'Choosing Solar Electricity'

[Tobi K]

Hello,

the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) has just published a new book on solar photovoltaics.
The book


Choosing Solar Electricity
A guide to photovoltaic systems
by Brian Goss

costs £14.00, has 192 pages, contains around 90 photos and illustrations and contains guidance on how to make the most of the new Feed-in Tariffs for PV.
It is now available from CAT's mail order department and will be sold through book sellers from April 8 on.

More information about the book is available here:
http://store.cat.org.uk/product_info.php?products_id=2177

As I'm associated with CAT I guess it wouldn't be appropriate for me to comment on the book, so I hope someone else will post a review soon!

[Laurence]

I guess that there are two approaches to buying PV, especially the more common "Grid Tied" flavour that is now set to see a rapid uptake in the UK.

1. Go to a Tesco-type outfit who will (via subcontractors, mind) charge you 15 grand and put in a system - few questions asked (or answered). Bish, bash, bosh. It'll work OK. Probably.
2. Get interested in the process, find out for yourself about the technology, what's going to work best for your property, and make the optimum, informed decisions and get the optimum solution. It'll work BEST!

You are at this forum because you are probably one of the latter type of person, who doesn't want to spend the wrong side of £10,000 without some say in the matter.  Where to start? Well, forums like this, and books. This book.

Aimed very much at the UK market, and BANG up to date with the latest about Feed In Tariffs, this book is quite simply the best that there is out there, to guide you towards understanding and then choosing the right system, and supplier.

If you are thinking about a UK PV system (and you are anything more that a "type 1" person above), you will need to know this stuff. It could save you a costly mistake!

Buy it. Read it. Do it. I picked mine up at Amazon, at a considerable discount to the cover price. It will more than pay for itself.

[brian_goss]

Laurence,

thanks for the positive feedback, thats good to hear, the book grew into a substantially bigger project than the small pamphlet it started out as..

the only thing I would add, if people chose to buy from CAT direct they will also be supporting CATs work promoting renewable energy - http://store.cat.org.uk/product_info.php?cPath=104_253&products_id=2177

Regards, Brian Goss

[DennyShane]

Solar power is really affordable and large source of energy. This book helps to know more about how to access to the solar resources and how the solar electricity works. It's good book. It tells about the advantages of using solar energy.

[noah]

Denny is so right!! Solar power is so affordable that the gov has had to make the process more difficult and expensive in order not to overstress the market!