News

The Isle of Wight has benefited from the installation of a 1.6MW solar park near Newport, one of the largest power plants on the island.

Alternergy, one of the UK’s largest solar PV distributors, has been crowned top of the Investec Hot 100 thanks to its rapid growth in the burgeoning solar market.

Research from uSwitch.com has revealed that almost 4 million UK households are currently in debt to their energy supplier. The annual report shows that those indebted to energy companies owe, on average, £131 – a 4 percent rise from last year’s levels.

Green Planet Solar has completed a 42kW solar PV array on a rural farm in Oxfordshire. The Banbury-based farm had long been an advocate of renewable energy technologies and had decided to invest in a solar PV array to generate carbon-free electricity for consumption on-site.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has announced the first wave of organisations that have signed up to become Green Deal providers, ahead of the scheme’s launch in October.

Cobham Hall, the original home of The Ashes, has installed a 50kWp solar system on its roof.

In the lead up to April 1 the UK solar industry continued to install at top speed, with more than 32MW completed between March 25 and April 1. This increased capacity has pushed the market well beyond the 1GW mark and now, leading research analysts are predicting that global solar PV installations will grow by at least 3.5 percent and up to 21 percent in 2012 – despite feed-in tariff (FiT) cuts across the board.

Friends of the Earth (FoE) and Solar Century, the main protagonists behind the recent legal challenges over Government’s handling of the solar feed-in tariff, have spearheaded recommendations that ministers adopt an ‘Under-Deployment Trigger’ that would see FiT rates rise if installations fell short of expectations.

The Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has today revealed a new £20 million funding pot, which will help UK farmers, foresters and horticulturalists develop green projects.

In anticipation of the Green Deal rollout, E.ON has revealed a £100,000 funding package to help with the recruitment of 100 energy efficiency apprentices. This commitment follows Government‘s £3.5m fund to train 1,000 apprentices in relevant Green Deal skills.