Solar power: Why it makes financial and environmental sense? |26 February 2014

The question was asked and answered by independent PV solar power consultant Tim Kirkpatrick, in a presentation at the Yacht Club on Friday evening.

Mr Kirkpatrick has been involved in the local solar power business for the last four years, dealing in both sale and installation of solar power systems and equipment.

The question should now be easy to answer and indeed Mr Kirkpatrick needed only a few minutes to convince his audience on why we should eventually switch to solar power, or maybe other means of renewable energy. Simply, it saves you a lot of money and contributes a lot to environment protection!

As the price of fuel-generated electricity will continuously go up, that of solar energy is constantly going down. The use of this form of renewable energy can reduce your household or business electricity bill by up to 60%.

But beyond the price factor, we should not forget the continuously catastrophic environmental impact caused by the use of fossil fuel which is directly related to human activities. The largest factor of global warming remains carbon dioxide emissions from fuel consumption followed by cement production and land use changes such as deforestation.

Global warming has now risen to more than one degree centigrade per year causing natural disasters such as land ice shrinking, sea level rise, heavy rainfall or droughts, floods, desert expansion, heat waves, species extinction etc. It is estimated that during the 21st century, the global surface temperature is likely to rise to a further minimum of 2.9 and up to a maximum of 6.4 degrees centigrade.

Negative effects significant to humans include the threat to food security from decreasing crop yields and the loss of habitat from inundation. In the case of small island states like Seychelles, some of our islands may simply disappear in the future!

In the same way as the use of solar energy is advocated by Tim Kirkpatrick, it cannot be said that the world has now not been sufficiently educated on the dangers of global warming. It only remains that each and every one of us takes our responsibility more seriously.
 
At a time when many countries cannot also reply to their electricity demands, the answer is solar or other forms of renewable energy. It is high time that we start considering installing photovoltaic panels on our roof tops and replacing our generators by recyclable solar batteries.