Apart from the other key issues of air pollution, high carbon and noise I can’t believe this is an economically sound way to power the store? I wonder why they aren’t making alternative arrangements - surely more cost effective in the long run!
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The weird thing is that the gasometers had their own unused substation, surely there is enough power feed for aldi
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They also had planning permission granted some time ago (DC/19/113670, granted October 2019) to build a mini-substation to the side of the premise.
Perhaps the combination of diesel power + Covid took any urgency away from sorting things out properly.
I asked Lewisham planning and my local Councillors for an update about these diesel generators, given that there is now no planning application or permission for their site, and here’s a summary of the informative responses.
The planning application for the temporary generators (DC/20/115852) was apparently withdrawn as Aldi have agreed a legal position with UK Power Networks to reconnect the store to the grid. The current unauthorised installation should therefore be removed by the end of October, though the reconnection is expected sooner than that. An investigation by Lewisham Planning Enforcement will therefore remain open until that time.
Cllr @John_Paschoud said he was personally confident the planning application would likely have been rejected, while the Planning Officer said the operation of ‘a large and low cost supermarket that many local residents used during a pandemic situation’ had been a consideration in the planning departments balance on the case - which indeed makes a difficult position for everyone involved. I can only imagine how controversial it would have been if Aldi were forced to close during the last few months, noting this case started in January before Covid was even on our radar.
Of course this doesn’t excuse the pollution made by Aldi’s massive generators and Cllr Paschoud also noted that environmental damage cannot easily be undone, but that Lewisham Council lack any powers to oblige irresponsible businesses to compensate those affected.
Indeed we can hope that Aldi will carbon offset for the diesel used, though that doesn’t help with NOx emissions and particulate, all of which could have been avoided with better planning on their part, or opening the store only when everything it needed was in place.
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Do you know what generators they are? Not all generators are equal and the latest Stage 5 are pretty good with emission control. Not ideal but not exactly belching out soot.
Not entirely sure, no. I think @swagger once had an idea based on the pictures up thread but can’t find the post now.
It’s going to be in this range though: https://www.mems.com/generators/ If you can figure out the model, you can find the engine - the one I guessed was a Perkins 404-D22 engine, “EU Stage IIIA/U.S. EPA Tier 4 Interim equivalent”.
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Okay - turns out I guessed wrong. I’m told it’s the 300 KVA offloadable which is actually a Bruno generator rebadged:
That one has a Cummins QSL9-G7 engine which meets the emissions ratings of EU Stage IIIA, EPA Tier 3 & 2g TA Luft.
So not the best, but not a belcher. Let’s face it, not an ideal scenario but it kept the store open, people employed and the public supplied.
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Yes - I think given the background of Covid-19 that is what planning had to weigh up and probably did the most reasonable thing. Of course, this still doesn’t excuse the poor planning and contingency shown by Aldi which created this situation in the first place and I see on Twitter some calls for them to do something ‘green’ locally to make up for it.
Perhaps Aldi could get involved with Haseltine Primary School somehow, for example.
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A pretty good idea that although I wonder if the fault is all down to Aldi. Given the large volume of stores they have I would imagine their people are pretty slick. But, mistakes do matter. Just glad they are heading in the right direction.
I look forward to popping in there in a few weeks
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The issues were raised, and planning enforcement underway, long before shutdown. Nobody wanted to close the store even before then, and campaigning was suspended during lockdown to avoid worrying people about it.
It is not OK to use diesel generators because you haven’t made an agreement with your landlord to connect to the mains. Presumably the agreement would be expensive, and so much easier to just bung in generators. It is even less OK to keep publicly denying that you are using diesel until you are totally busted.
I like Aldi stores, but they deserve really bad PR over this, and ought to apologise for the lies, as well as using the diesel-powered generators. Green energy is a big claim of theirs, and they have been shown to be not living up to their advertising claims.
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The (retrospective) planing application for the generators may gave been the first step towards enforcement action. That application was made on February 24th, and a decision would have been expected around 8 weeks later. I think it is also normal for public comments to be collected for at least 4 weeks prior to any descision being considered.
Lockdown started on March 23rd in the UK, although panic buying and other measures had begun before then.
Yes. While the situation may not entirely be of their own making, they were the ones that leased the generators and applied for the temporary planning permission. In fact Aldi must have known there was a supply problem as there was the prior planning application for the electricity sub-station, DC/19/113670, granted on October 23rd 2019. That plinth was built, and still was empty as of a few weeks ago:
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Lewisham council were typically slow to start enforcement; the social media campaign started on Facebook, I believe, and was active on se26.life from January. We were in intensive twitter conversation with Aldi from the beginning of February; see one tweet stream pasted below. I think social media made them reconsider, tbh, as it was bad PR for them. Either way, the campaign long predated shutdown, and ceased for the duration.
https://twitter.com/SGasworks/status/1224288192641282048?s=19
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I think the first step of enforcement action would to establish that the installation requires planning permission which would be denied. Thus getting Aldi to apply for planning was a logical step, but that requires Aldi to prepare documents and drawings for submission.
I’m sure Lewisham could have acted faster, but from January to February 24th seems not terribly unreasonable to me. Some of the delay would also have been waiting for Aldi. Beyond that the timeline was overtaken by Covid.
Note that I don’t doubt the Twitter and other publicity helped greatly though. Particularly the planning application also reached 5 objections from the public which is the new bar for it being considered to be considered at a planning committee. Good work SGasworks and James D Evans 
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A bit of Friday maths on this topic.
The generators are in a step-over configuration and so I think only 1 is active at a time (the large flat thing in the foreground of one of the pictures maybe a battery pack to facilitate change overs).
The generator is speced at using 46 litres/hour when running at 75% load which seems reasonable.
We are at day 255 of 2020, so 6120 hours into the year. That means Aldi has used an estimated 281,520 litres of diesel.
If we use a handy CO2 estimator, we can estimate that means about 747 metric tonnes of CO2 have been emitted.
Grabbing some random CO2 factoid, a 747-400 airplane produces about 70kg of CO2 per hour. So these generators made the equivalent CO2 of a 747-400 cruising for about 345 days.
It’s 22 hours to fly to Sydney, so this is also equivalent to about 7 return flights to Sydney (if we overlook take-off and landing), but all within Bell Green.
Looking at carbon offsetting, we can pluck another estimate of CO2 absorption by a tree, which is about 1 tonne for a mature tree over 100 years. So I guess Aldi need to plant about 747 trees and wait 100 years.
If someone can make this into a witty info graphic and tweet it at Aldi, I’d be very happy
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Genius!!! Does this include the land to plant them on?
Has anyone checked to see if Aldi have actually planted any trees by way of carbon offset or taken any other measures?
They certainly haven’t planted trees in the Bell Green area…
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Is there space for 747 trees in the Bell Green area?