Greystones & Delgany SEC “Solar Meitheal”

Meitheal is an old Irish term that describes how people come together to help one another out. The Meitheal was a powerful concept in years gone by, neighbours would join together, particularly at harvest time to make large tasks easier to achieve as a group rather than as individuals.  The concept of a Meitheal can also be applied to our SEC’s mission of making our community sustainable and carbon-free.

Our SEC has chosen Solar Photovoltaic (PV) for our flagship Meitheal Programme due to the relative ease of install and tangible energy savings obtained. Future Meitheals will focus on insulation and other energy saving upgrades and fittings.

All Greystones, Delgany, Kilcoole & Newcastle area properties are eligible. This includes homes, businesses and organisations such as sport clubs, churches, and schools. The more the merrier! And economies of scale can help reduce the final pricing per install. So register your interest!

Greystones & Delgany Sustainable Energy Community (GDSEC) is a subgroup of Greystones Tidy Towns and is a registered SEC with the SEAI (Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland). Staffed by volunteers under the mentorship of an officially registered SEC technical advisor, Simon Whelan (page 37), our mission is to explore options for reducing our community’s carbon emissions and increase the energy efficiency and sustainability of our buildings, transport and other aspects of our lives. 

With this in mind, we launched the “Solar Meitheal” initiative. Through our advisory and administrative support role, we aim to help homeowners and businesses who are interested in installing Solar PV to (a) understand the technology, (b) arrive at a solar PV system configuration that suits their needs, and (c) get a competitive quote from a top solar installer.

• Your home or business lies within the Greystones to Newcastle catchment area
• You have a minimum of 10m2 of usable roof space for solar panel install
• Your roof is south, east or west-facing (or a combination of these) and not shaded by nearby trees or buildings for the majority of the day
• You are in a position to finance your desired solar PV system configuration

• Provides free and independent advice as well as step-by-step guidance in helping you decide on your ideal solar PV configuration
• Through our combined Solar PV Request for Offer, the programme will provide a competitive quotation from a top qualified installer
• Through the pooling of purchasing power, the programme hopes to provide the added benefit of a potential economies of scale price discount

To figure out how much electricity your home or businesses uses annually, simply add up your kWh usage on all your electricity utility bills that cover one full year (usually 6 bi-monthly bills).

On each bill, the amount of energy you’ve used in the billing period will be labelled as “consumption” or “usage” and listed in “units” or “kWh”, (note: 1 unit = 1kWh). Write down the number of kWh (or units) used per bill and then add up all kilowatt hours across all the electricity bills within the year to get your annual kWh electricity consumption total.

At no stage will GDSEC engage in a contract or exchange monies with participants, we are only here in a voluntary support role.

Please note that to avoid the possibility of participants being scammed by imitators, GDSEC will be your only point of contact until after we make the formal email introduction between yourself and the winning installer. No monies or contracts will be asked for or exchanged with an installer until after this formal email introduction by GDSEC. 

GDSEC will only send you important content via our official email account info@greystonesgreenenergy.ie or stonessec@gmail.com, but may send text messages to inform of a new email (in case it ends up in your spam folder).

Yes, we will only seek bids from installers carrying full public liability insurance and are approved and vetted installers with the SEAI.

GDSEC will seek a Request for Offer from Ireland’s top solar panel installers, seeking the best balance of price, service, and schedule. GDSEC will contact you directly once a selection is made to properly transition you to the installer’s account manager. You will be dealing solely with GDSEC until this handoff occurs. Your complete PV installation contract and payments will be made directly with the installer.

Please note that participants can leave the programme at any time without penalty, prior to entering into a contract directly with the installer. However, your interest does have a bearing on the bidding and costing for the Solar Meitheal group cohort, and each assessment takes quite some time for our few community volunteers to complete. Therefore we kindly ask that you only participate if you are willing and financially able to fund a solar PV system through the programme, and to contact us immediately if you are no longer interested in continuing.