Solar Power

What I think is a shame is the low take up of solar panels on commercial property roofing in the UK (with some notable exceptions such as some major railway station projects). As I understand it this is down to the tendency to leasehold nature of such property which makes long term investment less financially attractive - this doesn't sound insoluble. Here in Cornwall there's a huge local outcry against the amount of farmland being put over to solar farms (it's not actually very much land area, but it does seem to have upset people) - it feels as if the same area could have been fitted to commercial / industrial roofing and been rather more popular.


Sadly the one direction our house does not face is anything vaguely like south!


Of course, as with all energy issues there's the question of whether solar panels offer a "whole life" greenhouse gas reduction, i.e do they take more fossil fuel energy to build than they save, this thread has just made me look this up and there's a nice article here http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13728 that suggests that yes, they have now passed that break even point through advances in technology and larger scale manufacturing.


There are those who dismiss solar panels and wind power as "irrelevant", my feeling is that with the rise of electric cars they may become very relevant!


Cheers,

Andy

What I think is a shame is the low take up of solar panels on commercial property roofing in the UK (with some notable exceptions such as some major railway station projects). As I understand it this is down to the tendency to leasehold nature of such property which makes long term investment less financially attractive - this doesn't sound insoluble. Here in Cornwall there's a huge local outcry against the amount of farmland being put over to solar farms (it's not actually very much land area, but it does seem to have upset people) - it feels as if the same area could have been fitted to commercial / industrial roofing and been rather more popular.


Sadly the one direction our house does not face is anything vaguely like south!


Of course, as with all energy issues there's the question of whether solar panels offer a "whole life" greenhouse gas reduction, i.e do they take more fossil fuel energy to build than they save, this thread has just made me look this up and there's a nice article here http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13728 that suggests that yes, they have now passed that break even point through advances in technology and larger scale manufacturing.


There are those who dismiss solar panels and wind power as "irrelevant", my feeling is that with the rise of electric cars they may become very relevant!


Cheers,

Andy