I suspect that the elephant in the room is simply money. Who pays?
I would be happy for the government to pay me to save on my electricity bills by installing PV on my roof but I suspect they might not be so keen on the idea. Loans instead? Maybe, but there are all kinds of issues around what happens if you need to sell the property etc.
Same with industrial units. You could have an enormous room that would cost £500K to install PV onto which would be way too much money for most building owners unless the feed-in tariff would cover the cost quickly but why should it? The Energy companies don't want to pay for a feed they might not need at any particularly time of day. Australia had big problems with over-supply of solar at certain times and I believe the rate went negative to try and stop people feeding it in.
For me, solar thermal for hot water is a far more reasonable position, certainly on new build domestic properties. We all use a lot of hot water, even during the summer and having water heated by solar thermal apart from being really effficient, masssively reduces the (usually) gas burden of heating from a boiler or immersion heater.
I also love the idea of a partnership between, e.g. An Underground Station with a limitless supply of heat energy to remove to cool down the stations, and perhaps the hospital next door which uses enormous amounts of hot water. Heat pump anyone?
I would be happy for the government to pay me to save on my electricity bills by installing PV on my roof but I suspect they might not be so keen on the idea. Loans instead? Maybe, but there are all kinds of issues around what happens if you need to sell the property etc.
Same with industrial units. You could have an enormous room that would cost £500K to install PV onto which would be way too much money for most building owners unless the feed-in tariff would cover the cost quickly but why should it? The Energy companies don't want to pay for a feed they might not need at any particularly time of day. Australia had big problems with over-supply of solar at certain times and I believe the rate went negative to try and stop people feeding it in.
For me, solar thermal for hot water is a far more reasonable position, certainly on new build domestic properties. We all use a lot of hot water, even during the summer and having water heated by solar thermal apart from being really effficient, masssively reduces the (usually) gas burden of heating from a boiler or immersion heater.
I also love the idea of a partnership between, e.g. An Underground Station with a limitless supply of heat energy to remove to cool down the stations, and perhaps the hospital next door which uses enormous amounts of hot water. Heat pump anyone?