UK company wins award

Press release

Solarcentury's integrated solar photovoltaic tile, C21e wins the coveted 'Best Sustainable Product Award' at Ireland's Construct Building Exhibition.

Last week solarcentury won Best Sustainable Product Award for their C21e solarelectric fully integrated roofing tile at Construct, Northern Ireland's major construction show. Following Secretary of State, Peter Hain's recent
announcementof £59 million for the promotion of renewable energy in Northern
Ireland, this product's accolade will provide the construction market with an
opportunity to embrace Northern Ireland's renewables revolution without
compromising the aesthetics of their development.

This latest award builds on a host of accolades for C21e including Best Exterior Product atInterbuild 2004 and Building Magazine's award for Innovation in their2005 sustainability awards.

C21e is the most efficient (21.5%), easy to install and cost effective solar tile on the market. The latest iteration of the C21e tile blends unnoticeably withconventional concrete tiles. solarcentury's advanced C21e design has been developed with aesthetics and efficiency as the primary concern. The cells are all black incolour with electronic contacts positioned behind a black tedlar backing. This completely eliminates solar reflection, maximising energy production within the given tile area, thereby requiring less than 10 square metres of C21e to generate a quarter of an average 3 bedroom homes electricity requirements. The application of these discrete solar photovoltaic tiles provides all the benefits of a 'bolt-on' solar systems, used in eco-home schemes such as BedZED, without affecting the 'rooflines' or appearance of the development.

Major housing developers including St James and Barratts are now testing
this new technology on their show houses as part of their drive to deliver more
sustainable homes.

Policies such as The Merton Rule (see http://www.themertonrule.org/) are encouraging a massive uptake in renewable technology as over 80 councils are in the process of implementing pro-renewable planning guidelines.

The thermal version of solarcentury's C21 tile (C21t) will make it's debut at Interbuild 2006 (April 23-27th 2006) providing a fully integrated 'Complete SolarRoofTM'. The combination of the two tiles (C21e & C21t) will deliver renewably generated heat and electricity to homeowners at a time when rising fuel prices are causing major panic in the energy industry.

The C21 product range 'future proofs' a home against such rises by fixing the prices that householders will pay for fuel over the 50 year lifetime of the product.

Eco-friendly Electricity

So, you want to do your bit for the environment and use renewable energy, but you can't afford to install solar, wind, or other means of green power in your home - what can you do?

Well, there is something you can do, you can do it right now, and you can make a difference!

With the deregulation of the UK's energy market you can choose who supplies your electricity, and make your voice heard with your money.

"The other thing that not many people realise is that we can now all choose who supplies our electricity, and therefore how it's made, so wherever you live in the country you can actually choose to have your home or business supplied by clean energy. The funny thing is switching takes about five minutes but it's the biggest single step you can take to reduce your emissions and protect the environment."

There are several green suppliers about, but only one that stands out for value AND their future plans, and that company is Ecotricity. Why Ecotricity you may ask?
Well, Ecotricity was formed in 1996, and have so far (Q4 2005) invested in and constructed 11 windfarms with more at planning stage and construction starting on several other projects.
Just click the previous link and take a look! (link opens in new window).

"Wind is an abundant source of energy that will never run out. It's also the world's fastest growing energy source and in the UK we're lucky enough to have around 40%of Europe's wind resource, potentially enough to power the country 3 or 4 times over".

There are other 'green' suppliers including; Green Energy UK, and Good Energy, but both of these companies have 'bought into' the green energy market by purchasing existing renewable sources including wind and hydro (water) from other companies. Their actual investment in new projects has so far been zero. An interesting comparison of green and traditional suppliers (including their 'green' efforts) can be found at www.whichgreen.org.

Ecotricity promise to match the price of every regional supplier, so therefore it should cost you no more than you currently pay, they also promise to invest the profits from you back into renewable resources, therefore increasing the amount of UK energy produced by environmentally friendly means.

So make a difference now - change your electricity supplier to Ecotricity and you know you are not only making a difference, but your money is also being invested in all our futures.

Further interesting facts and figures regarding electricity and wind power can be downloaded from here . ( in PDF format - Free Adobe Acrobat Reader required: www.adobe.com )