AM – Pscherer gGmbh (FE College)
- Sylvia Radisch-Siebert on renewables, especially PV and Fits (Feed-in tariffs) in Germany and UK. Looked at how this effected uptake.
- Emphasised importance of training and at a very young age.
- Shared experiences with young school kids on how to make a solar powered car from version 1 to evolve into a sophisticated model that had lights. This helped raise awareness and instil a renewable approach at a very early and formative years. These in turn affect their parents thinking and priorities.
- Brief look at some useful IT tools (internet and stand alone)
- Looked ant SunPower’s panels (currently the best on the market in efficiency terms).
- Was shocked at the wide and very technical details she looked at when judging a ‘good’ PV panel
- Carried a useful calculation to show how cheapest does not always mean best value for money over long term (look photo from today)
- www.sunnyportal.de & pvgis (PV Geographical Information System) were 2 very good starting points. This was a real eye opener for me. I consider myself fairly well educated and experience, not afraid of DIY and found that the holistic discipline approach is really required to provide sound assessment, advice and installation specifications. This ca easily be exploited by cowboys and the ‘honest’ incompetent installer.
PM – Group discussion
- Everybody introduced themselves and their current roles and what they wanted out of the week.
- Stared well but quickly descended into a group discussion about UK’s current plight and how Germany’s model may be applied.
Dr. Matthias Delling (Solarteur School)
- Started in Germany and model has spread as far as Palestine and Nova Scotia (amazing, there’s hope for humanity yet)
- 6 basic modules with 6 exams but require min 80% attendance (can’t learn to swim from a book – have to do it!)
- Pass mark 4 (1 excellent – 6 fail). Self vetting and most teachers are practicing technicians within their respective industry/area of expertise.
- Shocking amount of initial investment (£250k min) but not without it’s rewards, however the Solarteur’s profile will have to be raised soon and high for the kudos effect to kick-in.
- How model can be adapted to dove-tail to UK framework will be a challenge.
Wahid Khan
We started today with a morning lecture from a local PV installer who has been installing PV systems for 10 years. She totally believes in educating young children about renewable technology and volunteers time to running solar workshops with children in local schools. Engage the children as they have big impact on the future and shape how we view energy use. She shared knowledge of how the feed in tariffs influenced huge development in the market and warned about future pitfalls that may occur in the new UK renewable market. Learning from people that have years of hands on experience was enlightening and sparked a long debate amongst us of how UK should address these issues now. Education in renewables is going to be a major issue and proper training facilities are needed. I look forward to the field day tomorrow to look at installations.
Fergal McEntee
Today’s session provoked an interesting debate on how the Solarteur training system could be integrated into the UK further education system. Most of us could see the benefits of a rigorous renewable training programme but wondered how it would be funded. There was a general consensus that the Solarteur model would be a vast improvement on some of the privately run training establishments. The option of a blended learning package would make it cost effective for a number of learning institution.
Martin Abraham
The most interesting thing for me was how fast information changes and how much information about a particular piece of information is available in other EU countries in their native language. For example, today we had a very knowledgeable teacher/ trainer and Solar PV specialist and she prepared a comparison of the UK and German feed-in tariffs. Sounds straight forward? Maybe. She prepared a well structured PowerPoint presentation but the information on the UK feed-in tariffs was already out-of date as it only related to installations over 5Megawatt (MW), or in other words large scale installations covering (30 acres/ 12 ha) – huge. The thing is, these renewable obligations (ROs) are still in place but they are really only for large corporation/ energy producers. The actual feed-in tariffs relate to installations smaller than 5MW (the smallest installation will usually be from 1.1Kilowatt, but usually start at 2.2KW). She found the information on the ROs and then combined them with the available information on the feed-in tariffs. So, she wasn’t wrong but a confusion entered the room which was quickly diffused by some of the UK professionals who know their Kilowatts from the Kilovolts.
Dirk Bischof
