NPower have followed the pack and increased their gas and electric prices its been reported.  NPower are increasing their prices by 15.7% on gas and 7.2% on electric.

The owners of NPower are blaming the price increase on the fact they have to buy from the global wholesale market and the prices are in flux.

What is odd is NPower reported a increase in half year profits so why the increase for the customers?

Now that all the main companies have increase prices it means all most everyone will be paying a lot more each year towards their bills, so what can we do?

In truth there is very little we can all do other than finding ways to reduce our bills ourselves.  This will mean making sure houses have double glazing, insulation whether its in the roof or walls and doing other small things which I’ve been describing on this site.

Regardless on what we do it does mean we have to spend more in order to reduce bills in the long run which does seem unfair seeing as these companies are showing some very large profits.

As it seems to be a growing trend amongst electric / gas companies it seems that just about all of them have put up the price of energy this year.

E.On is the latest company to raise their prices and it’s not really a little jump with gas going up 18% and electricity 11% in September.  E.On are just another company in a long list that keep putting up the price of Gas and Electricity.  Amongst the other companies are NPower, British Gas and Scottish power to name but a few.

All companies are, at the moment blaming the rise in wholesale energy prices.

What I find odd is most of the larger gas / electric companies are investing plenty of money in renewable energy, of course the money they are spending will need to be ‘recouped’ but surely if these companies are making all this extra electric via solar energy / wind power then how come our prices are rising at a alarming rate?

It is estimated that with all the price raises this year it will cost a UK household 10% of the income if not more.  There are a few websites claiming now to offer advice on how to cut down your bills but there is only one showing you real tests and experiments on how to save money.  Be sure to share, like and tell your friends about www.powerbynature.co.uk and hopefully we can all save a little money.

As we all know Solar panels are being common around the UK whether it is on homes or in the garden.  The current panels do quite a good job at creating electricity but there is hope for improvement.

The clever people are trying out a new structure to the solar panels that forces photons to bounce while going through the panel rather than just ‘going through’.

This bouncing effect means that when light hits the new designs it’s bouncing from one layer to another, each time the light hits a layer it’s producing a small charge of electricity rather than the current process where the light simply hits the layer once, produces a charge and passes through.

This new design could mean that solar panels could be 26% more efficient than solar panels on the market today.

If the new design can be perfected then it would mean that a current 80w solar panel would infact be called a 100w solar panel.  I’m not sure if this would mean a price cut in the cost of solar panels but the material they have been testing the structured layered is less expensive that the current silicon solar cells.

The International Energy Agency have reported that the global carbon emissions are up and at the highest level ever.

With all the news over the past couple of years about reducing the emissions it makes you wonder if anyone actually cares. China and India are reported to have increased the most emissions which many other countries helping to make this the highest level ever.

There is a lot of money being ‘pumped’ in to greener energy but if the world as a while do not all join the fight to reduce the emissions it’s not going to happen and these figures are basically proof of this. We can all still do out part in helping with emissions but if the largest countries around the would don’t help then it’s going to be a loosing battle.

It’s been announced that the UK energy secretary want the UK to cut the carbon emissions in half by 2027. At the moment the UK does produce around 603 million tons of carbon emission, this sounds like a lot, which it is but that’s a decrease from 783 million tons since 1990.

To manage this is not going to be easy. The largest source of ‘free’ electric power is of course wind farms. The size of the wind turbines and the number of them allows them to produce ‘a lot’ of electricity.

But what else can they do?

Solar power is of course the other obvious choice. If half the houses in the UK had a couple of solar power panels on their roofs how much electricity would this produce.. my guess would be a lot. As the panels don’t need direct sunlight and just day light getting solar panels on more houses / buildings can only help the UK reduce the carbon emissions.

There is talk of further pushing the electric cars but I would guess that unless you live in a larger city such as London having a electric car is just not feasible due to the limits on how far the cars go.

So what else can the UK do to help cut these emissions… well I’m sure time will tell!

Welcome to our site. If you are here and reading this then you are interested in using either the Sun or Wind to power.. well anything.

We will be keeping you informed of information which comes out about new products or general news about solar / wind power. We shall also being running some projects in order to see how easy it is to create some solar / wind powered devices in your own home.

Keep checking back for further updates and to follow our projects