In 2022, Solar contributed to 4.4% of the UK’s electricity needs generating 8.67GWH of energy.
However, there has been a focus on how weather events, impacted by climate change, are affecting the technologies generation.
The findings have shown that increasing Solar’s durability should be of paramount importance.
In July 2023 a Chief Scientific Advisor for the Met Office, Stephen Belcher, chaired a discussion to investigate the impacts of weather conditions on UK Solar and Wind.
The findings were published on November the 21st, highlighting the vulnerabilities in the UK’s Solar market.
A key vulnerability is that UK’s Solar infrastructure is usually concentrated in smaller areas, which can increase the risk of localised infrastructure disruption.
For example, storm damage to cables will decrease the generation of the entire Solar capacity. To avoid this issue, the Solar asset must be spread out to avoid having a single point of concentration.
The research also found that current increase in temperature will affect Solar panels performance. It is important to know that high temperatures will only lower the efficiency of Solar PVs. The PV will not be damaged by reusing temperatures.
When air temperature reaches 23% the silicon in the PV will drop efficiency.
Alastair Buckley, Professor of Organic Electronics at the University of Sheffield, explained that increased temperatures will only ‘marginally affect the overall output of Solar power’ explaining its impact as a ‘secondary affect’.
Weather forecasting can help with managing the impacts affecting Solar generation but this can be hard to determine.
“With longer and sunnier days, solar power produces high yields of energy, some of which will be stored in batteries for later use. Summer in the UK can often bring unpredictable weather which is why solar generation works well in tandem with other renewable energy sources, such as wind. During sunny weather, it’s typically not windy, so when there’s not enough wind to turn the turbines solar, solar can help make up that difference – and vice-versa.” Chris Hewett, Chief Executive, Solar Energy UK
At Solar and Storage Live in London a focus will be placed on the various insurance and financing policies that are available in the UK Solar Market.
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Our next event is Solar and Storage Live London, April 29-30 2024!
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