Solar power: a niche or serious energy source for the UK?

Aurora · Post by **Aurora** » 27 Apr 2011, 18:47

The Ecologist - 27/04/11

Much more than just a tool to engage communities in climate change issues, the solar industry argues it could meet between 6-8 per cent of the UK's electricity needs by 2020.

Article continues ...

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 27 Apr 2011, 22:23

6-8 per cent? My PV system meets a much greater percentage of my needs than that.

rue_d_etropal · Post by **rue_d_etropal** » 28 Apr 2011, 09:45

Surely there must be a case for compulsory fitting of solar panels to all public buildings, as well as all those big financial buildings in London. Buying in the quantities required would not only reduce cost, but also inject a lot of money into British solar power industry and therefore actually create joibs locally.

cubes · Post by **cubes** » 28 Apr 2011, 15:06

rue_d_etropal wrote:Buying in the quantities required would not only reduce cost, but also inject a lot of money into British solar power industry and therefore actually create joibs locally.

Or more likely, buying is such quantities would exceed available supply and push up prices for everyone. Might create some jobs for eastern europeans who actually want to work here though.

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » 28 Apr 2011, 23:27

We should be spending money on insulation of buildings before solar panels; much more cost effective. Some of the gas saved can be used to generate electricity until we have cheaper technology available, such as the carbon nanotube based PV panels which are now in the pipeline.

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 29 Apr 2011, 10:30

True; insulation is real bang-for-buck and the more spent on insulation, the less would need to be spent on power generation technologies.

After insulation, the next best investment is solar heated water. Every building, wherever possible, should have it.

For instance, our hot water generation is approaching zero pollution. Locally-sourced wood in winter/totally free hot water when the sun shines/immersion heater as back up, with power from Airtricity.

Post by **adam2** » 13 May 2011, 21:44

biffvernon wrote:6-8 per cent? My PV system meets a much greater percentage of my needs than that.

Mine meets almost all of my electricity consumption, but that is only what I use directly, not including all the electricity used by my share of public houses, restaurants, shops, electric railways, street lighting, and factories producing goods that I buy.

RenewableCandy · Post by **RenewableCandy** » 16 May 2011, 22:35

The trick would be to bung them on office and school buildings, where people go home at night (or are supposed to, if we stick to the EU working time directive!). Then the supply and demand would line up better.

Incredibly, cooling is now a real issue in London offices. I didn't believe it myself, but then I ended up in one by accident. Of course there are much-better ways to do this than solar PV.

Here I'd guess (though we haven't had the best bit of the year yet) our PV provides about 1/3 our annual use. We could get that up to 1/2 if we were more careful but The Family would probably end up referring to me as Stalin

Post by **adam2** » 25 May 2011, 11:13

RenewableCandy wrote:Incredibly, cooling is now a real issue in London offices. I didn't believe it myself, but then I ended up in one by accident. Of course there are much-better ways to do this than solar PV.

Cooling is indeed a very substantial use of energy in a modern office building. Normally very much greater than heating.

The power demand at work for cooling is well over 500KW, for the landlords chillers, many tenants have their own AC installations as well.
More sensible design and use could no doubt reduce this somwhat, but I suspect that mechanical cooling in unavoidable in large modern offices.

Certainly a strong case for grid tied PV to offset some of that.

In many cases, the electricity companies limit how much PV can be fed back into the grid, in order to avoid excessive voltage rise.
This is unlikely to be a limitation in an office building.
Offices use a suprising amount of electricity even when empty or virtually so, for example on a Sunday afternoon.
I doubt that the electricity consumption at work EVER drops below 100KW, therefore up to 100KW of grid tied solar could be installed without actually feeding anything back into the grid, it would simply offset the 24/7 loads.
In practice, I doubt that that there is room for anything like that much, though every little helps.