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AC – alternating current. This is the form in which electricity is delivered to our homes from the national grid.

Anemometer – a gadget to measure how windy your site is, prior to investing in a wind turbine.

Clean Energy Cashback - the name for government's schemes to encourage renewable generation of heat and electricity: the renewable heat incentive and the feed-in tariff.

Coefficient of Performance (CoP) -  is the measure of how many units of heat are generated per unit of electricity used to run the heat pump (see also system efficiency ratio).

DC – direct current. The type of electricity produced by batteries, solar panels and wind turbines.

Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) - EPCs rate your house (or business premises) for energy efficiency on a scale of A to G. It also provides information on how to improve the energy efficiency, and what level you would attain if you put the measures in place. All homes bought, sold or rented require an EPC.

Feed-in tariff – The government's financial incentive to encourage microgeneration of electricity. A feed-in tariff was introduced in the UK on 1 April 2010. Large scale generation is encouraged through the Renewables Obligation (see below).

Green Deal - A pay as you save scheme for energy efficiency measures due to be introduced in October 2012. It will be available for domestic, business, and for landlords.

Inverter – used to convert direct current (DC) electricity to alternating current (AC), so that it can power domestic appliances or be exported to the grid.

kWh – kilowatt hour is a unit used to measure energy. Electricity bills are charged in kilowatt hours, and it is the unit used to measure the energy generated by wind turbines or photovoltaic solar panels.

kWh/year - kilowatt hour per year. This can be used in terms of heat output, or the amount of energy needed to heat a house. For example, my solar thermal system is predicted to generate 2,517kWh of heat per year. The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) calculates that the average household requires 3,742 kWh/year of energy to heat its hot water.

kWp – kilowatt peak is the measure of how much power a photovoltaic system produces from the sun under test conditions. It measures the power produced under 1kW per m2 of light. The more efficient the system, the smaller the area of panels needed.

Low carbon energy– this term refers to technologies which minimise the amount of carbon (or greenhouse gas) emitted into the atmosphere. At a domestic level it includes air and ground source heat pumps and combined heat and power. In national terms it includes nuclear power or the yet to be developed concept of carbon capture and storage – both of which continue to be controversial.

Microgeneration – is the generation of heat or power by renewable or low carbon means, by individuals, businesses or communities for their own use.

Miscanthus – also known as elephant grass, miscanthus is one of the front runners in the search for a commercially viable biomass crop in the UK and Europe. It is originally from China, but has a high yield when grown in the UK.

RDSAP - The reduced data SAP was introduced to assess the energy and environmental performance of existing dwellings cost effectively. It was developed in 2005 for the introduction of Energy Performance Certificates.

Renewable energy – energy generated from sustainable natural resources, such as sun, wind, water and geothermal heat. This includes biogas and biomass, hydroelectricity, solar heat and electricity, geothermal energy, wind, wave and tidal power.

Renewable Heat Incentive - government plans to encourage the take up of renewable sources of heat generation. This was proposed in July 2009 and is expected to be introduced in April 2011. It applies to heat generated in an individual home and large scale district heating systems and heat from waste plants.

Renewables Obligation - this is the government's main system of supporting renewable electricity generation. It requires electricity suppliers to source percentage of their sales from renewables (this percentage increases each year). For each megawatt hour of renewable energy they generate, they receive a tradable certificate called a Renewables Obligation Certificate (ROC). Small scale generation is rewarded by the Feed-in Tariff (see above).

Renewables Obligation Certificates (ROCs) - are designed to incentivise the large energy companies to invest in renewable energy. They are also paid to microgenerators who receive two for each megawatt hour of electricity generated.

Retro-fit - refers to products that are installed to an existing house, rather than as part of a new build. It tends to be more expensive to retro-fit, as systems such as plumbing might have to be changed.

Renewable Heat Premium Payment (RHPP) - The governments financial incentive to encourage the microgeneration of heat through a one-off payment to help with installation costs. Available from July 2011

SAP The Standard Assessment Procedure is the Government's principal methodology for assessing the energy and environmental performance and the compliance of new and existing dwellings.

System efficiency ratio - the system efficiency measures the amount of heat the pump produces for each unit of electricity needed to run the entire heating system (including hot water and supplementary heating such as an immersion). This is different from the COP (coefficient of performance) which just measures the amount of heat produced per unit of electricity used to run the heat pump.

U-value - indicates how well a part of the building (ie roof, window, door, wall) keeps the heat inside the building. It measures the heat flow through those components. The higher the figure, the higher the heat loss. It is measured in terms of how many watts (W) of thermal energy is transported through a component of 1 square meter (m2) at a temperature difference of 1 degree centigrade, ie W/m2.