Commercial & Residential Solar

Amid all of the uncertainty surrounding the larger solar power installations at present, it is encouraging to hear that a 99.9kWp system has been completed in Oxfordshire. Spanning two barn roofs, John Woolcock’s farm now features integrated solar technology, which has been developed for agricultural buildings…

Although plans for some of the large-scale solar parks in the UK are going ahead, not all are so optimistic. A solar park intended to be installed on the outskirts of Weymouth is now on hold as the company responsible for developing it waits to hear the results of the fast-track feed-in tariff review.

The Royal Bath & West of England Society has announced that it plans to carry on with work on its 14ha (approximately 5MW) solar photovoltaic park, despite Government’s recently announced feed-in tariff review.

Centrosolar UK has introduced its ‘54-cell Excellent’ module to the UK solar market. From April this year UK customers will be able to take advantage of solar panels containing four more cells than the former 50-cell panels of the ‘S-Class Excellent’ series.

Engineering Recommendation G83 – Recommendations for the Connection of small-scale embedded generators (up to 16A per phase) in parallel with public Low-voltage distribution networks. ER G83 is about to be reviewed and there is an opportunity for the solar PV industry to feed in their comments to this process. I will be sitting on the review committee – and will feed in comments from both Sundog Energy and also the wider PV industry as a REA-STA representative.

Regen SW’s annual renewable energy report has revealed a rapid growth in the number renewable electricity projects in the south west of the UK over the past year. The majority of these installations were dominated by domestic solar photovoltaic installations. However, the report also highlights that Government’s recent policy reviews have the potential to put a stop to this growth.

Well actually we are not at this stage – in fact we are a long way from this stage, but if the feed in tariff gets broken then this is what we face.

Molecular Solar, the spin-out of Warwick University, is working with Imperial College London and several other firms to develop prototype high-efficiency multi-junction organic solar cells. In order to help with the commercialization of this next generation technology the consortium as received a total of £1.4 million in funding from the Technology Strategy Board and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

An interesting development in the feed-in tariff fiasco has been uncovered by Business Green, which has exposed the Government’s silent scrapping of its own solar PV projects. According to the article project stakeholders have cancelled plans thanks to the recent policy u-turn.

So here we are, one year after the implementation of the UK feed-in tariff, and boy what a year it has been. After implementing a generous feed-in tariff on April 1, 2010, Government has made several hasty decisions that have changed the market considerably during the last 12 months. Industry has now reached a point where it will either fight onwards, or pull away. For now, let’s see how the feed-in tariff held up in its first year in the UK.