Energy From The Sun
The Sun not only provides this planet with light each day, it also gives out heat, which is every bit as important to our survival. The heat energy emitted by the sun in one hour could meet the earth’s energy requirements for a whole year were we able to harness it. We do have the technology to utilise some of that energy through the use of Solar Photovoltaics (PV) Panels, which captures solar energy and converts it into direct current (DC) electricity. Using an inverter, the Direct Current (DC) electricity generated can be converted into Alternating Current (AC) which can then be used in the same way as electricity generated by burning fossil fuels. The difference being that Solar Energy does not create greenhouse gases which threaten the future of the planet and unlike fossil fuels will never run out.
Individual households who choose to install PV solar panels on their roofs will be able to use the electricity generated to save on electricity bills and potentially earn small amounts of money by selling power they have generated but not used to their electricity supplier. The other alternative open to households is to add storage batteries to their installation which would allow them to store electricity generated during daylight hours for use in the evening or overnight. Installing PV solar panels and batteries carries a substantial cost which may be prohibitive to many homeowners and will mean a lengthy pay-back period for those who do install them. Not all houses have roofs or other sites within their curtilage which would be suitable or practical for installing PV solar panels. While individual households can make a small difference to the overall problem of greenhouse gas emissions, if enough homes turn to solar power it could make a significant difference.
This means that PV solar panels should not be overlooked as a means of cutting down our reliance on fossil fuels but we must take a more proactive stance on increasing their usage by thinking of better ways to deploy solar energy sources.
The UK government has announced that by 2025, all new homes will be banned from installing gas and oil boilers and will instead be heated by low-carbon alternatives. This announcement stops short of legislating on alternative energy sources, although heat pumps are being widely mooted as a much greener source of heat for domestic properties. We should not stop there, we should also introduce legislation which requires all new build properties to have PV solar panels built into their roofs and batteries installed to manage the usage of the electricity they generate? A number of manufacturers now produce roof systems which are used as an alternative to traditional roof tiles and allow PV solar cells to become an integral part of the roof rather than having solar panels fitted to a tiled roof. If such systems were to become a requirement, it is not unreasonable to suggest that whole new housing developments could become self-sufficient in generating electricity which would not be restricted to simply heating the individual properties.
If not a government initiative, local authority planners could make this a condition of the granting of planning permission to developers. New housing developments could be required to have houses with at least one south facing roof surface to maximise exposure to direct sunlight. The cost of a solar energy installation is more likely to have less impact on home owners if added to the price of a new property than if it is added to an existing property at a later date. An estimated 175,390 new homes were built in the UK in 2021 and around 200,000 are forecasted for 2022, this offers a substantial opportunity to improve our carbon footprint courtesy of solar energy.
PV solar panel installations are not restricted to single domestic properties, they can be installed in many other areas and we can already see evidence of that with large solar panel installations, or solar farms, now appearing in parts of the country. These consist of hundreds of PV solar panels mounted in rows over areas normally between 50 and 200 acres. The land will be close to either an existing sub-station or overhead pylons so that access to the national grid is simple, otherwise exporting the generated electricity into the grid can become expensive. There is also in many cases, the opportunity to graze sheep in the land between the panels, so that the farmer who owns the land does not entirely lose the use of it. By leasing the land to a suitable developer a farmer can achieve an annual rental of around £1,000 per acre for periods of around 40 years. These solar farms are quiet, producing an almost inaudible hum when the inverter convers the electricity from Direct Current to Alternating Current before passing it into the grid. It is also clean, unlike burning fossil fuels, as there are no fumes, gases or chemicals released into the atmosphere.
Having these solar farms should not deter us from looking at other options for siting solar panels. The two main criteria should be that we need sites that can house a large number of panels and would not impact on any otherwise attractive or useful land. This country has hundreds of miles of motorway, so why not mount solar panels along the central reservations of these, utilising otherwise unused and often unkempt ground. Having miles of panels would mean that instead of having a large acreage of hundreds of panels, the same quantities would be distributed in a line stretching for miles and still easy to connect to the national grid. If suitably mounted, they would have no adverse impact on drivers.
Regardless of where they are sited, solar panels can offer an alternative source of energy which is much less harmful to the environment than energy generated by burning fossil fuels. Around 30% of the electricity usage in the UK is domestic, so to make around 200,000 new homes per year almost self-sufficient by installing solar power and topping that up with external solar farms or other large installations can only be a good move towards cleaner energy. The price of solar panels for installation on existing properties will fall as production of the panels and batteries rise to meet higher usage demands, this makes such installations financially viable for more households.
It must be accepted that solar will not provide enough energy to satisfy the UK’s electricity demand on its own, partially due to it not generating during hours of darkness but when coupled with wind energy and other renewable sources it can go a long way to reducing greenhouse gases.
Renewable energy will not be cheap, solar panels are expensive to buy and will be expensive to install in the numbers required, likewise, wind turbines are costly to manufacture and install. To replace fossil fuels with renewables as the main energy source of a country will require a whole new energy infrastructure and while it is a change we must make to help to save our planet, it will not happen overnight but it can happen more quickly if government and local authorities start to think and act more proactively.