Blogs

Last week saw the official unveiling of the long-awaited third revision to the MCS PV installation guide. Peter Bennett gives a summary of the key changes.

Yesterday marked the beginning of the ‘Restarting the Market’ series of Solar Power UK roadshows. In front of a sell out crowd in Sandown Racecourse, Energy Minister Energy Greg Barker took to the stage to once again deliver a keynote solar speech.

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.

The solar industry is dragging the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) back to the High Court, this time with revenge on its mind.

In many ways the UK solar industry will be happy to see the back of 2012. Fast-track reviews, legal challenges, reference dates, consultations and RO banding reviews all loomed large over industry.

As the solar industry begins to wind down for a much-deserved holiday break, I thought it might be an appropriate time to take a look back at 2012’s most read stories on Solar Power Portal.

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.

It has been 50 days since DECC closed its consultation over proposals to slash the available Renewable Obligation (RO) rate for large-scale solar to 1.5 ROCs. Yet it appears that industry is still no closer to knowing what the RO rate will be from 1 April, 2013 to 31 March, 2017.

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.

The long-awaited Energy Bill was finally presented to parliament today. The bill included a number of factors that are set to significantly impact on the UK solar market.