High-tech paradox in Britain – solar panels are afraid of the Sun!

It’s too hot in Britain for guardsmen and solar panels.
Photo: Western Standard

“Britain fires up coal plant as solar panels suffer in hot weather.” “Rush to turn on air conditioning during heatwave causes spike in demand for electricity.” These are the titles of article at British “The Telegraph”.

The more solar panels there are in England, the less efficiently they work in sunny weather. Pradox!

Britain has started burning coal to generate electricity for the first time in a month and a half, after the heatwave made solar panels too hot to work efficiently.

The National Grid turned to coal to generate electricity as a rush to turn on air conditioning and fans across the country during the heatwave led to a spike in demand.

High temperatures over the weekend also reduced the amount of energy generated from solar panels.

Solar panels are tested at a benchmark of 25C. For every degree rise in temperature above this level, the efficiency is reduced by 0.5 percentage points.

The temperature level refers to the solar cell temperature, rather than the air temperature. In direct sunlight, the cells can easily reach 60 or 70 degrees.

Alastair Buckley, professor of organic electronics at the University of Sheffield, said: “Compared with a cool cloudy day, the cells might be a maximum of 25pc less efficient.”

Members of the public were advised to keep their phones charged in case of power cuts.

Octopus Energy called for the National Grid to introduce a permanent scheme to reward customers for using less energy at peak times in order to reduce dependence on coal.

Nearly 700,000 Octopus smart meter users received £5.4m under its Savings Session trial over winter, where customers were paid to use less power than they otherwise normally would during peak times.

Octopus said its scheme shifted 1.86Gwh of electricity demand to times of less stress on the network – the equivalent of stopping two million washing machine runs.

…Candles will soon become the most popular commodity in the UK…

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