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Solar Panels During a Heatwave: Do They Actually Produce More Electricity?

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  Solar Panels During a Heatwave: Do They Actually Produce More Electricity? Hook: Solar panels love sunshine — but they don’t necessarily love heat. When Britain experiences a run of cloudless, exceptionally hot days, it seems obvious that solar panels should be producing electricity at their absolute maximum. Blue sky. Intense sunshine. Long summer days. Surely this is perfect solar-panel weather? It is certainly good solar weather — but there is an important complication. Photovoltaic panels need light to generate electricity, but as the solar cells themselves become hotter, their efficiency falls. A wonderfully bright but very hot August afternoon can therefore produce less peak power than an equally sunny, cooler spring day . That sounds contradictory until we separate two things that we normally lump together: sunshine and temperature. They are not the same thing. Sunshine Makes Electricity. Heat Does Not. A photovoltaic panel converts incoming solar radiation int...
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Should We Stop Trying to Keep Britain Green All Summer?

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  Should We Stop Trying to Keep Britain Green All Summer? Perhaps a brown lawn in August isn't a gardening failure. Perhaps watering it is. For generations, the picture of the perfect British garden has included one almost compulsory feature: a neat, rich, green lawn. Green in April. Green in June. Green in August. But perhaps that expectation belongs to a different climate. During a hot, dry British summer, grass begins to lose its lush colour. It fades through pale green, then yellow, then eventually turns the rather alarming straw-brown that makes us think something has gone terribly wrong. The instinctive response is obvious. Get the hosepipe out. Yet an established lawn turning brown during drought has not necessarily died. In many cases, the visible leaves have died back while the roots and growing points remain alive. The grass has effectively reduced its activity until better conditions return. The Royal Horticultural Society specifically advises gardeners to resist...
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Don’t Pour Drinking Water on Your Garden: Use It Twice

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  Don’t Pour Drinking Water on Your Garden: Use It Twice Before water disappears down the plughole, ask whether you’ve really finished with it. We have become rather accustomed to using perfectly good drinking-quality water once. We turn on the shower and let several litres run away while waiting for it to become warm. We rinse vegetables under the tap and send the water straight down the drain. Half-finished glasses of water are tipped into the sink. An aquarium is cleaned and a bucketful of nutrient-containing water disappears down a waste pipe. Then, a few hours later, we go outside, turn on another tap and use fresh drinking water to water the garden. There is something slightly absurd about that. I am already a great believer in collecting rainwater. I have a 250-litre water butt, yet during prolonged hot weather even that apparently large quantity can disappear remarkably quickly. Rainwater harvesting is certainly part of the answer, but perhaps there is another reservo...
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