PV

The Great Yorkshire Show is now home to one of the largest solar arrays in the area after the completion of a 245kWp solar array at its headquarters in Harrogate.

“Feed-in tariff cuts ‘will kill solar industry stone dead’ ” shouted the headline in the Guardian way back in October when the Government announced its solar subsidies strategy. Fast forward nine months and the solar energy market, although battered and bruised, still offers one of the most viable investments around today.

Edible Futures, a Bristol-based community food project which grows edible plants in order to make community gardens which transform marginal land into productive space, is set to receive a unique solar tree. The tree will provide electricity for the nursery that will power a rain-fed irrigation system.

The latter months of 2011 and first half of 2012 saw global investment in renewable energy reach new, unprecedented heights. Solar power has now surpassed wind power as the most popular renewable technology for investment and here in the UK our solar market emerged onto the international photovoltaic (PV) scene thanks to the tried and tested method of feed-in tariff (FiT) reduction.

Bright Spark Solar has recently completed a 36kWp solar installation atop Plum Baby’s office building in Taplow.

Solar manufacturer Trina Solar has now completed the installation of a new solar system at the headquarters of the Lotus F1 Team in Enstone, Oxfordshire. Capable of producing more than 30,000kWh of solar energy each year, the system will be used to power the new Lotus F1 Team simulator, which reproduces lifelike driving conditions for research and optimisation without putting a real car on a racetrack.

The Collection Building in Lincoln now features a 4.80kWp array of solar panels, installed as part of a £1.1 million project designed to reduce the museum’s energy bills and reduce CO2 emissions.

Sun & Alternative Technology Ltd (S.A.T.) has recently completed a 228kWp solar installation at Eastfield House, Huntingdonshire District Council’s CCTV control room, printing services, building control teams and the refuse and recycling fleet.

Chiltern District Council has installed solar PV on the roof of the King George V Council Offices and the Chesham Leisure Centre in a bid to reduce rising energy costs and their dependence on electricity suppliers. The project was completed by InstaGen in November 2011.

One of the most popular events occurring on the fringe of the Intersolar PV show in Munich last week was a half-day session on the future prospects for PV deployment within the UK,organized by Solar Media, Ltd. under the banner of Doing Solar Business in the UK.