Rushcliffe Solar

Rushcliffe Solar started as a Transition West Bridgford campaign to encourage greater use of Photovoltaic home power generation systems in Rushcliffe borough, but we are always willing to answer an enquiry from other towns in the region. There are many buildings and entire streets with roofs which have a good view of the Sun and could produce power for the Grid and Income for the occupants. Hit the You Enquire tab to get a free appraisal of the photovoltaic potential for your building. Email: RushcliffeSolar@gmail.com
If you are thinking about it, do not be put off by recent changes in the tariff!: Since April 2012, the tariff was reduced to 21 pence/unit and ones on poorly insulated buildings get only 9 pence/unit. There have been further reductions since. Use the Expertsure calculator to check out your house and see if it is still worth doing.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Displacing solar power to store

1 Nov 2011: In the last year, I have been asked many times about whether one could cream off peak power in summer for storage. Well my reply has usually been that I thought it was unethical, as the public are subsidising us with a generous Feed in Tariff, and we have a duty to deliver some clean energy. With the change of FIT rate to something less generous, it is time to consider some of these storage ideas.
Carl of Prescient Power told me of a smart controller which is capable of reading the curve of the daily power generation, comparing it with the amount that is being used in the house. When the roof is peaking, the controller can direct power to something else - the best example would be an immersion heater which is a form of storage. If you were baking and ironing that day, it would decide that there would be no need to cream off spare energy. Another place to dump power would be to run to a battery charger, from which one can run night functions like lighting (using an inverter). The disadvantage of this is the same old one, that one has less spare power when you most need it, in the Winter when one needs longer hours of lighting, and more hot water. But it's worth thinking about.

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