PV solar panels, or also known as photovoltaic solar panels are fast becoming more efficient as the science of photovoltaics advances. Crystalline silicon PV units are now approaching the theoretical maximum efficiency of 29%, a figure that is determined by the physics of reflectivity and thermodynamics. Coupled with these technical advances, fabrication costs have also plummeted which means the economics of solar panels has now got favourable even in countries where the solar strength is not very large. Indeed pv production businesses are obtaining manufacturing costs lower than 65c per watt or $65 per kilowatt or better.

Whilst for manufacturers the target is the concept of grid parity – a price performance ratio at which photovoltaic panels match or beat existing electricity generation costs – for electricity users in the UK, the power market is even better with feed in tariffs positively incentivising businesses to install free solar panels. Such free solar panel installations typically require a house to be south facing in order to maximise the free power available from the sun.

Grid parity is already being achieved in hot places such as Hawaii but that doesn’t mean that a significant contribution to domestic electricity usage can’t be supplied in less tropical locations, particularly because solar panels generate electricity at some level during all daylight hours. This continuous, regular electricity production implies that one of the practical methods of exploiting panels is to directly connect them to the national electricity grid. This lets the delivery of any excess power to the wider network for consumption by others and ensures that if peak solar power production doesn’t coincide with the household’s own peak demand, electricity is not just wasted. Additionally, the householder is credited for power fed into the grid, often at premium rates.

In the UK residential installers of PV solar panels are given an economic incentive to do this under a scheme known as the renewable heat incentive which pays high prices for an kilowatt hour of energy fed to the grid. For this reason we can expect to see the steady growth of solar panel usage, most especially in those parts of the UK where solar radiation – sunshine – is strongest.