Guest Blog

Chris Laughton, Managing Director at the Solar Design Company, takes a detailed look at the impact of the new MCS guide on shading calculations.

One of the key financial policy measures introduced as part of the FiT reviews last year was the automatic degression of solar PV feed-in tariffs, linked to national installation targets being met.

Following the publication of the updated MCS guide, I have been inundated with questions. On this page I will try to keep an updated list of the most common questions.

On the day of the launch of government’s flagship Green Deal, Paul Williams from Freetricity gives a personal perspective on the coalition’s environmental commitment.

There seems to be a bit of a dichotomy around solar energy in the marketplace at the moment. On the one hand, research suggests that consumers want more solar solutions with a recent YouGov survey saying that 72% of respondents still favoured solar power. But on the other hand, deployment figures seem to suggest that people aren’t opting for solar.

More than a third of people think making money is not as important as protecting the environment and would install solar PV panels, even if there was no financial benefit.

In light of the new Solar PV guide, Martin takes a look at the various methods installers can record a horizon or shade line onto a sun-path diagram.

“What regulations do I need to study when designing a grid connected PV system?” is a question I get asked fairly regularly. The answer isn’t completely straightforward, but the following documents are good places to start.

Another week and another knee jerk reaction from The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). Faced with the prospect that take up of Green Deal home improvements could be as low as 1.5 percent DECC – which would much prefer to be just plain DE – has panicked and promised to throw £125 million at householders in an attempt to ‘kick start’ the program.

Many people aren’t aware that subsidies have long been part of the energy sector. We started having subsidies for fossil fuels a long time ago, and we still have them today.