The Government tries to redefine sustainable development to meet its own agenda

Yesterday we had our first day of blue skies and unbroken sunshine since May 1st, and our solar PV system installed last November recorded a new high for a day’s energy generated – 25.67kWh, beating the May 1st figure of 24.08kWh. What’s interesting is that the peak power in the middle of the day in [...]

We’ve just submitted the quarterly meter reading of the electricity produced by our solar PV system so we can receive our Feed In Tariff (FiT) payments. The good news is that – thanks to a sunny April – the system is on track to meet its design output for the year. The bad news is [...]

Well, not exactly, but the unseasonal run of unbroken sunny weather we have enjoyed recently has been good news for the solar pv system we had installed last November. In the preceding year, our electricity usage averaged out at about 350W, or 8.5kWh every day. Our system – with a theoretical rating of just under [...]

Interesting thought: if your house was heat-proof, once you’d heated it to a comfortable temperature, you could switch off the central heating and never switch it on again. In fact, you’d need to open the windows from time to time to let the heat generated by everyday living escape. Government figures for 2009 show us [...]

If you install a solar PV system in the north of England, the models show that you’ll get the least electricity production in the winter months of November, December, and January. The combination of short days, sun low on the horizon, and cloudy skies all conspire to restrict production to around 15% of production in [...]

Well, we finally got there today. Convinced by the ethical and financial arguments in favour of generating our own green energy, we’ve been waiting for the installation of a solar PV system on our roof. The team arrived on November 4th to carry out the installation, only to find out that the surveyor hadn’t spotted [...]