Homeowner Blog

Image: Ofgem.

What is DNO permission and when do you need it?

The DNO or District Network Operator is the company responsible for distributing electricity from the National Grid to your home or business. In the UK there are 14 different district networks or DNO regions which are owned by six groups. For our installation zone, the distributions network operators which we are concerned by are Scottish & Southern Electricity (SSE), UK Power Networks (UKPN), and Western Power Distribution (WPD).

Today is a big day at Spirit Energy.

It’s our 10th anniversary.

Most importantly we are celebrating with a big cake, but we have also taken time to review some of the milestones reached within the last 10 years, both at Spirit and within the wider community, focusing on cleaner air, climate change mitigation and sustainable fuel supply.

More and more of us are becoming aware of the urgency of the need to decarbonise our lifestyles. The latest warning from the IPCC gives us only 10 years to cut global emissions in half, or risk catastrophic damage to our climate. Whether you’ve gone solar or not, you may be thinking about how to reduce your carbon footprint. But where do you start?

The new year kicked off with the introduction of the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG), which came into law on January 1st. It’s the long awaited return of a scheme to ensure solar PV owners are paid for the power they send to the grid, ending the policy void that’s existed since the Feed-in Tariff closed to new applicants last March.

According to the SEG, energy suppliers with over 150,000 customers must offer an export tariff with a rate greater than zero. The SEG is available for customers with an MCS-certified renewable energy system under 5MW and a smart meter.

With zero as the minimum, at the very least you can’t be charged for being relieved of excess solar power. However, suppliers don’t have to give you very much for it. So how much are they offering in practice?

Another year has gone by with Tesla roof tiles as popular as ever in the public imagination, yet still mostly intangible. But that could all be about to change. Elon Musk has announced Solarglass, the latest iteration of his solar tiles with promises of improved technology and scalability. The company is aiming to ramp up to 1000 installations a week in America, so what can we expect?

Now that Christmas is less than a week away and the new year is just around the corner, it only seems right to reflect on what has been quite an eventful year for the solar and renewables industry.

We’re entering a period of dramatic change for the energy sector. From smaller independents breaking the hold of the Big 6 and consumers generating their own solar power to dynamic pricing plans and smart homes.

The latest innovation is one that combines all of these: Octopus’s Tesla Energy Plan.

The inverter is the heart of a PV system. It’s the crucial interface between your solar panels and the rest of the home, batteries or national grid. Aside from converting DC solar power into usable AC, it houses many of the system’s safety features and performance monitoring.

Given it’s such an important component, let’s talk about how to choose a solar inverter. What do you have to consider, and which is the best model?

Another week and another upheaval in the world of solar… While the world wakes up to the imminent threat of climate breakdown, our trusty government has decided it’s the perfect time to hike the VAT on solar PV installations.

In the wake of the largest climate protests the world has ever seen, we have dug a little deeper in our own back yard to assess the ‘life time’ carbon footprint of a solar system...