Fifty seven percent of the world’s population currently has no access to the internet. Google are planning to launch a fleet of solar-powered balloons, containing wireless routers, to hover at altitude and provide internet to remote and rural areas of the world that are not currently on-line, and offer the security of a stable internet service in the event of natural disasters.

This week the UK Government announced that all coal-fired energy plants will close in the UK by 2025. They aim to have reliable, cost-effective energy and to reduce carbon emissions. The government intend to switch to gas-fuelled power plants as a replacement. Environmental groups have welcomed the phasing out of coal but they are wary of it being superseded by gas-plants instead of a shift in focus to more sustainable renewable energy.

A new report from the International Energy Agency has shown that in 2014 over half the world’s new power generation plants were for renewable energy. This suggests that renewable energy choices such as solar, wind and biomass power plants are becoming a more popular option for nations looking to increase their power generation.

Construction of the world’s largest solar power complex is underway near the Sahara desert in Morocco. The Noor complex is set to help the country achieve independence from imported fossil fuels in the next 5 years.

18-25th October 2015 saw a 3000km race across the outback in Australia where cars created by 46 teams across the world competed, powered solely from the sun.

SolaSave have a number of installations where shading would have potentially rendered the site unsuitable for solar PV using regular crystalline panels. A good example of this is shown in the this case study, where CIS thin-film panels have been installed in severe shaded conditions and are performing considerably better than predicted.

At SolaSave we survey a range of properties for customers who are interested in solar installation. Some of the properties we see are more shaded from the sun. In many of these cases we have successfully installed innovative “CIS thin-film” solar panels. This panel technology significantly overcomes the decreased annual energy yields of conventional silicon solar panels for shaded properties and provides supplies of solar power that our customers are delighted with.