To be honest I didn’t even realise that my journey at MEA has just pasted the half point a few days ago, not sure if it’s because my concentration on work or just because of that theory which states you feels time goes faster as you grow older. Anyway, let me introduce you what I have done since my first post.
After armed myself with related knowledge and learned what the organization do, I began to do researches that would benefit both MEA and myself. Nowadays solar PV is becoming a popular option for consumers to cut their energy bill as the price of Solar panel dropped significantly since 2011(from £11000 to around £5000 for a 16kW panel). It’s also estimated that the national electricity price will increase in the following years, thus several organizations, including SolarTrade UK, one of the leading team in the field, believe that there will be a large expansion of Solar PV business by 2020. Apart from that, lot of families also got themselves a rechargeable battery to store day-time energy for the night use, saving them even more money on bills. MEA is looking forwards to knowing the recent development of solar technology, also the situation of related business, including how the other charities or councils are supporting the development. With those questions in mind I started my research journey.
I got the most of the answer from internet, especially in the UK government website where there’s a file folder that contains all the solar panel installation record across the country. I managed to separate multiple data points and produced some graphs for presentation. I also came up with a list of councils that are supporting their local solar PV construction, by investigating their website and their registration documents I got some idea of how their funding works and how much money is spent on the work. I actually learned how to do those in week 1, guess those reading have already paid off.
As I mentioned in my last post I got the chance to visit a solar manufacturer in Birmingham last Friday. I briefly interviewed one of the staff about the future of this application, the staff told me that the price of Solar PV might not drop further in short future as China is offering solar panel at such a low price that the actual sale price has to be increased to protect UK market.
Tomorrow I am going to give a presentation about my research, after that I will investigate the work of other energy charities and possibly find what MEA can learn from them in the future. I will be back shortly with further report, see you soon.