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Monthly archives: April 2010

We have teamed up with one of the UK’s leading Photo Voltaic installer and Distributor to enable us to offer you this amazing Solar Investment.

This company is enabling UK investors to take advantage of a new opportunity unlike anything previously accessible, which will appeal to individual investors, savers, businesses and financial institutions alike

You can now purchase an investment-grade, high-yield Solar Power System (SPS) along with the UK Government-guaranteed right to income from the energy it produces.

How much does it cost?

A single payment of £16000 (plus VAT at 5%) gives you ownership and the rights to any income generated by the SPS for up to 25 years. If you choose to retain ownership for the full term, the payments you receive would repay your capital outlay and produce an additional average return of 7%.

What Is The Return?

Through the SPS, investors and savers can gain a guaranteed income for 25 years which is index-linked and will provide an average return of 7% per annum, by taking advantage of the government’s Feed-in Tariff Scheme (FITS) scheme, also known as the Clean Energy Cash Back scheme, which came into effect on 1st April 2010.

Click Here For More Information

Energy company E.ON has announced that they will me making full use of the Clean Energy Cash Back scheme in bringing in a solar offering to its customers. The Cash Back scheme which came into effect on April 1 is essentially a feed-in tariff system offering small scale renewable generators cash for money used on site and better rates for money fed-in to the national grid.

E.ON plan to utilize the newly introduced legislation in order to offer their customers what they term the ‘SolarSaver’ scheme, a consultation, survey and installation service for solar photovoltaic products.

E.ON hope that their SolarSaver scheme will act as a sound investment product over 25 for its customers with expectations that it would take just 12 years to break even with 13 subsequent years of profit on the project.

According to the energy company, they claim that this projection is based on the fact that a 2.1kW solar kit costs around £11,350 and would be capable of generating around 1.5kWh p/a. Homeowners would expect to save in excess of £24,000 over the project’s lifespan with the added bonus of helping to offset their carbon footprint on fossil fuel energy savings.

A turnkey product is expected with E.ON stating that their solution will offer homeowners advice on the suitability of their home for solar paneling, consultancy for application of planning applications and advice for customers about entitlement to grants and other government schemes.

Phil Gilbert, spokesman for the SolarSaver scheme announced,

“We’ve all got a role to play in bringing down our carbon footprint and we’re helping our customers do that. With the long term benefit provided by the new Feed-in Tariff they’ll even make money back.

Adding, “This will be the first of many exciting new propositions we’ll have for our customers, giving them the power to produce their own heat and electricity from lower carbon sources.”

For full information about similar investment schemes offered through solarfeedintariff.co.uk please visit: http://solarfeedintariff.co.uk/solar-investments/

George Monbiot’s recent guardian article got me thinking about the nature of research and development in the photovoltaic industry and how R&D has been impacted by feed-in tariffs in Europe.

Having worked in photovoltaic research both in a university laboratory and industry I have some experience of R&D. The field of photovoltaics certainly falls into the category of applied research, meaning that the ultimate goal is not only to gain new knowledge, but to bring new products onto the market that improve the world around us. To achieve this however, there is a long journey that must be undertaken – getting a new technology onto the market is a multi-stage process.

Of course every new idea is different, and no new technology undergoes the same journey (whatever people say, there is no clear line between the terms ‘research’ and ‘development’). There are some features however, that are common in technology commercialization processes:

At the beginning is painstaking fundamental research in a laboratory. This may not even involve making a prototype but for example may simply consist of measuring an effect in some new material. Many, many ideas are proposed, tried and rejected for every idea that makes it past the first step. This is the most creative part of the process, which is why it attracts so many brilliant minds, but the most that can be achieved here in real terms, is some suggestion that a concept has a chance in the outside world.

From the initial conception of a new technology, extensive tests must be carried out in the lab to show feasibility of the idea. Once all the tests that can be done in a laboratory have been done, it is time for the research to outwards and beyond, and into the development stage. The challenge is to take the small-scale prototype closer and closer to what might be considered a real product using a real manufacturing process. In the photovoltaic cells, those made in the laboratory are often tiny (smaller than a postage stamp) and fabricated using methods that are totally unsuitable for large-scale production.

Laboratory research however, is relatively very cheap compared to the later stages of development. The big hurdle for scientists is to find the money to pay for the next step in the development journey.

Whilst more money in basic research is always welcome, there are a number of defined funding bodies that scientists can apply to for laboratory research. UK universities have so far been fairly successful in attracting funding to expand research for renewable energy research in recent years. What is much less clear however, is who will pay for the later stages of development when a technology is ready to leave the lab, but still has someway to go before it is proven on a large scale. Often there are a lot of big technical challenges to go from small to large-scale manufacturing, and one can never be sure that it will be viable at all until you try. With new types of solar cells, often this expansion happens in several stages, with multiple, progressively larger production lines being built. It can get VERY expensive.

This gradual scaling up of a laboratory process is not usually paid for by government sponsored R&D programs – building a manufacturing plant is seen as a commercial exercise. Scientists are therefore forced to go to the private sector and do battle with venture capitalists and the like to get the necessary funding. For this reason, many promising technologies never make it out of universities at all.

The painful truth is that the scale-up process is absolutely critical to getting a technology onto the market. Without this step you may as well not have bothered inventing the technology in the first place. I know from experience that there are hundreds of extremely exciting new types of solar cells sitting waiting in laboratories around the world. The bottleneck is and always has been raising finance for the expensive scale-up process.

In the last few years however, since 2004-5, there has in fact been a remarkable inflow of venture capital money in solar energy. Certainly not all, but many solar companies have managed to raise money to take their technologies from the lab to manufacturing. Venture capitalists (particularly from Silicon Valley) and corporations across the world have poured billions into the hands of solar cell scientists to take their technology on to the next step.

What caused this sudden surge in investment in solar energy? Certainly it wasn’t a shortage of revolutionary ideas for solar cells – the concepts that were given financing have been around since the 1970s. My belief is that it was a direct result of the German feed-in tariff that was implemented in its current form in 2004, shortly before the investment frenzy began.

Almost overnight, Germany became the single largest solar energy market in the world, and has remained so ever since. In 2009, over 60% of all the world’s solar panels were installed in Germany. The feed-in tariff guarantees a market for solar energy products and this is exactly what investors are looking for to reduce the risk of a new technology. There will always be technical risk, but the feed-in tariff means that at least if a new technology does work, investors can be sure there will be someone to buy it.

Many of these internationally funded new solar panel companies decided to build their first production lines in Germany. Examples of such companies are First Solar, Nanosolar, Avancis, Q-Cells, Sunfilm, Signet Solar, ErSol, Johanna Solar… I could go on. Each of these companies has raised hundreds of millions of dollars to build factories that produce new types of solar panels. Even the companies not located in Germany have all open their first sales office there.

Of course not all these companies will be successful, in fact Sunfilm recently announced it would go into administration, but that is the nature of developing technologies. The process of designing and inventing a new factory, and then using it to make good reliable solar panels takes such a long time. Despite this, First Solar has just entered the S&P500 with billions in annual revenue, and several others are in their footsteps. There is risk, but without trying you don`t have a chance. The prize is great for those who succeed, and often the experience an expertise gained in failure is not without value.

My opinion is that the feed-in tariff is great for encouraging investment in the scale-up stage of R&D, which is very poorly funded in the UK. Laboratory research will continue, and governments should not cut back spending on universities. However, if a government wants this early stage research to eventually make an impact on the economy, they have to find a way to support expansion stage R&D, and introducing a feed-in tariff is very good way to do this.

With the Queen granting Gordon Brown permission to dissolve parliament, the speculation can now stop and the hype begin; the general election will be on May 6. With this announcement the debate has already started, generally focusing on the key issue of the day, namely the world financial crisis and how the party leaders plan to reverse the trend in job cuts in the UK.

Afghanistan, the NHS, education and crime will almost certainly be hot topics for discussion. Even the issue of reducing the tax on cider distracts readers of certain tabloids from the more relevant problems of the day.

These issues aside, the three main party leaders, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg have asserted that they are the ‘greenest’ party (perhaps excluding the Green party) and that they will each strive to set in motion the carbon neutral revolution of the economy in the next five years. During the next four weeks we are certain to read much boasting from the respective parties regarding their green manifestos but what are we to expect?

Conservatives

Energy: David Cameron has stated on numerous occasions that he doesn’t see nuclear power as a long term energy solution for the UK, insisting that he would prefer to see greater investment in renewable energy as a means of transitioning from fossil fuel energy sources.

With the EU setting a target of generating 20 per cent of energy from renewable sources by 2020 the Conservatives have supported the development of green energy sites from an executive level. David Cameron has long been an advocate of green energy and a supporter of the feed-in tariff mechanism as a way of driving investment in new technologies. 

Emissions: Ambitious targets have been set with the Conservatives announcing that they will set carbon reduction targets of 60 per cent by 2050 which would be monitored on a year to year basis by an independent climate change commission.

If elected into government the Conservative leadership has plans to replace the climate change levy with a system based on how many units of carbon a company emits rather than how much energy it uses. This, they believe would incentivise businesses to go greener, sooner.

Vehicles: Conservative plans to reduce emissions from UK roads include taxing drivers on how much they use their vehicles. They have also announced that they will employ measures such as reducing the average emission of new cars to 20g/km by 2022 and set an average for all cars by 2030.

The Conservative Party has also opposed the congestion charge in London and all road pricing across the country, however it remains unclear whether they would actually abolish the charge once in power.

Labour

Energy: Having already established the department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) which has overseen the recent introduction of the Clean Energy Cash Back scheme, Labour plan to move further towards green energy generation and intend to make all homes carbon neutral by 2016. The feed-in tariff which came into affect on April 1 is a mechanism which will seek to boost investment in renewable micro-generation, offering small scale generators guaranteed, premium rates for energy fed back into the national grid. The scheme introduced by the DECC will be carried on beyond the May election with hopes within the party that micro-generation will become a typical feature of the British energy industry.

Emissions: The Labour party has already set a target of reducing CO2 emissions 60 per cent by 2050 with a more short-term target of 26-32 per cent by 2020. Unlike the Conservative plan for annual emission assessments, Labour instead wants emission targets to be set and reviewed every five years as ‘carbon budgets’. In the past Labour has supported EU proposals of reducing carbon emissions 20 per cent by 2020.

Vehicles: Famously introducing the London congestion charge, Labour wish to extend the zone around the capital and want to implement the same scheme in other British cities as a means of combating congestion and pollution. Road pricing will become a Labour mantra with plans to charge motorists for the amount of time they spend on the roads.

Liberal Democrats

Energy: Going along with the European Union, the Liberal Democrats have set the target of producing 20 per cent of all energy from renewable means by 2020 with further targets of 50 per cent by 2050. The Liberal Democrats do not however believe in the use of nuclear power and have set out that they think that the money building new nuclear facilities would be better spent on renewable energy plants.

Emissions: The Lib Dems have set out emission reduction targets of 60 per cent by 2050. Nick Clegg’s party have announced that in government they would levy a carbon tax which would be payable by all consumers not involved in the emission trading scheme, something which they believe would make a real difference from a grass roots level.

Vehicles: The Liberal Democrats have proposed a dramatic rise in tax paid by motorists in the UK with plans to raise top payments from £215 p/a to £2000 p/a in a bid designed to encourage people away from their cars and into public transport. The Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) would be scrapped for less polluting cars and duties would be halved for vehicles owned by those in rural households.

Part of the plan to entice the British public away from their cars is being reflected in proposals to invest in public transport. Public transport funding would come from road pricing and congestion charges in and around the UK’s busiest cities.