The Arctic Ocean is home to very few types of life. There are some plankton and algae, which provide the food for small fish, worms, crustaceans and molluscs, which in turn are eaten by cod. The cod are eaten by seals and the seals are eaten by polar bears. Of course, it is all a bit more complicated than that but there are not many different varieties of life in the Arctic Ocean because the fact that the ocean is mostly frozen tends to limit the size of the food chain.

If you look point a powerful microscope at cores of mud that have been extracted from beneath the Arctic Ocean you will see, I am reliably informed, diatoms. Diatoms are very small algae. From the pattern of the distribution and arrangement of diatoms you can, according to Alan Kemp of the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, reconstruct the Arctic Ocean’s climate. From Mr Kemp’s observations he has deduced that the Arctic was once rich in life of many varieties, because of the sheer numbers and distribution of the diatoms. It was once as rich in life as the Indian Ocean is today.

From this it seems that the Arctic was once ice free, certainly in the summer time, and possibly for some of the winter. The diatoms were laid down in the ocean floor mud at the same time as when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Some think that the Arctic Ocean will be free of ice in the next twenty or so years. If that happens then whatever the climate change consequences (which are likely to be very unpleasant for humanity) the consequences of an Arctic Ocean supporting far more life than it does today will be to provide a much needed source food for those animals at the top of the practical food chain – humans.

Every few months the leaders of the Group of 8 industrialised nations (USA, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the United Kingdom) meet. They call themselves the G8. The purpose of each meeting is to fix the world’s problems. It is nothing to do with the leaders getting some excellent publicity so that they may show to their electorates what a great and difficult job they are doing and the purpose is also completely unconnected with each leader showing their electorates just how much other all the important world leaders respect him or her.

During each meeting the world is treated to bits of “news” (presumably prepared weeks in advance) to show us what magnificent progress these leaders are making. Yesterday we heard how the G8 had agreed to limit global warming to 2⁰C (3.6⁰F) above “pre-industrial levels” (whatever that means) by 2050 and 50% cuts in global emissions by 2050.

Well, that is a wonderful idea. We would all agree to limit global warming. No one wants to burn. That is the easy part. However, this easy part has been hailed by the G8 as an important statement.

Some politicians, like Mr Miliband the United Kingdom’s Department of Energy & Climate Change’s Secretary (DECC), have pointed to that statement as being important because, it is argued, that if we can get the developing nations to sign up to the two degree limit, then all the detail about how to achieve that limit, can be put in place. The detail includes the cost of financing measures, identifying and requiring measures, deciding when those measures shall start and a whole host of other details about which governments across our slowly overheating world have not even begun to think about.

Mr Miliband pointed out that the European Union has directed that its member states will reduce emissions by one third by 2020 compared with 1990 and said that we must persuade all countries to raise their ambitions to reduce emissions significantly by 2020. He complained about a lack of ambition. He says that we need more ambition to limit climate change to a two degree rise by 2050.

I understand Mr Miliband’s position, because he wants to achieve international climate change co-operation, which will be the only way to achieve any result on climate change.  This means, however, that he does not want the United Kingdom to do the right thing if it is the only nation doing the right thing. For that, I criticise him.

Mr Miliband’s department is in charge of anti- global warming measures, as the name of his department implies. Mr Miliband is in charge of his department and has been in charge since October 2008. It is not possible to identify a single ounce of carbon dioxide that DECC has caused to be saved since Mr Miliband came into office which would not have been saved otherwise.

Even if DECC has saved some emissions, overall the United Kingdom’s emissions are not falling. The Department is not helping to reduce the risks of climate change.

In other words, Mr Miliband seems to be as lacking in ambition to save emissions and to keep the planet’s temperature low as those he urges to increase their ambition. However, he has been responsible for ensuring that there will be increasing emissions by failing to ban coal burning power stations, like the one proposed by e.on (formerly Powergen) at Kingsnorth.

So much for ambition.

Mr Miliband should care for the future. Last month his partner, Justine Thornton, gave birth to a son, the couple’s first child. If their child is to have a future that is worth living then Mr Miliband must raise his own ambition and his game, ensuring that real climate change measures are brought into being by the government department for which he is responsible.

If you put the words “carbon trading” into the blog search engine you will see that I have been consistently critical of carbon trading in this blog since December 2007. I have critically written about carbon trading many times since I started these posts. I have taken the view that it is a waste of time and money and will not reduce carbon emissions. I have been criticised in my views by bankers, politicians and civil servants, and many times felt like a lone voice against carbon trading as one organisation after another adopted its principles.

I hope that the tide is turning now. A group of academics from Imperial College, the London School of Economics, and the University of Oxford and many other prestigious centres of thinking have now made me less lonely in my opinions by publishing a report “How to Get Climate Policy Back on Course”. They argue that the strategy of carbon trading has failed so far and will fail us even more in the future. They urge measures – improving energy efficiency and using more renewable very low carbon energy, which they call “decarbonising” energy.

One of the group, Professor Gwyn Prins, who is a history and politics specialist, says that emissions are still rising and in fact are being permitted to rise by Kyoto and the world’s various carbon trading schemes. The paper’s 12 co-authors come from leading research institutes in England, Germany, Finland, Canada, USA, Australia and Japan.

I would argue with the title, ““How to Get Climate Policy Back on Course”. I do not think that we can say that we can get climate policy back on course because I do not think that climate policy has ever been on course to save the planet; almost every aspect of every nations’ climate policy as well as the broader international polices off too little to make a difference and when the policies make claims for the future do that too little too late. I suggest that they omit the word “back” from the title.

The report identifies that between 1990 and 2000 the carbon intensity for every additional $1000 of gross domestic product was 0.27 tonnes. From 2001 to 2006 that figure rose to virtually double – 0.53 tonnes per $1,000 of GDP.

What this means is that economic growth, beloved of politicians as the panacea to all ills, not only adds carbon emissions by virtue of its growth but also the amount of emissions per unit of economic growth has nearly doubled in the past ten years. Therefore, it is argued that the policies for climate change and in particular trade and cap schemes, are not making any difference.

The authors of the report cite the Kaya Identity in aid of their proposition favouring measures rather than trading; this is an equation which claims to calculate emissions by an equation using four topics – population, GDP per capita, energy use per unit of GDP and carbon emissions per unit of energy consumed. The authors seem to regard the Kaya Identity as proven and unchallengeable. I have looked at it but have not yet been able to decide whether the Kaya Identity’s equation is right or not.

I do know, from common sense as opposed to mathematics, that the only way to reduce emissions is to  save energy, not use energy unnecessarily, use benign energy rather than malignant energy and make polluters pay for the pollution. I provided more details about these principles in “the Energy Age”. This adds up (inter alia) in my mathematics to measures to conserve energy and to use clean renewable energy (not dirty renewable energy) and my common sense conclusions seem, according to the scientists, come to the same conclusions as their mathematics.

Some environmentalists feel that changing course (as they see it) would be harmful. I disagree. There is no point in sailing away from your goal in the opposite direction, which is the course that policymakers have set and the course that the planet is sailing.

You can read the report at

http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/NR/rdonlyres/6E0B4E96-3ECA-427B-8D86-1C241D04AACC/0/climatepolicybackoncourse.pdf

Sunspots, some claim, are the cause of the earth’s climatic changes, not the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that humans pour into the air every day. What is the evidence for this claim?

When I was at university in Manchester I walked up John Dalton Street from time to time. I also past a statue of John Dalton outside the Town Hall and had friends who lived in Dalton Hall residence. I never then knew that John Dalton, who died 123 years ago, was one of England’s leader thinkers who was the first to speculate about differences between various atoms was their masses, create a table of atomic weights (which followed directly from his speculation), and wrote about colour blindness. If Dalton had been in Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh or London he would have been greatly honoured; presumably the existence of one of the world’s leader thinkers in commercial Manchester was overlooked by the then great and the good.

Dalton was very interested in the weather and recorded observations of weather virtually every day of his life.

His observations showed a period of lower than normal solar activity – very few sunspots – that coincided with lower than normal temperatures between 1790 and 1830. 1816 was called the year without a summer.

Later an astronomer, Edward Maunder, studied old data covering the period between 1645 and 1715 and sought to link the colder than average temperatures then with lack of sun spot activity. In both the period that Dalton noted and the period that Maunder found the average temperature was two degrees Celsius lower.

In addition Gustav Spörer recorded similar low temperatures and low sunspot activity between 1460 and 1550.

Two degrees is a very large lowering of average temperature, and the three periods are now called “the Dalton Minimum”, “the Maunder Minimum” and “the Spörer Minimum”.

The Maunder Minimum coincided with “the little Ice Age” when, as far as we can gather, Europe and North America suffered from bitterly cold winters. This set people wondering whether there was a connection between colder than normal weather and lack of sunspot activity and if so whether increased sun spot activity leads to hotter than average weather. By studying the production of Carbon-14 in radiocarbon dating, and by measuring the production of beryllium -10 (which is affected by sunspots) scientists conclude that there have been 18 periods during the past 8,000 years which were times of low sunspot activity. Altogether the sun seems to spend a quarter of its time with few sunspots.

What seems to happen during these “minima” is that when there are no sunspots there is a decrease in ultraviolet light falling on the earth, which decreases the concentration of ozone. This affects the quality of the light reaching the surface and so the theory goes, causing the climate to change. Of course changes in insolation (the amount of light being received) occur for other reasons unassociated with sunspots. For example, the earth will get more insolation as it moves closer to the sun and less as it moves away from the sun on its slightly irregular orbits. The sun seems to marginally vary in size, which also affects things.

Many scientists have believed that sunspot activity and climate change were in a direct casual relationship. The sun is a climate “forcing” agent but in the main greenhouse gases are human created forcing agents.

There are patterns in sunspot activity that link up to patterns in local weather, for some of the time and in some places. These patterns are probably not enough of a fit to be able to prove that sunspots activity causes higher temperatures, although it is possible to show some correlation that provides grounds for further study. So far, most predictions of climate and weather based on sunspot activity have proved to be wrong.

Human induced global warming is a theory, albeit a highly persuasive theory. Sunspot induced global warming is also a theory but seems to have too many inconsistencies and not enough correlations to have significant credibility.

The climate is, as I keep reminding myself, something of immense scientific complexity wand to which logically everything from humans to the sun or from the formation of the planet to the growing things that live and die on it must affect one way or the other. It is entirely possible that sunspots may be a factor in climate change and if they are they are a factor that we cannot control and that cannot be said of human greenhouse gas emissions

When an important member of a highly polluting industry suggests that the industry should be taxed on its carbon emissions it is not usually because that there has been a conversion, similar to that on the road to Damascus. It is usually about damage limitation or spin.

Last week Mr Walsh, Chief Executive of British Airways, suggested that there is a global tax on emissions payable by all airline passengers. Does this mean that Mr Walsh has seen the light and that he intends to ensure that the airline he runs will become environmentally friendly and will start reducing its emissions? I doubt it.

Mr Walsh has form for attention catching gestures. He has decided, having regard to the present financial position of the airline that he runs, that he will forego his salary during the month of July. Mr Walsh earns around £735,000 a year and his airline made a loss of £401 million in its last financial year.

One month’s salary even for Mr Walsh is not a lot in the grand scheme of BA’s losses. Mr Walsh did forgo a bonus of over £700,000 due to the shambolic opening of Terminal 5 last year and that is perhaps not a gesture but recognition that it is wrong to award bonuses for poor performance. I do not think that we can pay too much attention or shower folk with praise when one does the right thing. You deserve no praise for doing what is right.

Airlines, with their creation of pollution in the upper reaches of the atmosphere where they do most harm, and associated greenhouse gas emissions, are the largest single source of growth in greenhouse gas emissions. By convention, their fuel is not taxed.

This makes Mr Walsh’s recommendation very odd. There is no universal agreement on taxing airplane fuel and there is no universal agreement on taxing shipping fuel. Consequently these forms of transport can emit as much greenhouse gas as they want, without having to pay for the consequences of their emissions. In the United Kingdom gas, electricity, coal, oil, petrol and diesel is taxed, every time we turn on a light or have a shower (assuming that we are not using our own solar energy) we pay a tax. If we jump in a taxi or ride a bus one way or another we pay a tax, but if we climb aboard any airline, not matter whether we fly in the front of the plane or the back our emissions from the flight are all tax free.

Mr Walsh’s call for a global tax is a clever piece of spin. There are over one hundred and eighty nations in the world that have airlines. Most nations have several airlines. There are many countries that have dozens of airlines when you include charter companies and companies that run air routes that are national. In addition there are many private planes. It would take dozens of years to secure any agreement with all of the major countries that have airlines about taxing their emissions.

Even if Mr Walsh’s idea that the airlines’ would act against their own self interest and make an aviation emission tax available (thus making aviation more expensive and limiting demand for it by price), his idea also involves hypothecating that tax to certain good environment projects such as fighting deforestation. That would bring his concept of an emissions tax in direct conflict with the way in which governments raise taxes in general – with the consent of their electorate, which involves their electorate knowing that their elected representatives are spending the money.

In other words, as an idea it seems to be, in the words of a well known London expression “all mouth and no trousers”.

Would I be too cynical if I dismissed Mr Walsh’s idea as gimmick? It shows the public who are becoming increasing climate conscious that British Airways are doing something, even if the ambition is set so impossibly high as to require the co-operation of hundreds of airlines and over a hundred government first to tax, and secondly to lose control of the money obtained in taxing.

Mr Walsh’s desire to slow down climate change without affecting the business he runs illustrates the conundrum that those who want to fight climate change must one day solve. Mr Walsh is running a business that affects the life and the future of the whole planet. He is not alone in this neither is his industry the only one that affects us so badly, but it does have an undeserved tax free status for fuel. Mr Walsh knows that his business ought to drastically reduce their emissions, but to do so without all his competitors doing so would mean commercial suicide for British Airways.

Mr Walsh knows that the only way to stop rapid climate change is by specifically binding international agreement on climate change legislation, enacted in every country in the world. That will not happen, the way the world is now. What may happen, if our grand children are very lucky in the leadership of the nations of the world today, is that the world may agree a very modest package of measures which limits temperature rises to two or three degrees.

I would guess right now we are on course for a temperature rise of five degrees, which will spell disaster of much of humanity but for the foreseeable future “business as usual” will unfortunately prevail.

Since Mr Obama was elected President it is now the case that every leader of each major industrial or developed country in the world agrees that climate change is a serious threat and that we ought to cut back greenhouse gases created by humans by 80% before 2050 and hold the temperature rises caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases to less than two degrees Celsius.

Believing that a something is necessary and actually doing something about it are two different things. The history of governments of all nations’ climate change policies is high on pious hopes and very low on real action.

This is because however large and serious the climate change threat may be, governments cannot lead their nations into policies that may cause them to lose competiveness against other nations or what will create a more expensive way of life however compelling the reason. You do not find more compelling reasons for action that the likely effects of climate change, but those effects are in the future and it seems that politicians believe that  no one can face making a modest “sacrifice” today for their grand children’s benefit.

Furthermore, any real policy to reduce climate change brings governments into direct conflict with most of the vested interests that have supported them or that they regard as important to the prosperity of their country. When it comes to fighting with vested interests governments usually refuse to take them on, or in the unlikely event of a fight, governments get out smarted.

Tony Bair, ex Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, is now urging rich nations to fight climate change by increasing the amount of renewable energy that they generate. He calls climate change as urgent and says that the solutions are “within our grasp”. He is right about the first part – climate change is urgent – but wrong about the second part – the solutions are not within our grasp –solutions have been spurned for the past ten years by governments of all nations – including the government that he led for ten years.

No one has suddenly placed the solutions within anyone’s grasp. The solutions have been pushed hard towards policy makers and governments who have, in the main, pushed them away or thrown them away.

Mr Blair’s reaction to climate change when he was in office was to talk the talk but not walk the walk. He created a number of fairly useless quangos to talk about climate change, and the net effect of them did not amount to anything. He did not create conditions for any real investment in carbon reduction but simply subsidised the some favoured types of renewable energy and created conditions where measures to fight climate change depended upon human choice, rather than compulsion.

As I pointed out in 2004, the expenses of 650 Members of Parliament at Westminster were far higher than the United Kingdom’s investment in 2004 in microgeneration. I also point that out in 2005, 2006 and 2007. Mr Blair was Prime Minister for each of those years.

Mr Blair was not brave enough when in office to fight climate change and I wonder why any politician who is in office now should take his statements on the subject seriously or why any member of the public should listen. Mr Blair’s time at the top was a time when the United Kingdom’s emissions increased every year.

Any policy to fight climate change that is based upon choice, rather than compulsion will fail. People will not choose to fight climate change until the effects of it actually affect them rather than their children or grandchildren. Politicians will not have the courage to enact the necessary laws until it is too late, probably because they fear that their electorates will not re-elect them if they create the draconian laws that are needed.

We do not need Tony Blair to tell us what we must do; you could write down a policy to fight climate change effectively on the back of the fag packet, or in the back of a paper napkin in your local restaurant. We just need to do it.

I visited Genersys’ German colleagues last week and in the course of travelling through parts of Bavaria, I was struck by the amount of solar systems that I saw on German roofs. Generally farmhouses had large arrays of photovoltaic panels and homes had smaller arrays of solar thermal panels.

The picture shows a typical installation of a PV system. It is on the roof of a farm building and feeds electricity into the German grid at a higher tariff than the consumer pays.  South German farmers can afford the large capital investment, they have the large buildings to create the economies of scale and get a very useful return on their investment.

Homes tend to favour thermal installations, and they are financed by a two tier subsidy. The first tier is if the panels are used for water heating. The second tier is an additional subsidy if the panels are used for space heating as well as water heating.

The subsidy is paid on a per square metre of panel basis.

I do not know if Germany has got the levels of subsidy right or not. I suppose that there are flaws in their subsidy arrangements, but what is clear is that their subsidies are sufficiently strong enough to enable the casual visitor to spot solar panels on many German roofs, unlike a visitor to the United Kingdom, who will be lucky to see a single solar system in a drive or train journey across Southern England.

If common sense governed the affairs of people South Africa would be one of the world’s leading markets for solar thermal technology and there would be a solar system on every roof in that great republic.

In South Africa there is a state monopoly of energy. The energy company, ESKOM, relies on coal to deliver almost all of its energy; coal is burnt to heat water to drive electricity generating turbines. South Africa has good coal reserves but unfortunately there are several problems.

The first is that coal burning is the most environmentally unfriendly and climate change inducing way of energy creation. In South Africa they burn coal to create electricity and the average household uses about 40% of its electricity for water heating. This is hardly efficient, never mind environmentally friendly.

In fact in South Africa most families can cover almost 100% of their water heating needs from solar systems. At Genersys we have designed thermo siphon systems (that it a tank located above the panels, fed by gravity) to be low cost and easy to fit specifically for South African conditions, where there is plentiful sunlight. In South Africa these thermo siphon systems work very well. There is plenty of light and the water inlet temperatures are high.

  A year ago ESKOM announced an incentive of up to 5000 rand for installing a solar system. The figures add up very easily. The average system costs around 35,000 rand, which is 30,000 rand after the rebate. The average family pays 18,000 rand a year for electricity of which 7,200 rand can be saved by using a solar geyser, which is what South Africans call solar system.

In anyone’s language this adds up to a no brainer, with a simple “payback” (assuming no change in electricity prices) of less than four years with a solar system that will be guaranteed for up to 20 years.

David Carte, a South African financial journalist has calculated that fitting solar geysers to every one of the six million South African homes would cost only about 15% of the cost of building a new power station. Like most countries, South Africa is facing an increased demand for electrical energy but has failed to build the necessary power stations to keep up with demand, so that South Africans from time to time experience power outages.

So far only 1000 solar systems have been installed in South Africa under the ESKOM project. It is hard to understand two things. The first is why only 1000 systems have been sold under these conditions. The second thing is why the government is not giving solar systems away. It would be a lot cheaper than building new power stations and would really help us in reducing the pace of climate change.

Genersys solar panels have been tested in many places for literally dozens of different countries. The testing for the European Union covers certification for each member of the European Union. In addition, some nations within the European Union, like France and Spain, have additional tests to which Genersys panels have been subjected. The latest country to test Genersys panels was South Korea. In every case Genersys panels have “passed” these certification tests.

Unfortunately both for the consumer and the solar thermal professional the information obtained in the tests can be misleading. At first sight it may be thought that the more heat that the solar panel creates the better, but this is not in fact the case. Solar thermal works on the basis of being able to store the energy collected by the sun. A larger water store with a properly designed and sized heat exchanger will provide more useful heat than a very hot panel.

Indeed, there are great disadvantages in making the panels too hot. In very hot countries – parts of the United States, Australia  and South Africa panels designed to be very hot will either need to be covered in summer and/or have the generated heat dumped. In other places the panel will simply overheat the system in very hot weather.

A panel designed on heat performance will over heat regularly. Overheating causes heat damage to the panels’ absorbers, to the system seals and valves. Over heated panels and solar systems are over stressed and they do not last long and they will have heavy regular maintenance charges.

At Genersys we aim to design our panels so that they are not damaged by great heat stresses and so that they also provide useful energy in low light conditions. These features often mean that on simple test comparisons it may appear to the untrained and unqualified eye that other panels perform better. This is not the case. Genersys panels perform as well as any other panels but by their design withstand heat stresses better, last longer and do not over heat or cause the system to overheat.

Michaela Wheeler is our Chief Engineer in the United States, (where solar thermal technology is relatively under developed) and she has has occasionally had to answer questions about panel performance. She has now put together her scientific comparison of panel testing. She concnetrates her figures around the Genersys 1000-10 panel and its US competitors.

You will note that different testing stations (even in Europe) often provide different test results! Michaela’s explanation creates a proper comparison of different solar collectors.  Here conclusion is “After converting the EN 12975 report into the OG-100 format, the Genersys 1000-10 has a peak efficiency that is comparable with its competitors and that all major panels operate at more or less the same peak efficiency as to make no difference.” and I am told that her mathematics proves it.

1000-10 Panel Thermal Test Results

    Source: Genersys USA

As shown in the chart above, the 1000-10 panel was tested using the EN-12975 and the OG-100 test.  

The thermal performance test procedure for the EN-12975 is the EN-12975-2 and the thermal performance test procedure for the OG-100 is the ISO 9801-1.   The test procedure for the EN 12975-2 was adopted from the ISO 9806-1.^[1]   Given the same testing conditions both test procedures should arrive at the same data.  

The difference between the EN-12975 and the OG-100 is how they calculate instantaneous efficiency and collector area.   The EN-12975 calculates instantaneous efficiency using the arithmetic average of the fluid inlet and outlet temperatures.^[2]  The OG-100 calculates instantaneous efficiency using the inlet temperature of the fluid.^[2]   The EN-12975 uses aperture area whereas OG-100 uses gross area for its collector area.^[2]   Instantaneous efficiency can be calculated in both formats using either EN-12975-2 or ISO 9801-1 testing procedures.

 Comparing OG-100 Results with Competitors

     Source: SRCC: http://www.solar-rating.org

                 Comparing the Genersys 1000-10 panel with its competitors reveals that the peak efficiency is significantly lower.   However, comparing the test conditions between the panels reveal that the flow rates and test fluids are significantly different.   This difference prevents us from making a proper comparison between the Genersys product and its competitors.  

 In order to provide fair comparison between panels, the OG-100 has an equation for determining flow rates for each panel.   The OG-100 application form states, “For glazed flat-plate liquid-type solar collectors the ASHRAE standard flow rate per unit area (transparent frontal or aperture) is 0.02 kg/(s m2) [14.7 lb/(hr ft2)]. “^[3]   Given this equation, the Genersys 1000-10 panel should have been tested at 35.6 ml/s.   Unfortunately, the 1000-10 panel was tested at 13 ml/s.

 How to Create a Proper Comparison

In order to create a proper comparison between the Genersys 1000-10 and its competitors, the Genersys 1000-10 panel would need to be tested at the proper flow rate of 35.6 ml/s and with a test fluid of water.   Thankfully this test has already been performed in the EN 12975 certifications shown on the first chart.   Since the testing procedures are the same for the EN 12975-2 and the ISO 9806-1, we can use the data from the EN 12975 report to calculate the efficiency in the OG-100 format.   The data for the 2003 EN 12975 report done by Fraunhofer Institut Solare Energiesysteme is shown in the table below.

Source: Genersys PLC: 2003 EN 12975 Fraunhofer Institut  Solare Energiesysteme

                m = mass flow rate

                t_in= temperature in

                t_out= temperature out

                t_m= average temperature between in and out

                t_a= ambient temperature

                G = Irradiance (975 W/m²)

                Ŋ = Efficiency

The equation for determining efficiency using the OG-100 format is shown below.^[2]

12ÅŠ = mCpTout-TinAcGt’>

                                                            Ŋ = efficiency

                                                            12m’> = mass flow rate

                                                                                C_p = specific heat of water  (4.186 J/g °C)

                                                                                T_out = temperature out

                                                                                T_in = temperature in

                                                                                A_c = gross area of collector (2.028 m²)

                                                                                G_t = Irradiance on collector (975 W/m²)

Peak efficiency is obtained when the difference between T_out and T_in is greatest.   Looking at the test data chart above, this occurs when T_out – Ti_n is 9.91 K.   This line on the chart is shown below.

Source: Genersys PLC: 2003 EN 12975 Fraunhofer Institut  Solare Energiesysteme

Entering the data on this line into our equation results in the following efficiency:

120.707 = 121.344.1869.912.028*975 (10003600)’>

Comparing Genersys 1000-10 Panel with Competitors using Proper Comparison

The chart below shows the efficiency of the Genersys 1000-10 panel with its competitors using the EN 12975 test results converted into OG-100 format.

    Source: SRCC: http://www.solar-rating.org

Conclusion

 After converting the EN 12975 report into the OG-100 format, the Genersys 1000-10 has a peak efficiency that is comparable with its competitors and that all major panels operate at more or less the same peak efficiency as to make no difference.

 References

[1] Werner W. Weiss. Solar Heating Systems for Houses.  Earthscan Publications Ltd.; 2004: 280

[2] John A. Duffie, William A. Beckman. Solar Engineering of Thermal Processes.  New York: Wiley-Interscience Publication, 1991: 304-305

[3] SRCC. “SRCC” Solar Ratings Certification Corporation. http://www.solar-rating.org/ratings/OG100_ratings_info.htm

I have written a great deal about energy from the climate change perspective. This has roused, from time to time, the ire of climate change deniers, who have often not bothered to read my views but argue against opinions that I do not hold. However, in all the arguments of those that think that climate change is nonsense and deny it, or those that hold it to be a no more than a trick for climate change researchers to get tax dollars, there are two points that their arguments overlook; the first is that traditional fuel supplies are finite and when they are exhausted there will be no more fuel and the second point is the desirability of energy security.

If people believe that the earth holds an endless supply of oil, gas, coal and uranium then nothing that I write will change that view. It will be the equivalent of their religion – the belief in never ending oil, gas coal and uranium.

It is much easier to persuade people about the desirability of energy independence.

The people of sovereign nations usually wish to maintain their sovereignty. If someone has to rule you, it should be people that speak the same language and hold the same values as you. Put simply, Americans do not wish to be ruled by the French, and the Greeks do not wish to be ruled by the Costa Ricans.

Many of the worse episodes in history have happened because one nation or group of people sought to impose their rule on others. Ruling others is a mistake that most nations commit when they are powerful; as powerful nations slowly become less powerful, they often find reasons to regret their rule of others.  

With energy, independence or self dependence (probably more or less the same thing) is now critical. We cannot run our defences or criminal justice system or hospitals and medical services or most of what we do without having a ready and safe supply of energy.  Most of us could not live without energy. It is, like food, an essential.

Most of us do not wish to be dependent upon other nations for essentials. Nations that we depend upon for essentials may be fair and reasonable today, but no one could guarantee that they will always remain so. The United States may find Canada a safe and substantial ally. The United States found Venezuela such an ally, once upon a time; things change and time changes things.

I have spoken with people who live in Germany and with others who live in Eastern Europe. They are fearful that this winter the supplies of gas upon which they depend will be cut off by Russia, which owns the natural gas. It is not a good position to be in. You might be free, except for your dependence on Russian gas. You are then not truly free at all.

Even if your nation had limitless fossil fuel, would you really be free? If you take the position one step further, if we, as a nation, produced all the energy that we needed, we would still be dependent upon others for the energy that we need. I shall explain.

Most of us are dependent upon the local energy company to produce and sell to us sufficient current to operate the light when we turn it on, and sell to us sufficient gas or oil to heat up our water and our homes. The energy company is dependent upon an energy network or grid through which the energy is distributed and a power station or energy producing plant for the generation of electricity and upon a regular supply of fuel to that plant and to its system for distributing fuel such as gas and oil in order to produce our heat. The fuel companies are dependent upon buying the fuel from abroad. If we simply remove the need to buy fuel from abroad, we will still be dependent on all sorts of other entities for our energy.

There is no guarantee that the local grid company or gas supplier or petrol station will always treat us fair and reasonably. Indeed, history tends to show that these entities strive to become monopolies, not to be able to treat us fairly, but to be able to get as much money from us as they can. That is the way of the world.

So, when you see wind turbines in a farm or solar panels proposed on every roof do not scoff at them because you may not accept that the climate is being changed by humans. Do not complain that they and the energy they bring are too expensive. They will provide some energy independence on a large scale for your nation, and on a small scale, for yourself. With any degree of energy independence, comes freedom.