Lower costs and battery technology offer hope – but industry says it needs support

“I’m 87% self-powered today. Yesterday I was 100%,” Howard Richmond said, using an app telling him how much of his London home’s electricity consumption is from his solar panels and Tesla battery.

The retired solicitor lives in one of the 840,000-plus homes in the UK with solar panels and is part of an even more exclusive club of up to 10,000 with battery storage.

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Richmond and other solar households should reap a windfall this week because of a forecast of sunshine and blue skies, which could result in renewable energy records being smashed.

Solar has grown rapidly in the UK’s power mix. A decade ago it provided virtually nothing; now it regularly generates about a fifth of the country’s electricity for hours on a summer’s day.

Electricity generation from solar panels reached a peak of 9.38GW last Friday, edging close to the record of 9.42GW. The highest percentage of power to ever come from solar was 28.5% on 6 May – and last Sunday came come close with a 27.5% share.

However, the household market has been dubbed the “solarcoaster” by industry, because of the booms and busts driven by the feed-in tariff regime, the main government support scheme, which started in 2010.



Those incentives were slashed dramatically at the start of 2016, largely killing the financial attraction for householders. Installations plummeted and companies folded.

Next April the scheme closes entirely and ministers are yet to signal that it will be replaced.

Unsurprisingly, that has led to a bleak outlook for household solar. Growth halved last year, which the government says is “not surprising”, given earlier rapid expansion.

Only 14MW of domestic solar is forecast to be fitted this year, down from a peak of 606MW in 2011, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

“This is heartbreaking for me,” Alan Simpson, an adviser to the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, said.

I wanted to see if I could be self-powered in north London in a cloudy rainy country Howard Richmond

One of the architects of the feed-in tariffs, Simpson said the importance of household solar was not only the clean energy it brings online but the cultural, political and social impact of engaging people with renewables at a local level.

He blames the government and big fossil fuel-based energy companies for bringing household solar to a halt. “We’ve got a completely inverted sense of how the shift into clean energy systems will take place and the role households can play in the process. We disempower and discourage households from being part of the clean energy transformation,” he said.

Solar advocates are pinning their hopes for a revival on the continuing fall in the cost of panels, and complementary technologies, including household batteries and electric cars.

Jeremy Leggett, the founder of Solarcentury, one of the UK’s largest solar companies, said: “It’s in flux but it’s heading in a very exciting direction. We’re coming out of the doldrums, whatever the government does.”

While the former oil geologist admits the UK solar market is stagnant, he thinks the direction of travel is clear.

Household batteries such as Tesla’s Powerwall, for example, enable people to consume rather than export their solar electricity, which makes more financial sense.

An energy supplier sells a kilowatt hour of power to a householder for in the region of 15p, much higher than the 5.24p a solar home can earn for exporting to the grid and the 4.01p for generation under the feed-in tariff.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tesla’s Powerwall battery unit stores solar energy throughout the day, which is used at night. Photograph: Gareth Phillips/The Guardian

Ryan McShea of Empower Energy, one of the few solar installers to weather the subsidy cuts, said he had been surprised by the uptake this year. “We’ve found a lot of people going for solar and batteries together.”

Solar panel costs have come down by about a fifth in the past year, he said, which he expected to filter down to cheaper systems for consumers. A typical 4KW array of solar panels costs about £6,000, down from £12,000-£14,000 when the feed-in tariffs began.

That price can come down even more for bulk purchases, the industry pointed out, potentially to as low as £3,200.

While the economics of solar are improving, few think they will stack up in coming years without some form of continued support.

Labour would renew the feed-in tariff scheme at a modest level, rather than let it fade away.

“Basically, this is the long-term consequence of the ‘cut the green crap’ stuff,” said Alan Whitehead, the shadow energy minister, in reference to David Cameron’s reported comments on renewable energy support in 2015.

“We would not want to see the [feed-in tariffs] regime disappear in 2019, we would like to see it continue but on a clear path,” said Whitehead, who envisages funding the scheme with a “tiny fraction” of the £557m ministers have earmarked for large renewable energy subsidies.

A Labour government would take a more holistic view of support for solar, too, he said, such as paving the way for an aggregator to bundle together many households’ solar output and trade it at a local level to other homes that need it.

A helping hand may also come from a backdrop of electricity prices, which are increasing in the face of rising wholesale costs. E.ON this week said it was putting electricity prices up 6.6% from August.

Back in Islington, Richmond looked at his electricity bill, which has fallen to £18 a month for a three-storey terraced house. The financial savings are not his main driver, however.

“My prime motivation was I wanted to see if I could be self-powered in north London in a cloudy rainy country,” he said. “If I can do it, so can the world.”

Wind becalmed as weather improves

Britain has suffered a wind drought throughout much of June, leading to a significant drop in output from the country’s largest source of renewable power.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Wind turbines on the Kentish Flats Offshore Windfarm, near Whitstable, on a calm windless day. Photograph: Chris Laurens/Getty Images/VisitBritain RM

While the hot, still weather has been a boon for beachgoers and solar panel owners, figures compiled by Imperial College London show that wind power generation this month is down nearly a quarter on June last year.



Turbines have been frequently left standing still, with several days having almost no wind at all.

The Met Office said the high pressure causing the country’s heatwave was suppressing windy conditions.

About half of the UK’s electricity is usually supplied by gas power stations, followed by nuclear and wind, although windfarms overtook nuclear for the first time during the first quarter of the year.

However, in June so far, wind has averaged only 3.4GW of output, or about 11% of power demand. That is down 24% on June 2017, which averaged 4.6GW or 15% of demand.

The significant drop-off comes despite the fact that the total capacity of windfarms on land and at sea has grown considerably since last June. Installed capacity is up 2.5GW, to 20GW.

Experts said the wind drought highlighted the need for a diverse energy supply.

Dr Iain Staffell, a lecturer in sustainable energy at Imperial College London, said: “This is a clear reminder that we cannot rely on one source of electricity alone. Back in March the UK nearly ran out of gas during the cold snap; now in June it is wind that is in short supply.

“The UK’s weather is anything but dependable, so the key is to have a diverse mix of sources that work together.”

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The wind power industry said that technical innovations such as batteries were helping the technology become more flexible.

Emma Pinchbeck, RenewableUK’s executive director, said: “National Grid can predict with pinpoint accuracy how much electricity will be generated from wind 24 hours in advance. We need a wide variety of energy sources competing against each other to ensure that consumers get the best value for money.”

By contrast, solar has had a strong June, going some way to offsetting wind’s shortfalls. For 13 days of the month, solar panels outstripped windfarms for electricity generation.