Prysor Angling Association is a voluntary organisation that manages the fishing on Llyn Trawsfynydd in Gwynedd. Llyn Traws is a trout and pike fishing venue, with a fleet of boats, that regularly hosts international fishing competitions and the Welsh fly-fishing team trials.
The Association also owns a clubhouse on the lake shore, managing it as a community venue and sub-letting to a popular café and fishing tackle shop, both hiring local employees.
Having previously rented the building, the Association bought it in 2024 to help safeguard its future as a community asset. A key driver was the building’s increasingly unsustainable energy bills and the wish to install a more viable energy system that could also deliver community benefit.
Project approach
The chosen option was a solar panel installation, to take advantage of the building’s large south-facing roof, accompanied by battery storage and EV charge points to help address the lack of charging infrastructure in the area.
Funded in part by Ynni Cymru, alongside Parc Cenedlaethol Eryri, Gwynedd Council, and Nuclear Restoration Services, and using £85,000 of its own funds, the Association managed the installation of a Smart Local Energy System or SLES comprising a 49.02kWpeak solar PV system, a 14.4kWh battery energy storage system and four EV charge points (two 60kW rapid and two 22kW fast).
Impact
The renewable energy system has reduced the clubhouse bills from a peak of around £2,000 per month to just the standing charge of c£50 during the summer, freeing up much-needed resources for other activities. This includes refurbishing the clubhouse and supporting continued employment of three community members to manage the fishing on the reservoir.
The café’s owners have also felt the benefits of the new energy system. The café is thriving, employing a core team as well as seasonal workers, all from the local community. It is popular with those visiting the lake to fish as well as local community visitors and tourists. Through prioritising local seasonal produce, the café is also supporting local suppliers.
Challenges
Installation of the solar panels was straightforward, although it has been more challenging to connect all the SLES’s different component parts due to the number of different bodies that need to be involved – some of which the Association does not have a direct relationship with.
Prysor Angling Association itself has no paid staff and the whole process, from applying for the grant to signing off on the installation and completing reporting, has been done by volunteers, requiring a significant commitment of both time and energy. Committee members were able to bring transferable skills from professional roles to assist with this.
Next steps
This is only one part of the Association’s energy vision. It currently owns 32 fishing boats that are used on the lake and stored in an agricultural shed. Future plans include replacing the current petrol motors on these boats with electric engines that could be powered by additional solar panels located on the shed’s roof. Bi-directional charging will also be explored so that the engines, when not in use, could store energy to charge other devices or provide energy back to the grid.
The Association is also keen to explore the potential to run a subsidised community EV minibus, to help local groups overcome current transport challenges. As Rhys Llywelyn, Chair of the Association, explains, although reducing energy costs was a key driver behind the project, equally important has been “having a vision” of what a long-term community-owned energy asset could provide for the local area.
For Rhys, this has been reinforced by seeing the impact on the local community when the building was forced to close during Covid, and, in contrast, more recently, seeing how much it delivers as an attraction for visitors and locals, especially at its peak season during the summer months.
Rhys’s advice to others wanting to start a similar journey is to keep the end goal in mind but take it one step at a time – bearing in mind that although securing initial funding may be difficult, it then opens the door to other sources.
“Have a vision and then break it down into manageable chunks. Once you get one lot of funding, others tend to fall into place.” – Rhys Llywelyn, Chair of the Prysor Angling Association
