Solar panels aren’t cheap – they cost thousands of pounds to install. However these costs are said to be offset by the reduced amount of energy that the household will require once they are installed – with some companies claiming that solar panels will reduce gas and electric bills by up to 70%. So although the up front cost is high, over time the solar panels should pay for themselves thanks to significantly reduced bills.

Around 100,000 households in the UK are said to have solar thermal installations already. Experts believe that this figure could rise to around 1 million over the next decade. This massive increase will in part be fueled by government grants which come into play next year. And with people worried about climate change and the rising cost of bills, there will be no shortage of people looking to install this expensive green technology.

However all is not as it seems. Which? has found that out of 14 companies they looked at, 10 exaggerated the claims about the effectiveness and potential savings of their solar panel systems. They found that a typical system costs around £5,500 to install however it will only cut around £55/year from bills. This means it would take around 100 years to recoup the up-front cost. Complaints to the OFT match Which?’s findings with around 1,000 complaints about the solar panel industry last year alone.

So although solar panels do have bona fide green credentials, it appears that many companies are overplaying how efficient the panels will be. Any for anyone who is hoping to save money on their bills by installing them, it is a case of do your homework carefully as in many cases homeowners are finding that the figures are not stacking up.

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It is understood that concrete used to fix some wind turbines to their steel foundations can wear away. This erosion then causes te turbines to drop by a few inches. This fault was discovered at a wind farm in the Netherlands. Wind turbines with single cylinder foundations are the ones which are affected by this flaw.

Energy companies are now looking into the issue to discover how many wind turbines are affected and how badly. Should repairs need to be made to any of the turbines, they will need to be shut down whilst they are being fixed. However it is understood that the flaw is not dangerous and will not affect operational or safety issues.

The bill for fixing the affected wind turbines is unknown – partly because no-one knows yet which turbines are affected.

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Scientists have discovered that birds such as buzzards, golden plovers and curlews are all avoiding wind farm areas. It is believed that the birds are avoiding the area because the wind turbines are acting like big scarecrows.

The impact is currently quite small as there are only a handful of wind farms in the UK however because there is evidence that it is affecting a range of bird species, bird lovers are concerned.

12 bird species populations were looked at in a dozen wind farms around Scotland and northern England. These populations were compared against a similar number of control sites with no wind turbines in the area. Upland areas were chosen because they are places where winds tend to be strongest and are therefore popular with wind farm developers, and these areas also tend to be popular with the UK’s most vulnerable species of bird.

The researchers discovered that seven species of birds tended to stop nesting within half a mile of wind turbines, meaning up to 2 square miles of land are affected by a single wind turbine. A further two species showed signs of avoidance. Given that 12 species were monitored, the research shows that a large number of birds were avoiding wind turbine areas.

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Milan Karki, 18, comes from a rural village in Nepal. The young inventor uses hair as a conductor in solar panels instead of silicon, one of the normal components used in solar panels. Silicon is very pricey whereas hair is not therefore the new solar panels are a lot more cost effective.

Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world. Many rural areas in the country lack any electrical supply and even in areas with electricity, there may be shortages of up to 16 hours a day.

Milan and four classmates have already made a prototype of the new solar panel. It produces around 9V (18W) of energy and costs around $50 to make.

It is believed that if the new hair solar panels were mass produced, the costs would halve and this would make them around a quarter of the price of solar panels currently for sale. The solar panel is currently capable of charging a mobile phone or a pack of batteries capable of providing light all evening.

Melanin, the pigment in hair that gives it it’s colour, is light sensitive and can also act as an electrical conductor. A kilo of hair can be bought in Nepal for about $1.

Milan says his inspiration comes from British scientist Stephen Hawking who described how to create static energy from hair in one of his books.

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The biomass and waste power plant will have the dual purpose of helping the UK tackle climate change whilst also reducing the amount of rubbish heading for landfill.

The construction of the new power plant will take three years and will create 380 jobs during the build. Once the power plant is complete, around 120 permanent jobs will be created.

The new biomass plant will be built by Tilbury Green Power Ltd, a unit of Express Energy Holdings. It’s overall capacity will be 60 megawatt which is about a tenth of the output of the UK’s nuclear power plants.

Biomass plants work by burning materials and using steam created from the burning material to fuel steam generators, combustion turbines, combined cycle technologies or fuel cells.

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The trial was launched in January 2007 and surveyed 57 UK-based domestic wind turbines for at least 12 months. The results of the trial show that anyone considering installing a wind turbine should research local wind speed carefully to establish whether a domestic wind turbine is suitable for their location.

The survey found that wind turbines do work, however they must be properly installed in an area with good wind speed. Wind turbines have the potential to change energy usage in this country – by using wind turbines in appropriate areas, nearly 2 million tonnes of CO2 could be saved thanks to around 3,500GWh being produced. The best place for wind turbines was found to be in Scotland.

Wind speeds were found to be highly variable and difficult to predict therefore it is important to look at best available wind speeds on your land along with wind speed distribution to ensure that the wind turbine is not only viable, but is also located in the best place possible.

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The wind turbine will be visible from the surrounding countryside and houses. Campaigners have said that the turbine will be a blot on the landscape, with others deeming it a ‘monstrosity’.

Dimbleby has responded by saying that he feels the ‘anxiety’ over his wind turbine is misplaced and that he has carefully considered the best place for it to reduce its visual impact. Dimbleby has said that the wind turbin will be below the skyline and therefore won’t be in direct view of any of the neighbours.

The wind turbine is a 12,000 kilowatt turbine and half the power it produces is likely to be fed back to the National Grid.

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At present, the renewables part of power bills stands at around £55 on average. Subsidising renewable energy further could more than double this figure to as much as £120 per year by 2014. The UK Energy Research Centre has predicted by 2050, the renewable energy subsidy will cost the economy £17 billion a year – around £700 per household.

The UK is pushing hard to find more renewable energy sources as the Government has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions from the UK by 34 percent in 11 years and 80
Percent in 40 years. At present, the UK is the only country with legally binding CO2 targets. The UK is facing an uphill struggle with just three percent of electricity currently coming from renewable sources.

To ensure that more people don’t fall into fuel poverty, the Government is also thought to be planning social tariffs whereby the poor and the elderly will not have to pay the full extra subsidy and energy companies will instead by forced to subsidise this cost by adding extra to the bills of better off clients.

To push the green incentive even further, householders may be offered incentives to produce their own energy for example through solar panels. Smart meters may also be introduced to help householders analyse their power use and help reduce it.

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The premise behind the invention is that there are different forms of light around the world – at the equator, the sun may be burning hot however at higher latitudes, the sunlight is a lot weaker. Partly this is because the atmosphere acts as a light filter so the light reaching the ground will vary from place to place, and will also vary according to different atmospheric conditions.

Quantasol is now using a solar cell which makes of use of gallium arsenide (GaAs) rather than silicon which most other solar cells use. GaAs solar cells have already been used in space successfully.

Quantasol take their solar cells and add indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) to tiny pores across the surface of the solar panel. Each of these pores can be tuned so that they absorb light at particular frequencies that aren’t being absorbed well by the rest of the GaAs cell. This means that the efficiency of the solar panel should increase because the InGaAs pores are able to absorb more of the light in the particular area.

In tests, Quantasol’s new solar cells have broken as 21 year old efficiency record for one type of solar cell. The peak efficiency was measures at 28.3 percent when light 500 times the strength of standard sunlight was shone at the solar panel. Although the result is just one-tenth of a percent higher than the previous record holder, the record has stood for a massive 21 years so it represents a good step forward in solar cell technology.

The main problem of using GaAs in cells instead of silicon is the cost – silicon is a much cheaper material. However Quantasol’s solar cells don’t become overloaded as quickly as silicon solar cells therefore smaller, more efficient cells can be built using Quantasol’s technology.

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Energy grids need to match supply and demand for energy as closely as possible – too much energy and there could be an overload, too little energy and there may be power cuts. Many renewable energy sources such as wind or solar power are notorious for having wildly fluctuating outputs meaning that as more and more renewable energy sources come online, grids are going to have to start being able to cope with these less reliable energy sources.

One solution to this problem is known as the Virtual Power Plant. These virtual power plants consist of many small generators mashed together in the grid to form a unit akin to a power station. The small generators can be a mix including sources such as solar panels, biomass power stations, hydroelectric dams or wind turbines, and can also include the energy from people who have their own renewable energy source in the back garden and are selling their excess energy back to the grid. The amalgamation of all these smaller sources is then treated like a conventional power plant.

This virtual power plant can be created by subtly changing the monitoring systems currently in place in our energy grid. Home users may also be able to benefit by selling their energy to the virtual plant which is currently offering them the best buy price.

Small trials of the system have already taken place in the UK, with further trials set for Spain in the near future.

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