Solar Photovoltaics Weekend Workshop

The Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) is an education and visitor centre demonstrating practical solutions for sustainability. They cover all aspects of green living: environmental building, eco-sanitation, woodland management, renewable energy, energy efficiency and organic growing.

We were asked to run a weekend workshop covering all aspects of solar photovoltaics (PV). The weekend was split into two days:

Day 1 covered solar resource, solar PV technology and grid-connected systems. Day 2 covered off-grid systems and economics.

This course was open to the general public and so the attendees (eleven in total) had a wide range of backgrounds. We tried to ensure that this was interesting for all levels, starting with the basic concepts and building on that. We covered a huge amount of information. We kept a practical element in the workshop and on day 2 reinforced the learning with a DIY practical, building their own solar PV powered off-grid system to power different loads, such as phone charging and lighting.

We have run a number of courses at CAT, including their City and Guild course for domestic solar PV installation, the AEES MSc solar photovoltaic module along with the Introduction to PV course.