I Like Solar Power

I wish the technology could evolve soon and we can get rid of fossil fuel energy for good.right now,the output of solar or renewable energy is just not enough to make it happen

The problem is not the solar arrays but their siting.

Obviously we need reduce the amount of carbon-dioxide we release into the atmosphere (not "carbon"!), but we need sensible and sustainable answers to that problem, and destroying prime agricultural land is not one of them.

A letter to my local paper recently suggested one possible alternative is to use the arrays as roofs over big car-parks, such as outside supermarkets.

They are a great thing and deffo climate friendly plus normally put on land only fit for sheep that farmers can leave in the land once installed and the sheep have a handy shelter from bad weather 😀

you will find that like a lot of things, you won't notice them after a while....

Nuclear Energy is far more reliable in terms of energy production than a Solar Panel. Unlike Solar Panels, you aren't going to stop producing energy because it is Night time, too cloudy or just not getting enough sunlight to be worth a damn.

I actually think its weird that its still common for houses to be built with oldfashioned roofing... all new buildings should have optimized roofs and solar on top...

additionally... all new electrical infrastructure should be capable of all new electrical flows.. .which is still not the case, let alone that the old infrastructure should be upgraded to accommodate all these new sources...

and why not build new water towers to function as hydrolic batteries? charge them during day time, and regenerate during the day edges when electricity is used most...

I would prefer the site of solar fields, and windmills, as opposed to oil fields, and coal mines.

As a roofing contractor I have seen the change to accepting panels on the roof. First with heating water and then to produce electricity. I have both. Being able to do the installation myself helped tremendously with cost. My 10 kw system is on line to pay for itself in 4 years.

Having lived on a farm my entire life I don’t disagree with panels but I find it bizarre they waste very very good farm land for these when putting on the side of a hill or land that’s very bad would be far more sense keeping the good fertile land in production

They had lots of orchards in stoke where I grew up, not stoke on Trent, the little village in medway, anyway I digress, they got rid of all the apples and pear trees, now it's a solar farm! I think it looks really cool in s way, all futuristic and shit, but apparently they make more money farming energy than selling fruit

THE UK really doesn't get enough sunshine to warrant it, lol...

Being a 'small' island we should have been looking at harnessing wave power for years now.

It seems silly to cover fields, when there are so many rooftops that could be covered by solar panels.

FPL recently went on line in our city
Now thousands are getting their power from solar

Natural energy

[c=#008099]
I almost invested in a solar-for-sale project on my property in Ontario Canada, which at the time meant that everything I produced could be pumped into the grid and I would receive payment for my investment at the end of each month.

My own electrical needs could either be tapped-off what I was producing privately, the remainder being sent on to the grid, or I had the option of purchasing ALL of my electricity from the grid and paying the rack-rate just like everyone else was doing. The only difference was, I could generate more solar energy than I could use myself, therefore I could still make a modest sum of money even after deducting what I would spend by purchasing my electricity separately and paying the rack-rate.

Despite the electrical constraints on an already obsolete hydro-electric system and associated grid network which originates in Niagara Falls Ontario Canada, the electricity provider got it's back up when private citizens were making money from producing solar energy with no investment in the grid itself, such as the wires and wooden poles that obscure our otherwise pristine landscape.

As well, a phenomenon called 'brown outs' would occur in the summer months when everyone used too much electricity, which was basically the sudden dimming of lights when you needed them most or electric clothes dryers suddenly taking twice as long to dry a load in the middle of the afternoon compared to at night.

Yet despite those so-called 'brown outs' occurring at peak times, the government in their infinite wisdom, decided that the electric utility monopoly was correct in their assessment and concluded as well that private citizens were making way too much money producing solar electricity, those same private citizens having invested nothing at all in the grid itself beyond their property boundary.

So, the government cancelled the incentive program for private citizens to generate solar energy to be sold to the grid, even after many people had invested close to half the value of their house in the government sponsored solar-for-sale initiative in Ontario.

Problem is, these rather large solar investments which were mounted on roof tops and set up as free-standing sun-seeking solar platforms, produced more power than the average household could ever hope to use in a month as the sun kept producing solar energy endlessly. Those same solar investments on rooftops however, did not ever come equipped with storage batteries to collect the solar power as it was being produced, because the solar energy through design was intended to be immediately sent out to the grid the moment it was produced. In other words, the grid itself became the 'storage facility' for all the solar power that was being produced.

With no home ever being equipped with solar batteries to store the solar power during the original installation however, it meant that using one's own solar energy could only happen in daylight hours but not at night! What this meant was an even further investment in solar storage batteries which amounts to about 25% of the value of the average house in Ontario...

At the end of the day, the homeowner who made the solar investment in good faith, was actually paying double for electricity as a result of now owning a depreciating investment on their rooftop, than they would have paid had they purchased ALL of their electricity throughout any given day at peak electricity rates, regardless of their time-of-use being day or night!

So yes, I love solar energy too, but I'll give you a heads up after I've figured out how to do this without having to reinvent the wheel just to keep the lights on and the clothes drying without involving the government! [/c]