Guest Blog

From 1 March, solar arrays installed with inverters that do not comply with G83/2 may lead to the DNO refusing to connect your project. Martin Cotterell explains what installers should be looking out for and how to prepare for the new requirements.

Finlay Colville analyses the current trend for supersized solar farms and asks whether we can expect for it to continue in the future.

Ben Cosh takes a look at the best way of hitting the UK’s renewable energy targets within the constraints set out by the £7.6 billion Levy Control Framework.

Where do you sit; are service and maintenance visits to a solar PV system a necessary and worthwhile exercise, or just a waste of money? This was the question posed to me today by a customer. My answer was: “Well that depends on the system, the installer and the way the system is behaving.”

Large-scale solar PV installations in the UK grew by an incredible 600% during 2013, driving the UK to a record 1.45GW of new solar PV capacity added.

In a year when large-scale, ground-mounted solar dominated UK deployment, it may come as a surprise to many that the UK ended up in sixth position globally for the most solar PV capacity installed in the small-scale segment.

Now I don’t know if you were affected by the power cuts over the holiday period, but some of the media coverage regarding the power outages made me consider the attitude we have to our electricity supply.

Ben Cosh of TGC Renewables explains why Treasury is missing the point; solar (balanced with gas) can still do the heavy lifting that offshore wind can do (balanced with gas), and at a cheaper cost.

Ian Lucas, MP for Wrexham, explains how “catastrophic” solar policy has caused Christmas heartache for 615 of his constituents

Potential Induced Degradation (PID) is a topic that’s been around the PV industry for a while, but until fairly recently I had not been paying it that much attention. This changed for me at Solar Energy UK 2013 in Birmingham when a manufacturer giving a talk said they had seen evidence of PID reducing output in a particular system by 60% – yes 60%!