Image: Ofgem.
The DNO or District Network Operator is the company responsible for distributing electricity from the National Grid to your home or business. In the UK there are 14 different district networks or DNO regions which are owned by six groups. For our installation zone, the distributions network operators which we are concerned by are Scottish & Southern Electricity (SSE), UK Power Networks (UKPN), and Western Power Distribution (WPD).
While climate science is alarming (suggesting just 10 years left to limit warming below the dangerous 1.5 degree level), it presents an opportunity for businesses to step up where governments have made little progress. Sustainability can give your company an edge and set you apart as a leader in your industry.
You may see it as a moral urge to reduce your business carbon footprint. Or perhaps it’s the long term financial savings that appeal. Either way, it makes sense to be a step ahead of future regulations which are likely to penalise polluters.
According to a Nielsen survey, 81% of customers think it is ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ important that companies act to improve the environment - so there’s a great commercial imperative to engage in climate action too.
But where do you start? We’ve broken down the question of how to reduce your company’s carbon footprint into five key topics to help you create an actionable plan.
At the end of January, thousands of homes local to us across Reading, Bracknell and Basingstoke suffered power outages for an average of 3 hours. This past week, Storm Ciara denied over 500,000 of us access to electricity. And last August the country was hit by the worst blackout in a decade, affecting hospitals, trains and over a million people.
This week saw the government bring forward the ban on new petrol and diesel cars to 2035.
One of the most pressing challenges in encouraging people to switch to electric cars is building an extensive charging network. Most people charge at home, but there is always going to be a time when you need to top up on the go. A novel solution is to bolster the number of available chargers by opening up privately owned points for public use - peer-to-peer (P2P) electric vehicle charging.
As it’s our 10th birthday today, we felt that it would only be right to reflect on some of the most significant moments of our lifetime. It has been a decade of change within the company and the world of renewable energy, with shifting government incentives, growing awareness of climate change and improving technology. The makeup of Britain's electricity supply has changed dramatically over recent years, with approximately a third of the energy now coming from renewable sources. As Spirit continues to grow we will hopefully see the number of homes and businesses generating their own free and clean electricity increase, helping to further decarbonise the UK’s energy mix.
London has high solar ambitions. The city is committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050. To reach this, the Mayor aims to install 1GW of new solar by 2030 and 2GW by 2050.
The solar manufacturing industry is devoted to trends - from bifacial to PERC - always seeking ways to maximise energy generation. One technology that’s seen a meteoric rise in the last few years is half cell solar panels (or half cut solar cells), on track to become near ubiquitous across PV modules.
We’ve recently done some modelling of the performance of solar tracking systems, but this can only tell you so much. What about how one would perform in the real world? Luckily we can answer that by looking at a solar tracker that we installed a few years ago...
Is it possible to get free solar panels for businesses? A lot has changed since solar first started gaining popularity, with prices falling around 50% in the last decade and many of the initial subsidies like the Feed-in Tariff closed to new applicants. But there are still opportunities for companies to benefit from financed solar systems, the most promising of which are Solar PPAs.
