Based on an article by Susan Ballard. An Oxfordshire couple power their house with solar roof tiles.

Introduction

To discover more about the feasibility of solar power, Susan Ballard pays a visit to an Oxfordshire village where a couple committed to making their lifestyle more sustainable installed photovoltaic roof tiles in 2000. Find out why they did it and what the costs and benefits are by reading on.

Roof Installation by Solar Century

Sections in this article

• What the tiles look like

• Costs

• How the Robertsons feel about it

• Where Next- more case studies and information?

What the tiles look like

At first glance a visitor wouldn't necessarily notice anything unusual about the roof on an outhouse in James and Alison Robertsons' garden. The dark grey glassy tiles blend in with the surrounding slate. There's no noise, no smell, no smoke, nothing other than a black cable running from the shed to the house and a couple of wall-mounted meters to mark this one-time stable as an electricity generating plant. Nor has this new-age source of renewable energy attracted much publicity other than a brief report in a local paper. The Robertsons' gesture of solidarity with the sustainable development movement has gone largely unnoticed.

James Robertson shows off his PV tiles

"We haven't publicised it much. There's something distasteful about fairly well off people banging the drum about how they are trying to save the planet."

Costs

The Robertsons had their PV tiles put up in January 2000. They paid about thirteen thousand pounds sterling for the whole installation carried out by Solar Century, a company known to them through work contacts. Now they can generate their own electricity from sunlight and sell what they don't use back to the grid.

However, it was never meant to be a financially profitable investment. Although they can sell their excess electricity to Southern Electric, they still have to buy in more than half of what they use at more than double the price they get paid for what they sell.

"The problem is that there isn't yet a cheap and convenient method of storing the electricity we generate, in a battery, for instance. I've been told that if we shop around we could find a better deal with a different electricity company which would pay more for what we sell to them, but I'm loathe to change our current arrangement. Maybe in the long run the monetary value of what we've done will grow if the price of electricity goes up but we are really doing it as a sort of ethical investment. We haven't got expensive leisure tastes. We haven't bought a boat or a holiday home, we see this spending as a passive leisure activity, something which is nice to have and which makes us feel part of a communal effort to forward the cause of solar power."

How the Robertsons feel about it

James and Alison are both keenly aware of global issues and human impacts on the environment. When they moved to their current house in Oxfordshire they had solar water heating put in and rebuilt the kitchen with the help of specialist designers to maximise energy conservation. They made an effort to make the house draught free.

"It's about putting your money where your mouth is"

The Robertsons say their investment makes them feel good in a low key way because they are making a small contribution to sustainability. However, they find it infuriating to think that if they had been living in France or Germany they would have received government grants to pioneer the new technology.

"You'd think that with a major crisis like climate change on the agenda it would galvanise the UK Government into more concerted action; there are more incentives to change in other European countries".

As the grey skies grew even cloudier I left hoping the Robertsons' home would soon be powered more cheaply by a change in the weather.

Where Next?

On ClimateX.org

For background on photovoltaic technology, you may want to read the article ‘Introducing Solar Photovoltaics' in this section.

Other Sources of information

For two more inspiring case studies of local Oxfordshire people installing PV, you might want to look at the http://theyellowhouse.org.uk/ and http://www.sageoxford.org.uk/ecohouse.htm .

Information about all of the Environmental Change Institute's PV and renewable energy projects can be found at http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/research/energy/renewable.php

The Solar Century website gives details of the company which installed the tiles on the Robertsons' roof.