Have you ever looked at the acres of industrial and residential roof space and wondered why that is not being used to generate power using solar panels? It is difficult to understand particularly when in some cases we are covering good agricultural land with solar farms.
So what is the potential opportunity if we just consider new builds, where it is possible to mandate the use of solar roof space through changing building regulations.
We are building around 200,000 residential buildings each year. The average home uses around 3.7KWhr 1] of electricity per year so solar panels generating c.4KW would provide the majority of the requirement. Even if we assume only 70% of the new builds incorporated this level of solar panels this would be equivalent to 0.56GW of power that could be generated either for use in homes or sent into the national grid.
According to one estimate 2] the annual industrial new build level is equivalent to 18million square feet of space. Assuming this equated to 9 million of useable roof space for solar panels then this could generate another 0.12GW of electricity.
In total then the opportunity is to generate c.0.68GW of electricity through changing building regulations and after 10years at 6.8GW it would be the equivalent to seven gas fired power stations.
There is a concern that solar panels on roofs spoil the look of the house. That is not the case with good design. Solar panels can now be integrated into the roof line 3] or also solar tiles, which look like roof tiles, can be used.
This is a great opportunity to not only to generate electricity close to the facilities where it going to be used (reducing transmission losses) but also creating new jobs in solar panel engineering and battery manufacturing.