Fast Track Review On Feed In Tariffs

You may not be following the industry news in the UK on and I guess many people visiting FreeSolarPanelsUK.co.uk will only have a mild to passing interest in what goes on behind the scenes. To keep it simple the government are fast tracking a review on solar projects over 50kW in size. Read into this that they will be dropping support or severely cutting back on funding for these large scale projects.

I did initially set up this site to provide fact based information to hopefully encourage people in the UK to better understand and take up solar as a practical green solution to the UK's energy problems. With so much going on now I feel I needed to add a commentary and opinion section to the site in order to fully cover what could be a defining moment in our countries energy policy.

The UK Energy Problem

It's nice to think that successive governments have had the people's long term interests at heart. Unfortunately each government manages to sink us deeper in debt and leave us even less well equipped to deal with our own energy problems.

We have managed to squander our oil and gas reserves and at the same time manage to keep energy prices high and not implement an alternative that doesn't leave us at the whims of other countries. We are solely dependant on oil and gas and we get this energy source from other countries.

Every year like hungry puppies we need more and more leaving us venerable to the mood swings in Europe, Russia and the Middle East. Not that I am a fan of nuclear but at least it would have been a practical alternative if we had kept up with developments. Now we can't even decommission our own aging reactors without help from the French.

Britain has one of the richest sources of natural renewable energy potential in the world. We are ideally suited for wind power, have great wave and tidal power potential and could easy meet all our electrical energy needs with solar alone.

Carbon Reductions

The feed in tariff was only realised as a way to help meet the government's carbon reduction targets. There was no real long term joined up thinking as to how it would all pan out. Hence the panic review that is now being undertaken.

The short sightedness and short termism of successive leaders means that we are always running to catch up and always behind other countries. The equivalent of the FIT scheme has been running in Europe and the US for decades, Germany in particular has had great success. We don't even make our own solar panels in the UK anymore.

What Is Wrong With Large Scale Solar Farms?

I can understand why the government should tackle the problem on foreign investors building solar farms on Greenfield sites in order to claim the lucrative tariff payments. In the UK such large scale project on our limited food growing land is not sensible and does not generate jobs, at least not here in the UK.

In this country solar panels should be located on roofs. Such large scale projects should be on public buildings. This would feed cash back into the public system and provide power efficiently to where it is needed during the day rather than feeding it back into the grid.

We want to be reducing our need to burn coal and gas to produce electricity only to lose half of it as heat through our network of inefficient power lines.

Developing The UK Solar Economy

Funds should be directed to developing the UK solar industry to not only create jobs but a sustainable future. Solar panels do not last forever so we will always need to replace them.

We should be encouraging the use of solar tiles on new builds. They are less obtrusive and also do the job of a slate or concrete roof tile.

With such large economies of scale solar would soon rival and even surpass fossil fuels in terms of price. Even if you didn't take into account the real cost of using fossil fuels.

Make Your Voice Heard

I have tried not voting for them but it doesn't seem to work, so instead if you want to lend your voice to the support of solar in the UK you can email your MP to support renewable energy. It only takes a minute, and your email will whisk its way to your local MP.