Editors' blog
Anna Simpson, 9 Mar 2010
In last week’s episode of ‘Lark Rise to Candleford’, two women vied for a rare opportunit...
Solar farm to transform Welsh city's skyline
Newport council outshines UK Government on solar power
Swimming pools, sports centres and schools are being eyed up as sites for a new ‘solar farm’. The Welsh city of Newport plans to pitch large-scale photovoltaic arrays on all public buildings, after a report found “great potential” on the rooftops. One sure target is the Velodrome, which will use power on-site from its 8,500-square-metre roof, while installations on other civic rooftops would feed sunshine back into the grid.
The plan, outlined in Newport Council’s Sustainable Development Proposal, takes its lead from the Moorland Park Community Centre, which won a 50% grant from the Low Carbon Building Programme to install a 2.75kWp system with 14 modules. The array was completed in June last year.
The initial report estimates that each 200W panel will generate 750kWh a year, to be sold back to the contracted supplier (currently EDF) at 10p a unit, generating £75 per year. This would pay back the cost of installation in less than 15 years, and then generate profit over the remaining ten years of the panel’s life.
Newport’s solar skyline is clearly ahead of the game, with the UK warranting only a D grade in a nation-by-nation report on PV progress. The report, by Green Cross International, found “no significant support for solar growth” in the UK – while France, Spain and the US all walked away with Cs, and no others matched A-grade Germany.
Germany currently has the highest capacity in Europe at over 5,000MWp, but Spain is catching up quickly with the fastest rate of improved capacity, according to the EurObservER barometer. The sunny kingdom added 2,600MWp to its PV total last year thanks to a feed-in tariff that proved profitable for large-scale plants. – Anna Simpson
2 July 2009
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Sunny outlook for Newport?
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Sunny Newport
I am a little concerned that the Newport Council have calculated that the 200Wp Solar PV panels generate 750kw per year. Surely the figure for this part of the UK is no more than 750kw to 850kw for a year for 1000Wp group of panels.
Correction
Jim Waters is quite right.
A 1kWp array made up of five 200W PV modules should produce between 750 and 800kWh per year. A 200W PV module will only produce between 150 and 160kWh per year.
The error appears in the original report. However, the author, Alex Nicholls, has confirmed that the calculation was indeed based on an array of five 200W modules. As the payback period was also estimated according to the cost of a five module array, it will not be affected by the error.
The article should therefore read:
The initial report estimates that each 1000W array will generate 750kWh a year, to be sold back to the contracted supplier (currently EDF) at 10p a unit, generating £75 per year. This would pay back the cost of installation in less than 15 years, and then generate profit over the remaining ten years of the panel’s life.