The number of solar panel installations throughout the UK has almost doubled in a year, as householders and communities increasingly grasp the chance to generate their own power.
There are now almost 650,000 installations ranging from large-scale solar farms in fields to schemes on homes, schools and police stations, with electricity-generating photovoltaic (PV) panels on one in every 50 households in Britain.
Industry body the Solar Trade Association’s chief executive, Paul Barwell, puts the popularity of solar down to falling product costs, easy technology and financial benefits, with home owners receiving “feed-in tariff” payments for power generated.
Residents from a village which was at the centre of huge anti-fracking protests have seen the completion of their first community-owned solar panel project.
A total of 69 panels have been installed on a cow-shed as part of a long-term plan to generate enough power to match the entire electricity use of Balcombe in West Sussex.
Thousands of protesters converged on Balcombe in the summer of 2013 after energy firm Cuadrilla started exploratory drilling for oil, sparking fears that it would go on to frack there.
Just Energy Group has struck a deal with Clean Power Finance (CPF) to sell residential solar electricity.
The agreement will provide CPF’s networks with a large solar sales pipeline as well as access to Just Energy’s 1.6million residential energy customers.
The companies plan to roll out the solar program beginning in the first calendar quarter of 2015 in New York and California, before expanding the offering into key target solar markets across North America.
Scotland’s solar power capacity has increased by almost a third in the past year, according to new figures.
More than 35,000 homes and 600 business premises now have solar photo-voltaic (PV) systems, December figures from regulator Ofgem show.
The capacity of these systems has reached 140 megawatts, a rise of 32% from 106 megawatts last year and a huge increase on just 2 megawatts in 2010.
Brazil’s energy regulator Aneel has set the highest price for wind and solar power at an energy auction this month.
Regulators set a ceiling price and developers bid down the coast they’re willing to deliver electricity, with the lowest winning long-term contracts to sell power.
