After the successful start of beneficiary dialogues in Barcelona (read more here), the second Sun4All pilot location, Almada (Portugal), has now begun to get in direct contact with potential Sun4All beneficiaries. AGENEAL (the Municipal Energy Agency of Almada), in collaboration with the Municipality of Almada, held its first informative session within the project to recruit eligible beneficiaries.

Almada’s Department of Social Intervention and Housing (DISH) has identified 124 social housing residents to benefit from Sun4All. Until October 2022, representatives of the Sun4All pilot location in Almada will seek to recruit all of them for participation in the project. To achieve this, AGENEAL and the Municipality of Almada will hold in total three informative sessions with potential beneficiaries in the Community Centre located in one of the main buildings that will be part of the pilot.

On 12th July 2022, the first informative session took place on a small scale. Ten households, which previously were beneficiaries of the HERB (Holistic Energy Efficient Retrofitting of Residential Buildings) project were invited to take part in that session. Due to their experience in sustained engagement, these households will be asked to assist the project in building trust, recruiting and communicating with beneficiaries, by taking on the role of “first movers”, mentors and multipliers.
During this first informative session, Sun4All representatives presented the project, its duration and benefits, and provided an introduction to the project’s objectives. Additionally, participants of this first session were handed out a specific questionnaire to be filled out. These questionnaires will contribute to categorize energy consumption profiles within the scope of the project.

The next meetings will take place in August 2022 and will be repeated in the form of several working sessions until October of the current year.

In this first project phase, Almada intends to set up a community for shared self-consumption of renewable energy. In total, the city plans to invite residents of ten municipal public housings located at Rua dos 3 Vales and Rua São Lourenço Poente to participate in the project.

Through Sun4All, buildings owned by the Municipality of Almada and providing social housing will be equipped with photovoltaic installations on the roofs. The beneficiaries will benefit in various ways, namely, they will have:

• an electricity bill reduction
• free access to activities on energy and sustainability literacy
• personalized advice on energy efficiency measures to be implemented at home
• free visits to photovoltaic sites and participation in workshops