A brighter outlook

Solar PV is arguably the most exciting thing that’s happening within the construction industry at present it is also the only growth area – with installations up from around 8MW last year to over 40MW in 2010. And that is just the beginning. If the European experience is repeated, installations will leap five, possibly 10 fold next year.

The vast majority of the installations so far have been domestic, some 15,000+ averaging 2.5kWp, enough to run an ‘average’ home. By contrast commercial and industrial installations amount to only around 285 totalling 3MW so far.

We have a long way to go to catch up with our European partners and in particular Germany, the renewables power house.

There are benefits for customers, suppliers and installers alike. The Feed-In-Tariff, which is guaranteed for 25 years, is a win-win situation for everybody – the customer gets his money back with a handsome seven percent return on investment that he will struggle to find anywhere else, the suppliers and installers have work, the country benefits from having people employed and even the planet benefits from the lowering of carbon emissions, which of course was the primary motivation for the development of the industry in the first place.

Further good news, is that the technology is not only equally suitable for existing buildings, the owners of these benefit from a higher retrofit Feed-In-Tariff rate.

The rate for retrofit is 41.3p per kW, which means payback periods of around 10-12 years can be reasonably expected and that means 13-15 years of profit never mind a minimum 25 years of free electricity usage.

As the industry developed, and as initially Government grants were available, the need to ensure the quality of products and installations became necessary and the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) came into force.

Under this scheme all solar panels and their installers have their quality control procedures for manufacture checked and approved. ICB (Solar) Ltd has been delivering Solar PV solutions since 2004 and was one of the first (MCS) approved installers in the country.

Always at the cutting edge of the industry, ICB introduced Evalon®Solar to the UK, the world’s first integrated PV and flexible waterproofing system. This combination represents a truly integrated roofing and PV solution. Imagine having your waterproofing and PV installed in one simple operation, one contractor, and one point of responsibility.

Recently we introduced SOLYNDRA® Solar one of the world’s most advanced photovoltaic systems using CIGS (copper indium gallium selenide) technology. Known for their high conversion efficiency, the revolutionary SOLYNDRA® Solar cylindrical solar cells catch solar radiation across their entire 360-degree surface to fully exploit the sun’s diurnal cycle. The beauty of this product, apart from its superior efficiency, is that it is very easy to install, requiring no additional ballast or fixing and therefore no penetration of the roof waterproofing. The waterproofing we recommend is alwitra’s Evalon V in white which provides superior reflectivity. This is important because 20 percent of the output achieved by the SOLYNDRA® Solar cells is through conversion of light reflected back off the waterproofing membrane. Furthermore, ICB (Solar) Ltd has now partnered with Inventux to widen its range of Photovoltaic options.

We specialise in thin film solar technology as generally this gives the best performance in the conditions found in the UK, but we offer all types of PV and design according to the principle of offering the best solution for the given application and location. This applies equally to your typical domestic situation of a few kW to solar farms of several MW; each presents its own challenge and solution, which is where we come in.