We are excited to get started in 2016, embracing the upcoming changes in the industry. Whilst the media portrays the changes to funding as a deal breaker for domestic solar, we are doing our best to make it work… with new gear! We’re absolutely confident solar still makes sense.

With a sensible approach to the facts with our knowledge of technology, we can design a system which will provide a great solution from both a financial and energy saving point of view for our customers – past and future.

With technical developments in “self-consumption” systems, both feeding to water and batteries, there are options for retrofit and at time of installation to ensure that your system is working its hardest for you.

Our friends at Coolpower Products have released a host of new products for the new year which provide reliable and hi-tech solutions in this area. Their new EMMA Elite for water heating is now cheaper and more advanced than previous generations, and the Bluesine Stack as part of this or alone adds in a fantastic battery storage element, which we believe is far superior to the many competing products.

We are currently working hard on looking at all the options coming on the market for self consumption improvement so that we can make sure we are offering the best option for your system, at the best price.

Get in touch for more information on how these systems could help you!

Solar and Wind Applications have had a great and busy year, and it’s time for a break!

We will be closed from 4pm 22nd December until 5th January 2016. During this period our voicemail and email will be monitored. If you have any urgent issues, please email us on helpme@solarwindapplications.com and we’ll be in touch promptly.

Best wishes to all of our customers from this year and past (and future!).

• The Solar and Wind Applications Team

Following the recent Government consultation on the FiT scheme, the rates for 2016 have now been confirmed.

From 15th January, the rate will reduce from 12.03p/kWh (for systems under 4kWp) to 4.39p/kWh (for systems under 10kW). This is much better than the Consultation’s proposals, but still impacts on the financial side of solar PV installations.

The other change which we anticipate being a factor on our customers is the revised requirement for Energy Performance Certificate for your property, which becomes a bit tighter from 15th January, too.

Get in touch and ask us if you have any questions about this, and we will keep you right!

Following on from yesterday’s announcement of proposed 87% cuts to Feed in Tariff (FIT) rates, we expect that anybody who has considered solar will be motivated to accelerate their plans.

With domestic scale Solar PV Tariff Rates for installation cut from 12.47p/kWh (from October) to just 1.6p/kWh from January 2016 there’s a significantly reduced return on investment element to the installation. Of course, all of the other benefits of a solar PV installation will still remain, so we do anticipate the industry to recover and installations to continue over the course of 2016.

As per our previous News post, we do not anticipate any significant reductions in installation cost going forward, and this announcement does not change this.

Based on experience from past significant changes in FIT rates, we are anticipating a very busy spell of installations towards the end of 2015. We would recommend getting in touch now if you’re keen to have an installation completed in time to benefit from the current FIT rates, and we’ll get you up and running in time to get all of the benefits.

We have been very busy this summer, despite the weather in Ayrshire and Scotland not proving to be very Summer-like!

We’ve installed Solar PV systems from large (100kW, https://www.solarwindapplications.com/casestudy/factory-solar-pv/) to small (0.57kW) and all over the country for loads of customers both old and new.

It is always the greatest of compliments when a customer who has moved house comes back to use for a system in their new home. They are always delighted to hear that not only has the price of the equipment reduced, but also equipment has got better. With almost all of our systems now including monitoring as standard, our customers have complete peace of mind from knowing that we are also able to keep an eye on their system to ensure it works at its best at all times.

If you have ever thought about getting some of your own solar generation, now is a really great time – cost is at an all time low and incentives are still in place. We don’t believe the cost is likely to drop any time soon other than cost savings from the gradual improvement in technology. For home or business – Just get in touch and we’ll be happy to keep you right!

The Energy Agency are holding their annual event, and once again Solar and Wind Applications will be there to have a chat about your project, or even just help you decide if any of our services are for you.

As usual it should be an entertaining and informative way to find out more about what’s available in the world of energy efficiency.

Information is above, clicking on the picture will take you to the Energy Agency site for more info.

We hope to see you there!

Late last year we contacted the majority of our customers by email, not only with festive best wishes, but with information about a little Prize Draw.

We asked our customers to add a review of our services to our page on the Energy Saving Trust Renewable Energy Installer Finder Tool. The tool provides great, impartial information to prospective customers, with the reviews adding helpful information on the service we actually provide.

We had a great response, and now have a good number of reviews from existing customers. We intend to attempt to keep this updated, as we see it is really great information for future customers on their search for an installer.

The winner of the prize draw was one of our local customers…

Mr Michael Buck of Coylton, Ayrshire

He is owner of a Solar PV system we installed and will shortly be the recipient of £200 worth of Marks and Spencer vouchers! Congratulations!!!

Many thanks to all who took the time to leave us an honest review – we’re very grateful for all ratings and comments received. We can now consider ourselves a “Rated Company”, and will be making sure our future customers have an opportunity to read your reviews.

Over the holidays Solar and Wind’s offices will be closed from midday on 23rd December until 9am on Monday 5th January.

If you need to get in touch with us, email is the best way, or leave us a voicemail at the office and we’ll deal with your enquiry as soon as we can.

For urgent enquiries email helpme@solarwindapplications.com and we’ll do our best to sort you out as quickly as possible.

We hope you have a great holiday, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

– the Solar and Wind Applications team

Sounding like a string of acronyms rather than anything of interest, the Customer Led Network Revolution (CLNR) project set out to find out the impact on the grid of various changes made to technologies available to people at home – including EMMA (Energy and Microgenerator MAnager) with Solar PV.

From various data sets using different technologies, conclusions can be drawn on how best to either change people’s energy use patterns or change them automatically.

We were involved with the automated on site usage of generated electricity from Solar PV with the use of EMMA. Results show a general reduction in net and peak export year round. What’s not shown is the savings made on gas or other fuel usually used to heat water. All of the test participants confirmed that they were really pleased with the addition of EMMA to their solar PV system, “magically” getting hot water to come home to!

For more information on this project, see this short video documentary of somebody living with the device and his role in the project (featuring an elequent description of its operation), or the project’s website http://www.networkrevolution.co.uk.

In addition to our own Open Days, we’re also attending the Newton Stewart Renewable Exhibition, hosted by the Energy Saving Trust.

Our new team member Bob Baillie will be joined by Technical Director Marty Mellis-Fox and both will be happy to discuss both the financial and technical sides of our offerings.

We would love to meet you, so please come along.

There will also be plenty of other local companies, as well as the Energy Saving Trust there to shed their impartial advice on your ideas.

Details on the poster below.

Wednesday 18th June
3pm – 7pm
Creebridge House Hotel
Newton Stewart
Wigtownshire DG1 1LT