Martin Cotterell founded his solar installation company, Sundog Energy, in 1995. A veteran of the industry who likely requires little introduction, he has worked with groups including Greenpeace and the British Antarctic Survey and played a key role in creating a 2012 guide to PV system installation used by UK accreditation service MCS.
There has been a great deal of expectation placed around the growth of the UK energy storage industry, especially as support schemes for solar have been drastically cut back. There are over 700,000 residential PV systems already on UK roofs and in the initial phases of the market, selling storage to many of these potential customers could present a significant early adopter market.
In a guest blog for Solar Power Portal and our sister site Energy Storage News this time last year, Cotterell talked about the need to sell storage systems responsibly. Following on from his recognition that more needed to be done, Cotterell worked with the National Solar Centre to produce two guides to using and installing storage optimally, especially when paired with PV systems. One guide is aimed at consumers and available free of charge, the other is a paid-for document aimed at installers.
Those guides were published at the end of January. We spoke to Martin Cotterell as he worked on them, and asked for his quick take on some of the issues covered. He also spoke about the ongoing role of the industry in educating customers at both commercial and residential scale about the options available to them in making their energy supplies clean.