Commercial & Residential Solar

The tiny village of Garrigill, Cumbria, which houses less than 200 residents, has embraced solar technology, with at least half a dozen residents installing a solar PV system from Eco Environments.

The MCS installation database has buckled under the pressure of installers rushing to register systems before December 12, when the axe falls on the current 43.3p/kWh feed-in tariff rate, cutting it by more than half, down to 21.0p/kWh.

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.

DECC has published the weekly solar PV installation and capacity graph that the Minister of State for Climate Change, Greg Barker, showed to the EAC and ECC during Tuesday’s inquiry into the proposed cuts to the feed-in tariff.

Phono Solar modules have received the salt mist corrosion certificate from Inertek Testing Services, in accordance with the IEC61702 standard.

A Shade Greener has installed its 10,000th free solar system this month, a figure that accounts for approximately 10 percent of all installations completed in the UK to date.

Councillor Jo Lovelock has written to the Prime Minister to ask for an extension until April before new cuts to the feed-in tariff come into effect. The letter is a direct response to the Government’s plans to slash the solar subsidy by over fifty percent. The proposed cut to the feed-in tariff rate has jeopardised Reading Council’s £5 million scheme, proposed back in August.

Cuts to the feed-in tariff have threatened Haringey Council’s solar scheme which was set to double London’s installed solar capacity. The scheme would have seen all suitable council-owned properties receive a solar installation in an effort to cut the council’s carbon emissions.

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.