A PV solar industry all grown-up
As Britain is about to find out post-Brexit, you only see true friendships once you’re down and out. Feel the pride that comes with encouraging greatness in its earliest years.
We allowed a few to manipulate the many into believing alternative technologies were useless, when in fact they’ll be our eventual salvation. History will show that installing PV (photovoltaic) and adopting EV’s (electric vehicle) may be a more astute move pre-Brexit than post-Brexit.
Global sales of 7 million PV systems installed last year, alongside every car manufacturer rushing to release an EV model, is proof perfect that people see ‘traditional’ energy as peaked two decades ago.
When I first began shouting from the rooftops about solar panels, we were still living in the golden age of cheap energy. They laughed when I predicted a solar-powered world, so quiet they remain today.
PV solar panel’s popularity began within our street furniture and road signage with only the most dedicated eco-warriors installing them on their roofs. Today, PV prices have halved, and energy costs have tripled in only a decade. Together with EV’s, they represent the most exciting time in human history since the personal computer.
The long road to today’s PV began in 1883 when Charles Fritts first invented a photovoltaic cell. PV was a novelty until the dawn of the space age; this is real space-age technology folks.
PV’s exceptional longevity first began to be noticed when obsolete 1950s satellites were still powered up many decades after being decommissioned.
Since the early 2000s, my predictions of year-on-year price rises in the traditional energy sector have come true. The low-hanging fruits are now picked, and today, we must scrape the proverbial barrel with fracking.
PV growth worldwide nationally and individually is inevitable as the cheap energy promises of fracking are broken!
We may have shortsighted political energy policies, but there is a growing number of us who consider themselves ‘switched on’ enough to see beyond the next election cycle. Just like any teenager, the solar industry has had to deal with powerful bullies whose influence wanes year on year.
Unfortunately, we have had our national energy policies decided by newspaper owners rather than proper planning for the next stage in our civilisation’s progress.
Real energy independence is what PV solar panels offer the human race today.
Additionally, new complementary plug-in technologies like battery-storage and PV-heating converters will grow to ensure the march of progress, plugs the gap that Fracking never will.
Fracking is a clear sign of desperation for an industry that peaked two decades ago – I digress!
Post-Brexit vultures are already circling.
Today’s, UK solar industry is MCS regulated with BRE installation standards that are world-class.
A special mention to the guys and gals at the RECC who bring peace of mind to a new generation of PV adopters today. The negative consequences of high energy costs have been quietly reverberating throughout our economy over the last decade.
Our economy is drying up like a raisin in the Californian sunshine, and a whole generation knows nothing but spending vast percentages of their income on powering and heating their homes. Additionally, government policy promotes vast subsidies that encourage traditional energy to pursue a system with increasingly diminishing returns; Alternative energy technologies have the opposite effect.
Already, PV solar is becoming cheaper than traditional forms of energy, and this will be enhanced further as EV technologies grow year on year.
I’ve always viewed solar panels as personal freedom from political stupidly and the UK Energy Industry’s ever-growing blank cheque book of subsidies. However, you view them, progressing your own family towards a PV/EV future and done in incremental stages is the next logical step.
Your next car purchase can be an EV and so than looking at charging it and your home with PV is a win-win. Similarly, installing PV to your home in stages can start with a primary PV system, and over the three decades of its lifespan, extras can be added such as battery storage or PV-heating converters. Either way, the future is PV for the most astute homes in our society. More growing energy bills for the rest.
The dark denial days are over. 2017 will be known as the year global warming slapped the US in the face, and the real threat of global starvation became real.
2017 will be the year that grumpy old media-owners lost their grip on number 10 and the ‘self-serving’ energy policies they promote to enrich themselves got binned.
I predict 2018 will be the year that life outside our planet will be confirmed and PV and EV technologies begin to turn the tide on our civilisation reaching for the stars once more. All matter in the universe is frozen sunshine. A realisation demonstrating science even today can miss the most fundamental apparent truths.
Dark ages are always darkest before the dawn. The dawn has finally broken technologically; we wait in anticipation politically. A PV-enhanced civilisation is a matured society, and a PV/EV enhanced family has a more discerning outlook than their neighbours.
David ‘green crap’ Cameron deliberately sabotaged the early PV industry in the UK during his time, but once Downing Street grasps the paradigm shift occurring around it, Britain may again learn to fly high in a post-Brexit world. Britain’s flight feathers will only grow with a growing PV sector. Releasing families from the ball and chain that the UK Energy Industry has become is paramount to gain lift.
Our fledgling PV solar panel industry nearly all grown-up. Yes, I’m feeling the pride that comes with nurturing and encouraging greatness in its earliest, wobbliest years.
For a crazy world.