I always try to stay away from writing about politics as much as I can, but after finding out what our current Secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs has been saying lately, I simply had to put fingers to keyboard.

Owen Paterson MP.

The cabinet minister Owen Paterson responsible for the countries environmental policies said publicly:

“that global warming would be beneficial”.

Mr Paterson also claimed:

“there would be advantages to an increase in temperature predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change including fewer people dying of cold in winter and the growth of certain crops further north.”

This level of childlike thinking does not stop there as he also added: (more…)

As a kid whose surrogate parent was the 1970s television schedule, I have gone through life with TV pretty much as the backdrop to my life. Even when I first discovered the internet in the mid-1990s, the goggle box was always on in the background.

A warning from the past about TV programming. Edna from Willow the Wisp.

That is why my younger self would be perplexed that I am currently enjoying my second week without my usual daily dose of television and not missing it at all.

I am now beginning to think my lifelong love affair with television is over. I am looking at my ‘Back to the future’ style flat screen telly, and the screen is black and has been for the last couple of weeks.

So why has my futuristic television lost my interest? What happened in my mind on that day where I didn’t reach for the remote and why am I continuing to ignore it to this day. Maybe it’s the awareness of the continued and increasing bombardment of commercial advertising. (more…)

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. (more…)

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.

(more…)

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. (more…)

I have always been excited by new technological innovations, but it has been a while since the solar panel industry has made any substantial innovative breakthroughs, until now.

My new love for thermodynamic solar panels

First impressions of thermodynamic solar panels seemed too good to be true, but upon closer research, the hype around this newest of solar technology did warrant closer inspection. I liked the thermodynamic system so much that I have decided to promote it here within my Power My Home website happily.

This system is a complete solar heating panel technology which surpasses traditional flat-plate and evacuated tube installations by clever use of integrating heat pump technology.

Now don’t get me wrong, traditional evacuated tubes and flat-plate solar panels are both fantastic at what they do, even in the United Kingdom environment, but they do have a noticeable Achilles heel. The ability to work at night, as well as the day, is where thermodynamic technology now supersedes its sunshine loving cousins. (more…)