PV solar panels for a crazy world

This week Caroline Lucas MP uttered a profound sentence as being arrested for protesting against fracking in Southern England this week. “Fracking is the dying breaths from the fossil fuels industry,” she said while debating the issue.

To frack or not to frack?

As someone who can understand both sides of the fracking debate currently gripping the nation at the moment, I can see a country wrestling with its conscience.

For those who watch the news and see protesters passionately making their voices and views heard reminds me of the fuel protests of 2005. Both are consequences, or as I call them first tremors, of much more significant danger, called peak oil. A Pompeian style disaster was looming over the whole world, and like the Pompeians, the threat was there every day, but mostly ignored or misunderstood.

Protesters who gather at anti-fracking demonstrations are on the whole, attempting to stop the energy industries from extracting another form of CO2 which would exacerbate the global heating problem. Read the rest of this entry »

While enjoying a pint during a country walk, I was distracted by a conversation occurring behind me about solar panels.

Do solar panels work well in the United Kingdom?

Interested to hear a stranger’s point of view about my beloved subject, I kept an ear on the conversation whilst admiring the beautiful Welsh countryside around me.

It didn’t take long for the conversation to steer around the effectiveness of solar technology within our varied British climate.

Resisting the urge to break my silence and introduce myself as an enthusiast for solar panels, I listened carefully to the conversation as the eldest of the two gentlemen begin to sing the usual myths surrounding this technology.

Read the rest of this entry »

The long-awaited confirmation of a feed-in tariff like the incentive for solar heating panels has been confirmed this week by Greg Barker of the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

Solar heating panels are child’s play.

Using the already existing feed-in tariff for photovoltaic solar panels, introduced by the last Labour government as a template, the Renewable Heat Incentive scheme for solar heating has been long-awaited by the UK solar industry. It gives me great pleasure to introduce you to the confirmed tariff payment of 19.2p per kWh for heated solar output over a period of seven years once a system’s installed.

This incentive is available to homes and businesses who install solar heating including evacuated tubes and flat-plate solar panels that produce heat for water tanks, central heating and swimming pools. Read the rest of this entry »