New data has revealed that British installed solar power capacity has now surpassed 3 gigawatts as of April. This means the UK now ranks among the top ten solar producers, with Germany in first place with thirty-six gigawatts installed. Meanwhile, China is the fastest growing country when it comes to installing solar panels.
Britain’s installed capacity in the first quarter rose by 189 megawatts according to new data published by the Department for Energy and Climate Change on Thursday. UK solar PV capacity at the end of April 2014 stood at 3,179 megawatts across 551,939 installations.
The reason solar power is becoming so increasingly popular is because there are so many benefits to this kind of renewable power source. Working by capturing the sun’s energy using photovoltaic cells, power can be continually produced and contrary to belief, solar technology can even produce some electricity on cloudy days. These cells convert sunlight into electricity via a semi-conducting material such as silicon. As light shines on a cell, it creates an electric field across its layers. The stronger the sunshine, the more electricity produced.
As bills continue to rise year on year, this is one sure-fire way for households to offset the cost of powering their home. As sunlight is free, you’re only really paying for the installation and your electricity bill will be significantly reduced. In fact, you can even be paid for the electricity you produce via the government’s feed-in tariff so you can make money as well a save it. If you produce more electricity than you will use, you can simply sell the surplus to the grid.
When looking for a way to power your home efficiently, solar power is an ideal choice because wherever you are in the country, there will always be sunshine and daylight to use to power your home. This isn’t always the case with other renewable energy such wind and water power.
Solar panels are easy to install and can be fit to most homes. All you need is a good south facing space on your roof and no overhanging trees blocking the sunlight or likely to dispense leaves. As long as you keep the panels fairly clean and in good view of year round sunlight, you should have all you need to power your home via solar power.
With fossil fuels slowly running out and becoming increasingly expensive, it is becoming more and more vital to find energy efficient ways to power our homes.
