Solar PV is amazing. It enables you to generate clean energy and reduce your dependency on the grid. The technology of Solar PV has vastly improved since 2010 and the inception of the feed in tariff, when almost everyone went Solar bonkers.
I say almost everyone, as one ex employer of mine failed to grasp the potential of solar PV and the feed in tariff (FiT) until the FiT was reduced dramatically. At the time, I was becoming tired of having my Solar PV business cases batted back with the usual risk averse questions of “But what if the FiT gets reduced?” or “Sounds a bit too good to be true?” or “You know what, I am just a thick bastard who won’t admit I don’t understand this’”
To be fair, the FiT was too good to be true. You got paid to generate your own power, which also lead to a reduction in your electric bills. Not only that, if your solar array was beneath a certain threshold in size, your export level was assumed to be 50%. You didn’t actually export any power whatsoever, as to do that would in most cases mean upgrading your meter.
So how can we maximise the potential of Solar PV.
Time for a little story. Long ago, in a galaxy, far, far away a young Jedi Knight (Energy Manager) installed three, 4Kw solar PV arrays. All of which were in the same town. They were all bang on facing due south and none of them suffered from any shading. All arrays were installed at the same time, using the same panels.
One of the solar arrays generated 12-15% more power than the other arrays. This not only confused me, it made the other solar arrays feel jealous, not that I ever admitted to having a favourite. What I went on to realise was that this particular array benefited from a close proximity to a car park. On a summers day as the car park filled up, the solar array received additional sunlight reflecting off the car roofs.
This got me thinking about reflection and its clear potential to increase generation. Naively, I started thinking about strategically placing mirrors to achieve this goal. Utilising mirrors in this way may well sound a bit off the wall although there are many solar thermal systems that use mirrors.
The point I am making is that reflection should be considered during the design process, as currently it is completely overlooked. Particularly as it can raise generation levels significantly. In a previous blog I asked the question…….
“Why don’t we clean our Solar Panels?”
Recently I have become aware of people working in the solar industry mainly on solar farms spending the whole day literally cleaning windows or in their case solar panels. So why don’t we clean our solar panels? I accept there will always be the challenge of access. Maybe it is because suppliers tell us that the rain will keep them clean.
This I find amusing as I am still waiting for the rain to wash the bird shit off my car. Solar Panels must get covered in bird excrement, primarily as they are up on the roof. They must make superb targets for the birds. The birds have probably developed their own gaming industry on the back of solar panels. I can see them now flying in with the Dambusters music playing in the background.
The solar industry does talk about the degradation of solar panels and I wonder if this is partly because we never clean them.
Would you live in a house for 20 years and not clean the windows?
I wonder what the impact on degradation would be if we periodically cleaned them. I would estimate this impact to be around 10-15%. This is something I will come back to once I have some data. However, I will stand by this 10-15% as having seen solar panels close up I was shocked to see how much dirt and grime just sits on them.
“So what is this term Block Chain?”
Well as with most of my blogs it is time for another buzzword. The term block chain describes a group of properties sharing the benefits of a single solar array by being chained together. This came about as we realised that power generated by solar PV that was not either consumed, exported or stored, would be wasted as heat. If we can link properties together, any unused power would pass down the chain.
What a fantastic idea.
Put simply, if you have solar on your roof and your neighbour does not, a simple connection between the two properties would enable unused power from your house to pass to theirs. I accept you may want to meter it and engage some form of current protection. There may also be the typical British bureaucracy of becoming a small power supplier to untangle. Although this could be avoided by donating the power, free of charge.
However, during the day when you are at work and your house is on a low consumption you could also be powering several other properties. Think what that could do for social harmony.
So there you go, so to speak. To maximise solar PV we should consider cleaning it, investigating the possibilities of reflection and finally popping round to our neighbours to see if we can share some power.
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