Household manages to reduce electricity bill by 80%

In South Littleton, a couple has managed cut down on their electricity bill by supplementing the electricity provided by the local supplier with electricity from the sun. Now eighty per cent of their electricity needs are met by the solar panels they have installed.

The couple, Stephen Martin and Maureen Martin, who reside in Long Hyde Road, comprise one of the three thousand households in Britain who put up photovoltaic solar panels on their roofs this year.

In the beginning their target was to meet sixty per cent of their electricity requirements from solar power but they faced a major obstacle at the onset of a dull winter and then floods.

Stephen Martin, who was previously a chairperson of the Worcestershire Climate Change Committee, admitted that at the beginning they were afraid of failing but at the end of the year they realised they had produced two thousand and three hundred kilowatt hours of power while they imported less than three thousand kilowatt hours of electricity. In the process 1.4 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions were saved.

Whereas in places like Germany households can tell how much electricity is being supplied or generated by use of meters, households in Britain have no way of telling exactly how much they are exporting since there are no support meters.

In Europe, nations are obligated to buy back micro-generated electricity at a rate of thirty five pence per kilowatt hour. In the United Kingdom however, there is no such obligation.

An activist for Friends of the Earth, Dave Timms called for assured premium payments to encourage people to generate power from renewable energy sources.