The Oil Drum

Your wind resource is much easier to exploit right now. Take a look at George Monbiot's book "Heat." Very cheap solar may still do better than wind in the UK eventually, but we are a still some time away from that.

Chris

Step 1.

As PV solar power becomes economic, large installations are put into place in Spain, where the sun is reliable and hot, and where there are huge summer peak daytime air conditioning loads.

Step 2.

The Spaniards discover they have excess, effectively free, electricity from their PV plants in the winter when a/c loads are negligible.

Step 3.

The Spaniards notice that the British are paying through their noses for peak winter electricity.

Step 4.

The Spaniards sell electricity into the French grid, the French sell their electricity into the UK grid via the existing interconnecter under the channel.

Step 5.

PV in Spain expands to provide cheap winter solar energy to the whole of Northern Europe.

EP is making a good point about the way systems (in this case the waste side of things) can produce surprising results. That is why it might just be a mistake looking at the viability of solar in the UK alone.

Solar, whether a waste product or not, will hardly be a silver bullet and will have its issues too.

Looking at the big picture, the situation looks more like this:

Source = Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation
Integrating all possibilities - including the renewable resources available to the Brits - will be a more complete answer.