Countryside Renewables will begin the 5 MW Solar Project

Countryside Renewables, a company specialized in the development, acquisition and financing of solar, wind and natural projects (CRL), which has a great experience in the field, they financed over 1 billion euro projects in solar and wind energy projects all over Europe, just managed to get the permission to build a 5 Megawatt solar project in Exning, Suffolk.

 There were a lot of possible alternative sites for the construction in the United Kingdom, over 500 locations were screened for the project, but in the end Countryside Renewables picked the Exning location, which is surrounded by trees on all sides so the neighbors who own properties in the area will not be affected by the forthcoming project.

 Over 22 000 of photo voltaic panels are to be installed in the beginning of 2013, when the project is expected to start, yet CRL was not able yet to provide us with the information about who the supplier will be. The 5 Megawatt installation will be finished by the end of June, 2013, if everything works as planned.

 When the project will be completed and fully functional, the energy generated by the 22 000 solar panels will be enough for powering over 1200 homes, with an estimated 5 GWh of solar power produced every year. This is much more than needed in Exning village so the residents will have the capacity to be completely off the grid, and entirely fed by solar power.

 Countryside Renewables claims that the project will provide reactive power control to the grid, making it one of the first solar projects in the United Kingdom which has that feature.

The managing director of Countryside Renewables, Mr. John Dunlop told us that the project is "Well located" and the electricity produced by the solar park will be significantly cheaper than the power provided by offshore wind parks.


For more information and news about solar energies in the UK, you may visit here anytime: 

http://www.solar-energy.co.uk/

The Suppliers of Photo Voltaic Panels in UK Prepare for Large Scale Demand Surge

The major chains of photo voltaic panels  in the United Kingdom received the news about the changes in RO rates starting in the April of 2013 with great interest, as they may lead to a very possible increase in their revenues, also the suppliers of balance-of-sytems (BoS) components  in the market are bursting with joy for the Q1' 2013 possible windfall.

 Solarbuzz , an important renewable market  analyst, drew a report calld UK PV Market Entry Guide:New Revenue Opportunities, according to the newly published document, a very important pipeline of hundreds, even thousands of megawatts of large scale, ground mounted renewable technology infrastructure was developed in 2012. And the expected reduction to the RO rate will determine the developers to continue the investments in the solar energy/renewable sector, thus leading to a significant surge in demand for the cheapest materials off-the-shelf.

 The president of Solarbuzz, Mr. Finlay Colville presented the situation in the following terms:

“Explosive PV growth in 2011 and 2012 was dominated by residential installations benefitted by attractive feed-in-tariffs. However, the focus at the start of 2013 will change rapidly to megawatt-scale ground-mount installations as installers seek to beat the end-of-March cut off deadline.”

And the market analyst Solarbuzz predicted that the large scale push will determine the United Kingdom solar panel market to go over 1.6 gigawatts  in 2013. Keep in mind that the UK's photo voltaic market grew by over 94% in terms of capacity installed in just 2 years, the last two actually.

 The impressive growth was fueled by the United Kingdom's  solar policies, mainly the solar support mechanism called FiT&RO, it was  so efficient  that the UK entered the top 10 most reliable global photo voltaic markets in both 2011 and 2012.

 Due to the fact that the UK market, according to Solarbuzz analysts, has a lower financial risk than other PV markets, it is expected for many major PV manufacturers and suppliers to plan long term strategies for the United Kingdom renewable sector.

 Solarbuzz  also said about the capacity of the UK's market potential to even outperform the already very optimistic predictions for 2013, as Mr. Coleville said :


“Energy costs remain a highly emotive issue within the UK. Consumers continue to prioritise investments to hedge against inevitable rising electricity prices. So long as PV system pricing continues to decline, there is a strong possibility that the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s Impact Assessment goal of 22 GW by 2020 can be reached.”

Mr. Coleville also told us that the United Kingdom's photo voltaic market is no longer an emerging market, we can talk about an established one,and the companies playing in the renewable field will have to adjust their strategies  in order to cope with the leading downstream installers  and the developing projects the future will bring.

 To quote Mr. Coleville:

  “By the middle of 2012, there were more than 4,000 certified PV installers in the UK,” “This made it very difficult for overseas PV suppliers to decide which companies to forge long-term supply relationships with. The growth of the ground-mount segment will assist in filtering down the list of downstream survivors, with many of these companies participating in the Q1’13 demand pull over the next few months.”


You must realise that the NPD Solarbuzz UK PV Market Entry Guide: New Revenue Opportunities report is based on an exhaustive data base in which over 100 of the leading companies  are listed and ranked across a range of categories.

 For more information and news about solar energies in the UK, you may visit here anytime: 

http://www.solar-energy.co.uk/

 

 

Eco2Solar chooses Acorns for charity of the year 2012

The well known solar panels installer Eco2solar just made a public announcement about this year's nominee for the charity event of 2012, the Acorns Children's Hospital which will benefit from a generous subsidy.

 Eco2Solar will make a donation in sum of £10 for each solar panel that will be installed on the Hospital's premises by the company. The benefit will run until November 2013 and there will be a monthly fund raising event organized by Eco2Solar in the local community which is expected to contribute also for supporting the project.

Mr. Ryan Mee, the Sales and Operations director of Eco2Solar commented on the event:

"We have donated a significant amount of money for a range of charities through regularly fundraising activities since the launch of the business in 2007,”

 He also mentioned:

 “By adopting a chosen charity each year, we will be able to make much more of a difference.

Acorns is a fantastic charity and the funds we raise will directly help life limited children and their families throughout the region by paying for vital care and support services.”

 Eco2Solar has high hopes for this project, they expect to raise £5,000 from donations, the money will be used to subsidy three more hospitals in the area which are also run by Acorns, I am talking here about Birmingham, Black Country and Three Countries. 

The Corporate Fundraising Officer at Acorns Children’s Hospice, Ellie Griffiths, made the following statement regarding the event:

“Acorns relies heavily on fundraising, donations and the support of businesses like Eco2Solar to provide care for life limited children and support for families, including those that are bereaved. Families do not pay to the charity’s services but it costs £750 per day for each child’s care.”

 For more information and news about solar energies in the UK, you may visit here anytime: 

http://www.solar-energy.co.uk/

  

New Feed In Tariffs Rates Come Into Play

Big news folks, we have new feed in tariffs rates applicable for solar PV technology, effective as of 2 November 2012. This information was confirmed by Ofgem and you can see them at the end of the article.

 The CEO of Freetricity made a strong point against the tri-monthly degression model enforced by the UK  Government, he stated that:

“With only around 1000 solar installs being done across the whole of the UK in the first three weeks of August  - two per installer company - and a solar industry on its knees,  a further digression of the FiT programme in November will just heap more misery on the green energy sector .

"This at a time when Government are wanting to promote the green deal, desperately need economic growth and job creation and are encouraging businesses like Freetricity to export our knowledge and expertise to new markets. In order to flourish, the industry needs German and American style tangible long term consistent support.”

If you take a look at the data you will see that the new rates for the residential FiT are insignificantly cut, just over half a pence, from  15.44p/kWh from 16p/kWh and the commercial Feed in Tariff was cut with a mere (almost) half a penny,  to 13.1p/kWh from 13.5p/kWh, meantime for the big businesses the tariffs remained unchanged.

 But due to the rising costs of electricity in the recent months, even these small cuts in the Feed In Tariff may create a come back for investments on solar photovoltaic projects, at least that's what Dr. Chris Jardine, the Tech Director at Photovoltaic installer Joju Solar hopes:

“We’ve seen a 3.5% cut in feed-in-tariffs on residential and small commercial buildings. But at the same time, we’ve seeing electricity prices rise by as much as 10 per cent in October which more than outweighs the cut in feed-in-tariffs and makes the return on investment from solar projects higher than it was this time last month.”

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) revealed in October this year the quarterly energy statistics which shows that installations under the feed-in tariff (FiT) have reached 1.3GW across the UK, and the solar installed power under the FiT scheme in the first 9 months of 2012 reached 747.586MW .

You can see the full document from Ofgem here.

For more information and news about solar energies in the UK, you may visit here anytime: 

http://www.solar-energy.co.uk/

Description	FiT rate p/kWh
0-4kW	15.44
>4-10kW	13.99
>10-50kW	13.03
>50-100kW	11.50
>100-150kW	11.50
>150-250kW	11.00
>250kW-5MW	7.10
Stand-alone	7.10
Export tariff	4.50