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Barnsley Batteries!

We’re getting closer and closer to cleaner and more greener sources of energy and the UK is helping to achieve that goal. 40 homes in Oxspring, near Barnsley are taking part in a trial which will see their homes fitted with batteries to run on using energy solely generated by local rooftop solar panels.

Battery company Moixa are local solar specialist Energise Barnsley are behind the trial and they hope to create a “Virtual Power Plant” Essentially by linking all the homes together to generate electricity it will help to cope with the demand.

They will a method called bottlenecking in the power grid to stop the solar panel systems from feeding energy back into the network when they generate more energy than the homes need. By using a battery to store the power, it saves it up and spreading it wide between the community uses the energy it creates cleanly in a clean manner instead of dumping it back into the network.

 Moxia boss Simon Daniel said:

“By managing clusters of home batteries in a virtual power plant and allowing homeowners to use more of their solar energy, thereby exporting less, we believe we can significantly reduce peak generation output onto the network. This will allow more homes to go solar without imposing new costs on network operators.”

To listen to the guys chatting about this please click here! 

Solar Panel Road!

What Marcus has been saving for WEEKS has actually come true. (Who knew he’d be such a tastemaker for great tech!)

France has just launched it’s first solar panel road. French Ecology Minister Ségolène Royal launched the road December last year in an attempt to increase the ways in which the country uses renewable energy and reduce it’s greenhouse gas emissions. The road took 5 years to develop and cost $5.2Million dollars. The road includes 30,000 square footage of solar panels which are coated with a clear silicon resin which is able to resist the impact of constant flow of traffic.

They won’t be rolled out across the country just yet as they are still incredibly expensive to manufacture in large quantities. France however have stated that if costs can be kept low and the efficiency of the panels up then they could install them across another 1,000 kilometers of its roads and then who knows what the future holds for their roads and beyond.

To listen to the guys talking about this please click here!

Reuters