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How it Works

By converting light into electricity. We use a system called Photovoltaic (or PV for short), which generates electricity by using daylight on silicon solar cells normally located on your roof.

You can directly use the energy you generate and in turn reduce your electricity bill.

When the electricity generated by the silicon solar cells is not being used, it can be sold back to your energy supplier giving you a further financial benefit.

The best bit is that on top of these savings you also get paid for all the electricity you generate whether you use it or not, from the feed-in tariff scheme.

Silent and virtually maintenance free, a solar roof not only adds value to your home, it produces clean electricity helping to protect generations to come.

What is solar power? How much energy can we get from the Sun?

Solar power is amazing. On average, every square meter of Earth's surface receives 164 watts of solar energy. In other words, you could stand a really powerful (150 watt) table lamp on every square meter of Earth's surface and light up the whole planet with the Sun's energy! Or, to put it another way, if we covered just one percent of the Sahara desert with solar panels, we could generate enough electricity to power the whole world. That's the good thing about solar power: there's an awful lot of it—much more than we could ever use.

But there's a downside too. The energy the Sun sends out arrives on Earth as a mixture of light and heat. Both of these are incredibly important—the light makes plants grow, providing us with food, while the heat keeps us warm enough to survive—but we can't use either the Sun's light or heat directly to run a television or a car. We have to find some way of converting solar energy into other forms of energy we can use more easily, such as electricity. And that's exactly what solar panels do.

The Feed-In Tariff

The feed-in tariff is a new scheme which was announced by the Government on February 1st 2010. This scheme was introduced to reward home owners for generating clean renewable electricity. Home owners who have a PV Solar Panel (electric PV solar panels) installed from July 2009 onwards will benefit from the scheme. They will start earning returns from April 1st 2010.

The feed-in tariff works on the basis that you, the consumer, will be paid for each kilowatt hour of electricity your system generates. This also applies even when that electricity is used in your own home. But that's not all! There is also an additional payment for the electricity you don't use, which is fed back into the national grid.

The introductory rate per kilowatt hour of electricity you generate is 21p. In addition, a further 3.1 pence per kilowatt hour will be paid for electricity exported to the national grid. This means that you can expect a sum of 21p per kilowatt of electricity your system generates, and 24.1p for unused electricity.

How do photovoltaic (PV) cells work?

PV cells are panels you can attach to your roof or walls. Each cell is made from one or two layers of semiconducting material, usually silicon. When light shines on the cell it creates an electric field across the layers. The stronger the sunshine, the more electricity is produced.

PV cells come in a variety of shapes and colours, from grey "solar tiles" that look like roof tiles to panels and transparent cells that you can use on conservatories and glass.

The strength of a PV cell is measured in kilowatt peak (kWp). That's the amount of energy the cell generates in full sunlight.