Renewable Energy meeting on 16 November

Renewable Energy Technologies and their financial incentive schemes
Tuesday 16th November 2010
7pm for refreshments, prompt start at 7.30pm


SNC Training, South Notts College
Mere Way, Ruddington Fields Business Park, NG11 6JZ


The third in a series of free evening events:
Short talk and experts to answer your questions


The talk will cover:

• Generating your own electricity via Solar PVs and wind turbines
• Ground and air source heat pumps
• Solar hot water, wood/pellet stoves and boilers
• FITs and RHIs (i.e. the financial incentives)

First, Talk by: David Hill - Carbon Legacy
followed by the chance to put your questions to a panel of suppliers and independent experts, including David NC from Rushcliffe Solar.


Please email info@wbecohouses.co.uk if you are likely to be attending: it is not obligatory, but it helps with planning the refreshments and leaflet printing.


Directions: Follow Mere Way through Ruddington Fields Business Park. Pass the first SNC building on the left, and take the next turning to the second SNC Training building. It has a distinctive suspended curved wall with car parking beneath it. Park here or on the roadside.


Buses to Ruddington village: Ruddington Connection (Trent Barton) & No. 10 (Nott City Transport)

For more information about the Eco House Group, go to http://wbecohouses.co.uk

For more information about Rushcliffe Solar, please email RushcliffeSolar@gmail.com 

The WB Eco House Group is a project inspired by Transition West Bridgford: www.transitionwb.co.uk

Doing it the big way - 504 panels on one roof!

30 Oct: Here is a link to an article about a farmer in Cambridgeshire - he installed 504 solar photovoltaic panels over 736 square metres on a massive barn.
It is arranged in 36 strings of panels, with 12 inverters. It would produce something like 100kW on a sunny day and being due south at 22º it will work at its best in midsummer.
http://www.fwi.co.uk/Articles/2010/10/16/123991/Britain39s-biggest-barn-mounted-solar-PV-switches-on.htm
I often see these massive warehouses next to the M1, and wonder why they can't all be photovoltaic power stations - maybe it needs a national effort like the building of the National Grid to make something like that happen.

Post 20 Oct situation with Renewables

20 Oct: Despite this day being a much feared day (for budget cuts), and one that will have many consequences in other parts of our life and economy, there is a small glimpse of relief, in that the situation for renewables is presently unchanged.
The Good Energy website sums it up well, Feed in Tariffs will continue in their present form for PV, and the Govt will continue with intended plans for the Renewable Heat Incentive.
    The degression rate - the rate at which the rate of FiT payment is reduced annually - might be reduced a bit faster than the originally proposed 7%, but this can only be good for those who get their panels up before 2012. The degression system was always intended to encourage early adopters, and discourage the "We'll wait until prices come down" brigade.

Installation in West Bridgford

13 Oct '10: One of the first people to come to our outdoor solar surgeries in July, let's call her Ms JJ, is now happily living underneath 14 solar PV panels. These were installed by EvoEnergy some time in September. We, the team of Rushcliffe Solar, wish her many years of happy FIT payments and reduced energy bills!

Solar boat to circumnavigate

29 Sept '10: IN case any of you enjoy a link between photovoltaic power and boating, please enjoy this link!
http://www.ecorazzi.com/2010/09/29/worlds-largest-solar-boat-kicks-off-round-the-world-voyage/
In case you want to sail one of your own, try the Virtual version on:
http://www.virtualregatta.com/index_planetsolar.php

Birmingham houses to get Solar panels

3 Oct '10: Birmingham has announced a major programme (£ 100 m) to instal PV solar panels on houses.
"Plans to fit power generating solar panels to council-owned properties in Birmingham will be pushed forward this week after the council agreed a "green new deal" scheme covering 10,000 homes.
     In the biggest proposal for retrofitting houses through an energyefficiency upgrade yet seen in the UK, the council agreed a £100m proposal last week designed to create jobs and meet the city's ambitious targets for reducing carbon emissions."

Read more at the Guardian page

Installations in Rushcliffe

3 Oct '10: DNC writes: Tim Saunders of the Energy Saving Trust has sent us the sustainable energy installation statistics for Rushcliffe Borough. These date from April 1st, the beginning of the Feed in Tariff.
   It seems there have been 49 installations, totalling a value of 125 kW (averaging to about 2.5 kW each). I am sad to see that there is not a single 'commercial' installation of PV in the time - if we were in China there would have been dozens! The householders of Rushcliffe are gradually getting the message, but not the institutions or businesses.
   There has also been one domestic Wind Turbine worth 5 kW and a commercial one worth 10kW somewhere in the borough.
  Looking at the East Midlands as a whole, Rushcliffe seems to be doing quite well. Rushcliffe is a rural borough smaller than an 18th of the East Midlands, but domestic PV installations of 49 (125 kW) out of a total of 914 (2.371 mW) across the whole region seems quite good.

Which panels to choose?

2 Oct '10: We get quite a lot of questions about 'Which panels to use' - this is difficult to answer, as it takes 25 years of living with them to know if a class of panels is truly successful, and what the replacement percentage may have been in that time. Some panels are tested merely by quick 'Flash' tests, and that says nothing for the reliability of the panel or the responsiveness of the manufacturer to technical queries or claims.
  David Hill of Carbon Legacy has written a long and detailed article on Rushcliffe Solar site about some of these questions.  http://rushcliffesolar.blogspot.com/p/panel-details.html