News

 
Got leftover wine bottles from Christmas? Whistlewood Common, a community-owned woodland in South Derbyshire, is trying to collect 9000 empty wine bottles by the end of March to form part of the base of the lovely roundhouse that will be going up on their site this year.
 
The group are looking for standard 75 cl size bottles and will accept champagne and spirit bottles of this size too. Bottles can be dropped off during their normal fortnightly volunteering session which take place on the following dates between 1pm and 4pm: 6th and 20th January, 3rd and 17th February.
 
Please do not leave bottles at the entrance to the site at other times as this causes problems for the group. At the time of writing they had approximately 1000 bottles – help them get to 9000! More information on their new eco building can be found online: http://bit.ly/2lHBaWD

The Centre for Sustainable Energy is looking for smart communities to take part in unique open data trials. The OpenLV project is making electricity data from the low voltage substation network ‘open access’ for the first time ever. This presents a great opportunity for smart thinking and innovation.

Are you interested in developing projects to benefit your community? CSE are inviting people based in WPD's network area (which includes most, but not all, of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire) to come up with novel ideas for using this substation data, either in the form of an app or in any other way.

You might want to use the data for real-time feedback on community electricity consumption, planning electric vehicle charging times, carbon footprinting, and electricity demand alert systems. You might have your own ideas – now is the time to get them in!

Three or four groups will be selected to participate in the trials. Applications are being accepted until 22nd January 2018. More: http://bit.ly/2kPQyzC