PV

Manchester-based property developers, Willan Investments ltd, now benefits from a 22.5kWp solar array after Cruden Energy Supplies fitted the solar system to the roof of the neighbouring offices.

Wiston Estate in West Sussex has installed a 50kWp solar array to help generate renewable energy for its winery.

West Kirby Residential School is hoping to teach its pupils a lesson on the power of renewables after solar panels were fitted on the school’s roof by Williams Renewables.

Toyota’s Burnaston manufacturing plant near Derby, now boasts a 4.1MW ground-mounted solar array. The array, which is large enough to cover 12 football pitches, will provide enough electricity to power the construction of 7,000 hybrid vehicles a year.

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.