not designed for Temple Guiting to send a lot of

electricity the other way, that's not how it's built, is it?

No, no. So, yes, when you have long lines like we have here,

you start having concerns around the voltage limits.

We need to keep our network within those voltage limits,

and if you put more generation on it,

it pushes the voltage to the upper limits.

If we go above that area you can have sparks and basically break down of insulation,

and that can be bad for the network.

The other element is if you start exporting you are actually pushing power back

through the network, you might get up to the thermal limitation of the network as well.

Is there any way around that, so that we don't have to

put a strain on this network?

So, the old-fashioned way is that you reinforce the network,

you basically put in a bigger line, which has a lower resistance so it has

less of an impact on the voltage.

I'm assuming running a big cable from here to Temple Guiting,

is not, like, 20 quid.

No, no, you can imagine if you are talking about larger voltage levels

it's extremely expensive for reinforcement,

which makes it uneconomic for people to connect.

The news from Western Power that the local power network cannot cope with

large quantities of electricity being produced and exported by the village

into the grid is a big blow to Robert and his project.

That was, you know, in some ways a bit depressing because we are restricted by

the amount of electricity we could generate in the village. These wires just aren't up to the job.

One of the things that I quite enjoyed was when he described what would happen

if we overloaded the grid,

if Temple Guiting produced too much electricity

and he was describing how it would damage the insulation.

I kind of now understand what that means is, the wires would melt,

they would burst into flames, there'd be sparks everywhere,

setting fire to people's houses, electrocuting things.

That's not a good idea, that's not what we want to do at all.

This revelation casts a shadow over the feasibility report meeting.

-How you doing?

-Good.

-Good.

-Good to see you.

A core group of keen villagers has arrived at Robert's house

to hear the results of the survey of the parish.

He's got no prejudice, he'll do it to anyone.

My 96-year-old auntie got a shock when she came to this.

Jo, Jo...

None of them are expecting to hear the news that it's the grid,

not the sites themselves, that poses the problem.

The village itself is very constrained

because the ability of the grid to

both deliver energy into houses and

also for houses to export energy back

the other way simply because

the wires weren't ever designed to do more

than they currently do do.

We are somewhat stuck with the electricity infrastructure

that does exist at the moment.

Because of its aged grid infrastructure, there seems to be

only one last option for the village.

Solar panels mounted on the new barns at the Cotswold Farm Park,

as they can use the electricity generated on-site

without exporting it back to the grid. And they could pay the village back an income for

investing in the array.

The reason the Farm Park project is as viable as it is, is precisely

because the electricity generated in the solar panels has an immediate

use on-site and the company on-site will pay an amount of money per

kilowatt hour of electricity.

There aren't that many options for other things that you could do and I

think the great advantage of this particular solar opportunity is that it

looks like it's feasible in the short term.

There have been preliminary,

preliminary discussions between the Farm Park,

Duncan and Adam and the agent, so there's absolutely no agreement but there

wasn't sort of instant dismissal.

The villagers are shocked that there is only one option left.

Just a bit...

gutting, really. It's quite exciting, but I'm not quite so sure now.

The ability to affect our being able to feed back to the grid has really

limited our opportunities in what we can do,

which has sort of flummoxed me a bit.

I wasn't expecting that to be the problem.

I was expecting it to be generating the energy to be the problem,

not the fact that we couldn't get it back.

See you. All right. Take care. Bye-bye. See you soon.

Even a walk with his wife, Judy, can't cheer Robert up.

His dream seems to now teeter on the brink.

If it's this difficult for a small village to change how it powers itself,

Robert is losing hope that his plan could ever be taken up across the country.

Basically, we're a bit stuffed.

Even if we had permission, say,

to put a really big solar array in the playing fields, for instance,

we couldn't because there's nowhere to put the electricity.

-Oh, God.

-So there's all...

and that goes on and on and on everywhere we've looked.

So the one place we've got left is the farm park,

it's up at Bemborough farm, with Duncan and Adam,

and that we could do, technically, because of all their extensions they're building there.

So then we thought, "Oh, let's put it on there".

and that's all right and that could work, except it's not their farm.

You've done so much work.

I mean, if nothing happens, I don't know.

Yeah, I know, it's a depressing prospect.

It's been a really tough trot.

So if nothing happens then, I mean, what would you do then?

We'll have to sell the house and move out.

We'll just leg it in the night.

Otherwise there'll be a burning cross on the front lawn.

Then Robert receives more bad news from his one last hope -

the Cotswold Farm Park.

-ON PHONE:

-Robert, I just want to bring you up to speed

-with where we were with the building project.

-Yeah.

We are keen to progress the idea of putting PV on the roof of the

-building.

-Brilliant.

But the complication I have is that it's a sort of

three-way relationship with us being a tenant.

So I think that we are going to have to sort of remove ourselves

from the project, which I know won't come as welcome news to you,

given the work you've done on hoping it could be part of the community

-energy project.

-No, but I mean, yeah.

It's a bit of a blow, but I mean also,

I completely understand because it does make more sense you doing it and

you know, what I'm really pleased about is that you're doing it anyway, you know?

If you said, "We just don't want solar at all," that would be more depressing.

The fact that you're going to do it yourselves is still better than not doing it.

I shall come and look at it and have massive panel envy when it's done.

I look forward to showing you around.

All right. Well, thanks, Rob.

-That's all right. No, and I'll see you soon, I'm sure.

-OK. Great.

-All right. Good to speak to you.

-All right, take care.

-Cheerio.

-Take care, bye.

-Bye.

You know, after all the effort we went through to sort of find out

if it was possible and go through all the stages...

It's just part of the endless process of working out quite how to do this, but...

Yeah, it's a bit of a setback. No doubt about it.

That field has got a lot of room for solaring.

With the Cotswold Farm Park going it alone and putting solar panels on their barns themselves,

it seems it's all over for Robert's dream of a Temple Guiting community energy project.

He calls an emergency meeting.

So, I've got bad news.

Duncan and Adam at the farm park have decided to go ahead with installing

a 50 kilowatts solar array on the barn themselves.

So they are having solar panels, they're just not ours.

-So a good idea, then?

-Yeah, it was a good idea I gave them.

So there will be solar panels going up in the parish on a large scale.

OK, so that's a good thing.

-Thank you for your hospitality this evening.

-Yeah, thank you.

Robert's dream is in pieces.

Having set out to try and solve an energy bottleneck,

Robert instead has found himself stuck in one.

Robert's options seem exhausted.

Seeking solutions,

he goes to the headquarters of the thing that has stymied his plans, the National Grid.

It's very nice to be back.

That is amazing.

The big problem we are facing is that Western Power,

who are our local distributors,

can't deal with us inputting a lot into our local part of the grid.

The main solution is either just to build a much bigger grid locally,

but actually it makes more sense financially, you know,

and from a community sense, to use that power locally.

The easiest way to do that is to store it, and the best way to store it,

going over the next five years, is easily going to be batteries.

If you look at California, Germany,

that's what houses and communities are deciding to do right around the

world, is to start storing and using power locally by having a battery in

the house, or a battery in the village.

-Even at grid level your talking about it?

-That's right. We're going to have, globally,

the largest installation of grid scale batteries

coming in in the UK over the next year. And as you say, it's at grid level.

Internationally, everybody's looking at it and we're seeing it right down

to your village and to domestic as well.

Basically what you're saying has convinced me that

batteries are the way to go. I mean, that really does make a difference.

If nothing else, it means we can utilise more of the power we generate

in the village, we can use it in the village.

It should allow you both to match off your demand against supply and make

sure you use your renewable power locally, and in doing that,

you also reduce the strain on your local distribution grid around there,

-which will save you money and will help you get more renewables locally.

-Right.

The National Grid's news that they are exploring batteries as a solution

gives Robert's crusade, that had looked dead in the water, a glimmer of new hope.

Robert has found a new love in a 200-year-old technology - the battery.

The thing is, you can't catch and store electricity,

but you can store electrical energy in the chemicals contained inside a

battery and batteries then convert this chemical energy back to electricity when you need it.

I mean, we're all very familiar with batteries.

We all use them every day, and I've got a whole drawer load here.

So here's some batteries.

Big one, medium, little fellow.

So, there's three main components of a battery.

There's two terminals made of different chemicals,

which are typically metals.

These are called the anode and the cathode.

And then there's the electrolyte in the middle,

and this is the chemical medium that allows

the flow of electrical charge between the cathode,

or the negative end, and the anode, which is the positive end.

So when a device is connected to the battery, say a light bulb.

Here's your battery.

That's your plus end, that's your minus end and then here's your device. Let's say a light bulb.

There we go.

A little screw-in one.

Once you connect the device to that,

so you connect the device up and then

the demand on the battery creates a

chemical reaction and that lights up the bulb.

Ping! Light bulb goes on.

So that, you know, does look like the most boring thing on earth.

It's just a block, but what is actually happening

is that is an amazing mini power plant.

Batteries could store the electricity produced by renewable technologies

in the village and it could then be used locally when needed rather than

overburdening the grid.

But how to share this battery breakthrough with the local residents?

Robert calls on Hadrian for some creative chemical advice to find a simple

way to demonstrate how chemical power can be stored and then released as electricity.

We can go back to a simple test you did at school,

-which if you're like me, you probably forgot about.

-Right!

That little humble morsel has power.

-Right.

-And you just need a zinc coated nail and a copper nail.

And what happens is that the electrons are forced away from the zinc and

are attracted to the copper.

So that humble potato, look, it is producing 0.9 of a volt.

-Wow.

-So effectively, if we joined ten of those together,

we would have nine volt.

Wow. Wow.

To create a sizeable potato battery and enthuse the villagers with a

possible solution to their current problem,

Robert needs more than one potato and more than one villager to come to the demonstration.

I've got a leaflet for you. Not much warning cos it's tonight.

This is about your electrical job?

That's all that electrical business. All right? Nice to see you.

-Thank you.

-Take care, Jim. Bye-bye.

Will the villagers be turned on by Robert and Hadrian's novel approach?

Thank you very, very much, everyone, for coming tonight.

What we thought we'd do is do a science experiment,

which we'll have all experienced before,

but it does say something about energy and the way that we live and

consume energy without thinking.

So what you're being issued here with is a galvanised nail,

which is covered in zinc, and a copper nail.

That's a small potato, sir.

I haven't taken offence.

No.

You wouldn't.

The village hall has seen a fair few things,

but I'm confident this is the first ever root vegetable battery created

under this roof.

-So what do you reckon we'll get out of it?

-16.

-16, OK.

-Uh...

-15.8 volts.

-Wow.

15.8 volts.

Is that one... It's that one that's let us down!

Straight away here we've got 15 volts.

I mean, you know, nine volts powers your radio,

you can listen to several hundred hours of the Archers on a nine volt battery,

and this is just a very simple way of showing

that there is power in things that you wouldn't think about.

-APPLAUSE

-Thank you.

I'm not convinced it's going to happen.

I know from experience living here,

that you can get very excited about something and then there's a bit of

apathy in the village, but I would love to see it happen.

But I'm not quite sure how it's going to happen.

-Good to go?

-Yeah.

I should do that.

Don't leave the lights on! Cor, blimey, it's dark.

If 20 potatoes can be tapped so as to produce enough electricity to listen

to over a year's worth of everyday stories of country folk on the radio,

Robert wants to find out what the latest cutting edge battery technology

can achieve. What batteries might be suitable for his village that could

store the electricity produced by renewable technologies and release

energy back as electricity when needed?

Robert heads to Birmingham University Centre For Energy Storage.

Hello.

Here they have developed a prototype for a new way of storing and

releasing energy, using air.

-Is that it, there?

-Yeah.

-It's huge!

This is an air battery, the first one like it in the world.

-It looks like a big power station, but actually it's a giant battery, really.

-Indeed, yes, it is, yes.

It's really impressive.

I assumed it would be like a little generator set, you know,

but this is big.

For this sort of power plant, it's the first one in the world.

-Oh, is it, this is the first one in the world?

-Yeah.

-Wow!

To explain what's going on,

the centre has made a miniature version of their air battery.

So, basically, you have liquid air stored in that tank.

-Liquid air?

-Yes, which is -196 degrees C.

Wow, so that's really cold.

But it's actually just air that we're breathing but squashed really down?

Yes, squashed. So when you need electricity you switch on that,

and liquid air will come out, it will expand at roughly 700-800 times.

-Wow.

-So, you know, quite a high-pressure, which can drive the turbines,

-produce electricity.

-And this is like a little model turbine to show, right... Can you turn it on?

-I want to see what happens.

-Oh, yes, yes, let me do that for you,

so you'll see how it works.

-Yeah.

-So if I turn this one...

HIGH-PITCHED WHINE

Slowly.

Wow. So this is how many volts... Is that the voltmeter there?

And that's getting very cold now, wow.

That is incredible. Because it's essentially very simple technology,

it's not complicated, it's just wind driving a fan, isn't it, really?

-Yes.

-So then you use excess electricity to run a compressor,

which you store in a tank, which can be huge.

Yes, they can go to hundreds of megawatts.

It's a brilliant way of storing a huge amount of energy.

Yes, sustain a long system.

Yes, right, wow.

That's amazing to see. Thank you very much.

-Can you just make it go again? I just want to see it working again.

-OK, let's try it again.

HIGH-PITCHED WHINE

That is brilliant.

Birmingham University's air battery uses excess electricity to compress air.

When that energy is needed again, this compressed air is released,

driving a turbine to create electricity.

Exciting as it is,

the futuristic air battery is some time off from being in everyday use.

Robert wants to focus on the storage possibilities in the here and now.

Well, we're all used batteries that you use once and throw away, you know,

once they're chemically discharged,

and they're being replaced by rechargeable batteries.

Rechargeable lithium ion batteries,

that you find in your phone or in your laptop, or even in this car.

This car has lithium ion rechargeable batteries.

Lithium is the lightest of all metals,

making lithium ion batteries an extremely

efficient way of storing energy.

Lithium ion batteries' ability to be recharged and reused lies in the

movement of its atoms or ions.

In a totally discharged battery, the lithium ions lack electrons,

so will be entirely connected to the positive electrode.

Pumping electricity into this system adds new electrons,

causing the lithium ion to shift to the negative electrode.

Now loaded with high-energy electrons,

the battery is then charged,

restored for another use.

Robert wants to see how these lithium ion

rechargeable batteries can be scaled up,

so rather than being used to recharge a mobile phone,

they can be used to recharge a whole town.

In America, Robert is visiting

electricity company Southern California Edison's Mira Loma Substation.

They have gone on a large-scale

lithium ion rechargeable battery spending spree.

I've come here to look at a bunch of white boxes,

but they're really clever white boxes and what they represent, really, is the future.

Once this substation is completed,

this will be the biggest lithium ion battery storage project in the world.

There's a lot going on here, and I want to find out how this technology works,

so I'm about to meet Ron Nichols,

who is the president of Southern California Edison.

But I'm just waiting for him to land, because he's coming in a helicopter.

Batteries are a really important part of overall plan for the rising

levels of renewable energy in California.

It's a huge state,

with an enormous population and an enormous demand for electricity.

We're going to be at 33% renewable energy,

that's large-scale renewables, by 2020,

and 50%, at least, by 2030.

So as we look at this level of renewables,

there are periods of time where we'll have

4,000-10,000 megawatts excess energy during the middle of the day.

So more than you're consuming?

More than we're consuming. So we need to find a useful home for that

energy, and that's the benefit of batteries.

-Right.

-You have the ability to use them exactly when you need them.

-Right.

-Here is a 20 megawatt battery array, which is really significant,

but just a piece of the puzzle to integrate renewable energy.

These Tesla batteries, the brainchild of technology pioneer Elon Musk,

will be charged using electricity from the grid during off-peak hours,

releasing it back into the grid when the demand requires, providing,

at peak capacity,

enough electricity for the needs of a Californian town for a full day.

But what is going on inside these white boxes?

Robert gets a guided tour from the on-site engineer.

-Can we have a look?

-Yes, let's open this one.

Oh, right, wow.

So it's just a lot of big black boxes.

A lot of single batteries that

connect together to make the large battery systems.

-Each one of those, then, isn't that powerful?

-No, that's correct.

It doesn't contain that much, but there's so many of them.

The common element is fairly small, maybe something you have in your laptop,

I mean that's kind of the energy content of a single medium cell.

-Right.

-And just you put those together,

add them together and create those large battery systems, you know.

So they could, if they wanted to, increase the size of it?

-They could have 800?

-That's correct, just by adding more of those common components,

you could double the size or triple the size of that system.

So these 400 boxes, then, they've got a capacity of how much power?

So 20 megawatts for four hours,

which is equal to around 80 megawatts an hour.

So how long do these take to charge up?

So this system is a four-hour system, which means

it can be de-charged in four hours, and as a result can be recharged in roughly the same amount of time.

-Oh, I see.

-The power is limited by the inverter,

the inverter is sized specifically

to despatch that energy in four hours,

so you can use the same power to recharge in the same amount of time.

Because I noticed when you opened the door

I got the smell of brand-new electronics, you know,

like when you unbox your new computer.

So these have just been made, effectively?

Yeah, basically as soon as they can make them, they ship them,

and you're correct, this is a brand-new product

-that was probably only manufactured a few weeks ago.

-Right, right.

It's very inspiring, Luic, thank you so much for explaining it.

Because if you can do this on this scale - OK, it's a huge budget,

it's an enormous project, it's the biggest battery packs in the world,

all that stuff, but it does sort of inspire me to think, well,

if we do this in the village on a much smaller level,

it is technically achievable.

So many houses are in the village?

-How much power?

-It's about 62 houses, so very modest.

So 60 hours, you may get away with two megawatts -

maybe a great fit for what you're after.

I think I'm going to have to suggest that, then, to the parish council.

We need two megawatts of Tesla batteries.

We could put them round the back of the school somewhere.

-Behind the church.

-Yeah, yeah, behind the church!

They really don't look like much, but what they represent, I think,

is a glimpse into the future.

These are really a first step on a really big change to the whole way

that we look at electricity.

It's not just big scale - it's OFF the scale.

This lithium ion battery array contains enough stored energy

to fulfil the needs of 2,500 homes for 24 hours.

Temple Guiting has 62 houses,

meaning it only needs around a fortieth

of this rechargeable capacity.

Robert looks closer to home,

to understand how renewables and storage

can work together on a smaller scale.

I'm on my way to Oxford, because I've been doing tonnes of research

about this project I've heard about,

where they're using batteries but not at grid level,

they're using them at domestic level

and I'm really excited to see if we can use something like that in the village.

This initiative is taking place in 82 homes on a housing estate,

to help reduce fuel poverty.

Andy Edwards, the project coordinator,

is taking Robert to see one of the homes involved in the scheme.

Some solar on that house up there.

-This is the one we're going into...

-OK, all right.

-Hello.

-Hello.

-Eleanor. Hello, I'm Robert.

Hello, Robert, nice to meet you, come along in.

Thank you very much.

Straight through. I've made some coffee.

Oh, that's very kind of you, yeah, thank you. Yeah.

Erm...

Let me go and get the pot.

Ooh, I'm looking at the graph already. Ooh.

Yes, that shows the electricity consumption in the house.

This yellow line

-is the power generated by our solar panels up here...

-Right.

..and the blue line shows what's coming from the battery,

that's our consumption.

So the spikes are your consumption, but the thick blue bits...

Are when the battery is releasing electricity,

and so bringing down the spikes.

Have you noticed a difference in the way you use electricity?

Because we always used to just switch things on

-and then never thought about it.

-Yeah, it's changed our behaviour hugely.

So essentially, what we try to do is

use the electricity when it's coming from the solar panels,

and then what the battery enables us to do is to use some of the

electricity generated during the day, in the evenings.

In the evenings, right. So then in actual financial terms,

your electricity bill, has it gone down?