Following on from a previous post about Emergancy IKEA Shelters, The Guardian reported recently that IKEA is going to start selling polar panels in all 17 of it's British stores with in the next year following the success of is pilot project in Lakeside, East London that sells on average one photovoltaic a day.

In case you some how didn't know, the UK green energy market is pretty heavily subsidised, and the government offers quite nice subsidies to encourage people to take up the use of alternative energy sources such as PV panels, windmills and the like. Mostly anything that produces green energy that can't be stored. A home owner can receive subsidies for generating green electricity as well as exporting excess power into the main grid.

According to the Guardian article, an average house with a south-facing roof would earn about £770 a year through subsidies and savings on energy bills. Which is quite tidy and they get to feel good about becoming a bit less finite reliant.

Unfortunately the article is really snarky about the China made panels, claiming they will break in roughly 7 years. That being about the length of time the panels take to pay for themselves on the above predicted savings. In actual fact photovoltaic technology is pretty good, even the flimsy film pvs have a good 10 year life span, longer if you don't mind non-peek performance. Lets face it, we all have ikea furniture that has out lasted our expectations.

IKEA itself aspires to produce all its power from green energy by 2020.