Amorphous Silicon Solar Cell

The British Government has made a pledge to cut Britain’s carbon emissions by an ambitious 60% by the year 2050 at the latest. If that’s a pledge that is going to be met, then there have to be some rapid changes. One of the means of cutting emission to this level is by encouraging more Brits to go solar.

At the moment, only 1% of homes in the UK generate their own power using solar pv panels. This is pretty poor, to be honest. It’s especially poor when you look at a country with a similar climate, Germany, and consider that there, 40% of homes use solar electricity generation means. And the weather is a common reason people use not to install solar panels. Yet despite our cloudy climate in the UK, we still get 65% as much solar radiation as Spain gets and 55% as much as there is on the equator! So really, the weather is no excuse.

In order to encourage more of us to install solar PV panels and generate our own electricity, the UK Government’s feed-in tariff comes into play in April 2010. The idea behind this is that businesses and homes installing solar PV panels will be paid for every single unit of energy they generate – this includes energy they use themselves! They’ll be paid at premium rates depending upon the type of system they have. In addition, they will be paid at even higher rates for the units they generate and use themselves.

Because of this, the reduced electricity bills and the fact that solar pv panels can add around 10% to the value of your property, solar panel installation has become a particularly attractive investment, rather than a costly expense. The feed- in tariff means that the average return on solar panels will be 8% a year!

And that is certainly what the Government hope. Their ambitious pledges at the Copenhagen climate convention at the end of 2009 must be met and solar panel installation is looking like the most promising means of making it happen.