Solar Panels on the Roof
Only in the UK you say? Pity
We, a family of four, have produced 92% of our electricity usage from the roof of a century-old terraced house in south-east London - laying to rest the idea that Britain is not sunny enough for solar power.
I am fairly sure that I would have noticed if anyone was doing this round here. And, no, it is not only in the UK - the Germans, he says, are doing it even better.
The up front investment seems a bit steep - and why am I not surprised that the government there backed off sharpish once the take up rate showed thay had made it “too attractive”. Britain generates a lot of its electricity from coal and will have to start importing natural gas again as its own supply of North Sea gas is dwindling. So you would have thought that a bunch of householders volunteering to provide some additional green generating capacity would be good news.
It also seems to me to much more popular than anything to do with run of the river hydro, which was supposed to be so much better than big dams but now seems as popular as a root canal.
It has been a while since I toiled in this field, but I do recall an exhibition in Delta where the residents lined up to complain about Delta’s by laws which prevented them from even heating their water with the old fashioned black panel type solar heaters (I had one of those back in Ontario).
I thought the behavioural stuff was interesting too - but then no-one interviewed the family about Dad’s obsession with turning things off. I can just imagine the eye rolling when he talks about hair dryers. (Of course, I do not even own such a thing.)
The weather in London is not greatly different to here - although they get much less rain (it used to average 24″ a year in our school weather station). We are further south (49 not 51 like them) so that might help too. Although I do not recall snow in April in London
yea solar is great but—–I don`t believe there`s enough roof top in eco-density to suffice–housing here is so expensive now-another 200.000.00 would leave more people out in the cold!—all builders would have to make it the norm,to get prices down—also jim kunstler(clusterfuck nation) says the fancy solar panel alloys are becoming scarcer and scarcer— also here in bc we have plenty of hydro( despite campbells fear mongering) and bc hydro ( crown corporation ) makes a nice tidy profit—–that goes to hospitals and many other things—–so no provincial goverment here in bc will ever support that idea! however places without clean hydro-electric should check it out! unfortunately,idiots are in charge——I was reading those peak oil charts -and the tar sand production takes 25% of alberta`s water and 4% of canadas natural gas to produce, as well it burns one barrell of oil to produce 2 last but not least—-I saw a car ad today that blew my mind— it started by saying ” do you want to reduce your carbon footprint ” my ears perked up — it went on to say —-”if you buy a car from us we will plant a tree ( singular) along I-90 I believe thats in washington state I believe carbon offsets and trading has turned into a sic joke signed……………………………..and its not funny
CBC (I think) had a segment on an Ontario homeowner who had installed solar panels, one problem was that the payback period is currently about 100 years, Still, it must be satisfying to see the electric meter actually run backwards when you’re supplying power to the grid.
The are over a dozen grid-tie solar photovoltaic systems in the Lower Mainland. The group I work with (www.vanrenewable.org) has worked on five of them and we are currently in the process of doing three more.
One of the homes we worked on in North Vancouver has a net-zero annual electrical bill from BC Hydro (the solar system meets 100% of their needs).
We don’t see more because BC has some of the cheapest electricity in the world. And we don’t have the advanced feed-in tariffs that they have in places like Ontario, Germany and Washington State.
Germany produces more electricity from solar photovoltaics than anywhere else in the world. Yet, they have less annual sunshine than we do in Vancouver.
Ontario pays up to 0.42/ kWh for solar PV electricity so the payback is much less than 100 years (more like 25).
Solar Hot Water is becoming more popular here. The solar hot water installers currently are having trouble keeping up with the demand.
Thanks Rob. I knew the we had cheap electricity but I thought the BC Liberals had ended that policy with their breaking up of BC Hydro and requiring all new projects to be private sector.
I read somewhere a little while ago that a California company has made a major discovery in “printed” photovoltaics that allows it to produce PV in rolls of thin printed film, a far less expensive technology that rigid silicon cells.
If this breakthrough survives the commercialization process (and if Exxon Mobile doesn’t initiate a hostile takeover with the purpose of killing it), then we may witness an order of magnitude leap in sales. Some of this film may be slightly transparent which could make those tall glass towers into energy generators.
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