The Alternative Energy blog – green renewable alternative energy

With the opening of the Thanet Wind Farm off the coast of England the UK is now the world’s largest producer of wind energy. The Thanet Wind Farm started sending power to the UK electric grid last week. It sits, at its closest, about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) off the shore of Foreness Point, which is located at the most eastern part of Kent, England. The $1.2 billion farm has 100 V90 wind turbines that have a total capacity of 300 MW. It creates enough power for 200,000 homes. The UK’s Read more [...]

UK: Families can earn £900 a year by installing solar panels on their roofs as part of a new Government scheme to pay people to generate their own electricity. Under the deal, which will start from April this year, households will be paid for electricity fed into the grid from renewable technologies such as solar, wind or energy from waste. The most attractive rate of return will be on solar panels, which for an average sized three bedroom home could earn households £25,000 over 25 years. Ed Read more [...]

The UK  can achieve grid parity for households by 2013, seven years sooner than expected says Jeremy Leggett, founder of Britain’s Solar Century. 

Its is believed that south-facing roofs and facades in Britain could one day provide a third of UK electricity needs.

Householders convinced that the UK does not have enough sunshine to effectively use solar panels are 'wrong', according to a domestic solar panel advisor. The UK energy advisor Heat my Home has explained that the panels operate on solar radiation not sun rays and the UK gets enough of this to run solar. Stuart Lovatt of Heat my Home said: "One unique selling point with solar is the longevity. A good quality system will easily last 30 years, so the long-term benefits of solar are obvious. "How Read more [...]

An extra £8m is to be invested developing wave power at Orkney’s marine energy centre. It is part of the UK government’s plan to cut carbon emissions and generate more renewable energy over the next ten years. The announcement was made at Edinburgh based Pelamis wave power by Jim Murphy, the secretary of state for Scotland.