During Climate Week we’ll be looking at a different renewable technology each day. Good Energy currently supports almost 2,000 independent renewable generators spread right across the country, making clean, green energy from wind, water, sun and biogeneration. These technologies are putting power back into the hands of people, making a difference to climate change and helping to build a renewable future for Britain. So to kick off Climate Week we are starting with Solar PV:

Best suited to south-facing roofs, photovoltaic (PV) cells convert radiation from the sun into electricity.  A typical PV cell consists of a wafer of semi-conducting material, usually silicon, manufactured with two electrically different layers.  When sunlight hits the cell it excites the electrons within the silicon, creating an electric field across the layers and causing a flow of electricity.

Sunlight is all that’s needed to generate electricity from a solar PV array, so it’s an unlimited, clean resource. More electricity is produced on sunny days but the panels still generate on overcast days too - which is good news in the UK!

Choosing the right site is really important because location plays a vital part in the performance and efficiency of a solar PV system – the further South you are, the better it performs, although Good Energy does have pv generators as far North as Thurso near the Northern tip of Scotland. An optimally orientated, un-shaded 1kWp array should, each year, generate approx 850kWh (units) of electricity.

Under the current government Feed-in-Tariff you can get paid for all the units that you generate (even if these are used onsite) and for the exported units.

Click here to read how David Humphrey in West London is generating electricity from the sun.

To find out more about solar pv, selecting the right site and becoming a generator, click here.