Solar panels and energy crunch forum

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Fossil fuels provide us with a great source of energy.

The human race has built up an unsustainable reliance on fossil fuels, and it is estimated that if we continue to consume these supplies at the current rate, the cost involved in sourcing and processing fossil fuels will be prohibitive to use in domestic homes. The environmental cost of using fossil fuels is also significant.

With fuel costs rising, fossil fuel supply’s diminishing and the impact on the environment becoming more and more obvious it has never looked more attractive to look at other viable, cleaner ways of sourcing the energy for our homes rather than using fossil fuels.

After the initial investment has been recovered, the energy from the sun is practically free. It is a misconception that solar panels only work with direct sunlight, because solar panels will heat water even on an overcast day which is excellent news for us in the UK.

Solar-powered hot water heating systems should now be viewed as a real alternative, providing a large percentage of your yearly supply of hot water without producing any pollutants and with panel life expectancies of 35 years plus our systems offer real peace of mind. By investing in a solar hot water heating system, you will be able to protect yourself against future fuel price rises.

By harnessing the free energy of the Sun with savings of up to 70% on your hot water heating bills. The carbon emissions produced during manufacture are kept to a minimum, and with a payback time on those emissions of just a couple of years, you will be able to relax in the knowledge that your impact on the environment will be significantly reduced, as well.

Although many people install solar hot water to help preserve the earth’s resources, many more are installing the system for economic reasons. At current energy costs, the average payback period for a system is between 6 – 12 years, with a life expectancy of 35 years.

Return on investment for the system is typically to generate a saving of around £35,000, for a cost of £5 – £7k. And that is at current prices. If, as the DTI predict, domestic fuel prices continue to rise at an average of 28% per annum over the next decade, as have done over the previous one, this return on investment will be massively understated.

Britain could face blackout as soon as 7 years

Britain could face widespread blackouts in just seven years, when nuclear and coal power stations are phased out, due to them coming to the end of their service lives..

This was the warning from Professor MacKay, currently a researcher at Cambridge University, who is soon to become the government’s new energy advisor.

Speaking today, MacKay said, the UK faces an enormous building project to construct alternative power stations to fill the energy gap. We will be left with as coal, and nuclear power stations are taken off the grid.

There is a worry that in 2016, there might not be enough electricity. My guess is that what the market might do is fix that problem by making more gas power stations, which isn't the direction we want to be going in with current climate change problems.

We should be upping the build rate of the alternatives and promoting micro generation such as PV solar panels as soon as possible.

MacKay said that the public is largely to blame for the energy deficit we will face in the next decade because of widespread opposition to wind farms, nuclear power, and energy imports.

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The UK energy system is a mess

If you were designing a 21st Century system you would have the opposite of what we have now: crumbling power stations, little renewable power, 99 per cent of customers with six suppliers, antiquated metering, and little energy efficiency: Britains homes are the least insulated in Europe.

In some ways, the problems of the energy system mirror those of the financial system. Everyone seemed happy with short-termism; politicians were content that households had low bills for the first half of this decade as Britain tore through its vast gas reserves, pumping out supplies on the cheap to thermally wasteful homes.

Decisions about replacing old nuclear power and coalfired stations were delayed. A crucial strategic move into renewable power was half-hearted.

Just as banking and household debt cannot forever rise, such an unsustainable system cannot last. The energy crunch has arrived.

Britains gas reserves have dwindled, making the UK more dependent on supplies from abroad, but increasingly, from volatile regions of the world, compared to the last century. The power stations have to be replaced, or the lights will go off. Climate change can no longer be ignored.

All this means that up to £20bn of investment is needed and bills will have to rise, by between 20 and 60 per cent in the next decade, before sliding back downwards.

Over the next decade, bills will certainly have to rise, to fund the newer, greener generation we have been dodging for a generation. The £1,140-a-year bills being charged by the Big Six suppliers now are not funding this vast new investment (that’s why bills ultimately have to rise).

Suppliers will announce bumper profits this winter and shareholders will be the ones that benefit. As the Local Government Association discovered last year, in 2007 - at a time when the Big Six were moaning about rising wholesale costs and investments in new power stations - they funnelled an extra £257m to shareholders, £75 per home.

A future energy system must be greener, with more renewables and more efficient, and that costs money.

Boring measures like wearing jumpers and turning down the heating, ensuring every lightbulb is a long-lasting eco one, lagging lofts and draughtproofing doors and windows slash bills.

For the five million and rising Britons who will not be able to afford this new green future, better social tariffs should be introduced.

We at Heat my Home have been warning of the up and coming energy crunch for some years now. Most people who buy solar panels from us are not buying for environmental reasons anymore but are buying for energy reasons. The more people invest in this technology:

1. The greater our chance of reducing climate change effects for later generations. 2. The better we will be prepared for peak oil and the energy crunch problems.

One things annoys me about climate skeptics.

Even if the sun is playing a part in global warming (which it is not) that does not excuse mankind's destruction of the planet.

We are emptying the sea's, causing a mass extinction of animals and destroying natural habitat for our own selfish needs, which will undoubtedly cause problems for our own species down the chronological timeline.

Viruses destroy their own hosts and end up destroying themselves, as a result. Are climate skeptics any different?

Found this story, which if true, is truly frightening. Richard Branson has blown the whistle on our situation, which politicians are too scared do.

Ofgem has estimated that by 2016, the energy bill in the UK could have risen 60 per cent to £2,000 per year. That increase would represent more than 10 per cent of household disposable income once essentials such as housing, food and clothing are usually taken care.

As an example, UK energy bills increased by 16 per cent since 2008, yet again raising serious concerns about the affordability of energy in this country. Alot more people are going to feel the energy crunch over the coming years!