Renewables
For the past 150 years mankind has been extracting and burning the buried fossil fuels of the planet. Many of those fuels are not plentiful any more and increasingly arduous steps are being taken to extract the last pockets remaining. All fossil fuels create greenhouse gas emissions when burnt; the resulting increase in overall temperature is expected to seriously harm the biodiversity of the planet. Predictions range from species extinction and increased famine to near complete ecological collapse: the future is uncertain.
Renewable technologies are a bridge between an unsustainable world and one that can live in harmony with its basic components. Renewable technologies come in many guises and sizes from an old windmill that pumps a well to an underwater turbine in the North Sea. Many renewable technologies only work intermittently, solar being one of them. So a mix of these technologies is necessary with an intelligent grid that can balance them.
Solar is one of the few technologies that is cost effective at domestic sized levels, wind, wave and tide being better suited to larger installations. From the UK’s perspective over 1/3 of the total potential for solar is on domestic homes and garages (in excess of 20 TWh), 5.5 TWh of potential is found in small systems on commercial buildings, while 8.5 TWh is considered available from stand-alone systems on poor quality agricultural or brown field sites.
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