Chris Jardine will be speaking at the half day “Progress in Solar Architecture” event in Oxford. Celebrating the 30th anniversary of Prof Sue Roaf’s iconic building integrated PV house, the event will look at the evolution of solar architecture in the intervening years.

Chris Jardine will be looking at cost aspects here. Does the dramatic reduction in costs of solar PV mean that it should be considered earlier in the design process, rather than an additional extra at the end?

25 years ago, solar PV was a hugely expensive, niche energy technology.  Today, it’s one of the cheapest means of generating electricity worldwide and we’re installing Gigawatts every single day.   It’s easy to take this for granted, perhaps – so here’s a light-hearted review of how it all happened.

A big topic for two hours! This is a whistlestop overview of all renewables - wind, solar PV, solar thermal, CSP, biomass, hydro and the marine technologies. The lecture covers technical, social and environmental aspects of each before looking at the more overarching challenges - scale, grid integration, economics, policy and speed of deployment.