Blogs

Arc Faults are once again on the agenda at the IEC PV meeting this week. Arc faults in a PV system have the potential to cause a fire – and, sadly, there are a number of documented cases around the world where this has occurred. In considering the issue, three categories of arcs need to be addressed…

Having spent the last few weeks on roofs installing, I am now swapping screwdriver for laptop and heading to an IEC PV standards meeting in Switzerland.

The Government, led by the DECC and Greg Barker, has consistently pushed the message that in these desperate fiscal times it is the best hope to create a sustainable solar industry in the UK. I wonder is it all rhetoric or will the Minister deliver on his promises?

The opposition day defeat has left the solar industry with little option but to brace itself and prepare for the introduction of the new 21p/kWh rate proposed by the Government.

Any ideas of properly determining how quick the TrinaMount system really is has been dashed by the weather this week. Thanks to very high winds, it’s been a real stop-start operation … just too dangerous to handle the PV modules at times.

Thanks to the December 12th FIT deadline its all hands to the pump here – and I am back on the tools for a few weeks. This week’s project is a 50kWp installation on the metal roof of a local auction mart.

Now we have all got over the shock announcement of potential changes to the FiT some people in the industry are saying we should just get on and make the 21p work.

BBC’s panorama show on Monday night was billed as an investigation into the truth behind the UK's rocketing energy bills. Surely a rational, unbiased report from the BBC’s well-respected Panorama show would present the benefits of solar PV and other renewable energies to the wider public, while sensibly explaining the implicit costs to the consumer of supporting such technologies – wouldn’t it?

Greg Barker is misunderstood. He has come under heavy criticism from those within and without the solar industry in the UK and I can see why. It is never easy to be the hatchet man when there is a tight budget in the offing and it is even more difficult to know deep down that the system (political and economic) you are forced to work with is far from ideal and constantly places you between a rock and a hard place.

The announcement this week from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) on solar feed-in tariffs (FiT) came as shock to the solar industry. But this shock wasn’t just from the FiT reduction, as Government had widely flagged its intention to reduce the subsidy designed to make solar panel installations economically viable – even if the size of the cut was larger than had been hoped.