The Great 'Get Paid To Generate Energy' Hunt

celerity

Cardew wrote: »

Why do we want it 'boosted' when it is so inefficient and costs us all a fortune in subsidies? Directly on our electricity bill!

You know my answer to this, and you won't like it .

By establishing a small-scale solar PV (and in practise lots of these companies will do solar thermal as well) industry in the UK, it should mean that in a few years time the prices of systems will come down enough that homeowners and small businesses* can afford to buy them without subsidies. This won't happen in isolation of course, but elsewhere in these forums we've already established that panels are falling in price, the next gen of inverters will be much cheaper etc. All of these factors mean that a long term strategy of getting a useful number of buildings micro-generating in the UK is possible.

One other benefit that is worth considering is that by promoting small scale renewables / micro generation etc, it helps shift public awareness about energy. This is not an easy to quantify benefit, but I confess to liking it all the same.

/\dam

* obviously only ones with suitable roofs!

Cardew

celerity wrote: »

One other benefit that is worth considering is that by promoting small scale renewables / micro generation etc, it helps shift public awareness about energy. This is not an easy to quantify benefit, but I confess to liking it all the same.

/\dam

* obviously only ones with suitable roofs!

The majority of people in UK cannot 'enjoy' PV because they live in rented houses, flats or houses with unsuitable roofs.

So to make them aware of energy(renewable), a system is devised where they pay venture capitalists, and the well off, huge subsidies.!

To add insult to injury, the Government actively discourage more efficient ways of solar PV generation(i.e. solar farms) in favour of paying bigger subsidies to the aforementioned venture capitalists!

Run that by me again please!

celerity

Cardew wrote: »

The majority of people in UK cannot 'enjoy' PV because they live in rented houses, flats or houses with unsuitable roofs.

Solar is one of the few domestic micro-generation schemes that are viable today in the UK though. We've already established that small wind turbines are a non-starter.
So, if you want to raise green-awareness in our villages, towns and cities - solar PV is the way to go.

As I've often said, I do genuinely see your point about disagreeing with the solar FiT scheme - to the point where I do question the efficacy and (un)fairness of it myself more than you might think. If it does help in some way to shape our society into using more renewables though, then I think it will be worth it.

Put another way, if in twenty years time, it isn't unusual for homeowners to fit solar PV without any subsidies, that would fully justify today's FiT for me. I take your point that the majority of properties in the UK aren't suitable, but this is a red herring. Even if only a small fraction of roofs were suitable, that would still be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of areas that could be micro-generating. Get the cost down enough and even you might mellow to "that pesky old FiT" in your twilight years .

/\dam

Cardew

celerity wrote: »

Solar is one of the few domestic micro-generation schemes that are viable today in the UK though.

Might be a semantic point, but IMO it cannot be correct to define Solar as 'viable' in a discussion about costs, when it needs such massive subsidies.

Just to repeat a point, I don't think anyone has made any criticism of people for taking advantage of these subsidies.

celerity

Cardew wrote: »

Might be a semantic point, but IMO it cannot be correct to define Solar as 'viable' in a discussion about costs, when it needs such massive subsidies.

Just to repeat a point, I don't think anyone has made any criticism of people for taking advantage of these subsidies.

Okey dokey. I meant "viable for a homeowner or small business" in the sense that they'd actually get their money back in their lifetime.

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Cardew

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/consumertips/household-bills/8620325/Solar-panels-save-just-70-a-year.html

keith_r59

Cardew wrote: »

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/consumertips/household-bills/8620325/Solar-panels-save-just-70-a-year.html

Rosalyn Foreman of the EST said:

"While these are typical estimates, it's quite possible that someone could save more than £70 if they were at home in the day or set all their appliances to run in daylight hours."

Avalon_Fantasy

Well, I am hoping that no one bites my head off, and I`m not exactly sure if this is the correct section of the forum for this, but anyway.

Just this January we had some of the panels fitted to our roof ( its a south facing barn with only fields in front) we paid for them ourselves because it wasn't difficult to see that if our 'spam phone-call ' rates were quadrupling each week, from firms wanting to put it up for free but have the money signed over to them for the next 25 years, that this was / is a good thing if, A- you can afford it, B- your roof faces the correct way, C- you own the property, D-In during daylight hours

So that in mind, we did a lot of checking, goodness me there are some right.........you know whats about (last week probably selling driveways as they were in your area... wink wink!)

After filtering through the dross and finding a lovely accredited company from up north they came down, and sorted it.
We sent off all the details in January to British Gas ect and then a couple of weeks ago we got in touch with British Gas again, gave them the reading to which there was a gasp,(LOL) and a request for us to take a picture of the obviously offending meter reading counter!

Anyway, after we emailed the image they replied back with the comment of ' this is higher than expected'..
I was just waiting for them to say, 'well you cant have that amount of money', but some days later we received our first cheque..£500
So I can say that I am liking the panels as a genuine home-owner.
I also think that if more of these panels we utilised in building homes the price would come down for everyone.
As I am at home during the day I have made a few changes, I suspect time will tell how that works in the scheme of things.. I do washing of clothes, drying, dishwasher ect during daylight hours, so it will be interesting to see what will happen to bills over the next few months.

Avalon_Fantasy

It has occurred to me that you might like the details regarding the numbers.
Firstly, I forgot to say that when we sent the initial numbers British Gas would not accept 0 as the start... not being an engineer I would love to know why ever not, after all we had all our bills/ certificates ect to say this was a brand new just put in system..so despite that I think we said ..ok...then 1. rhe.
This is a portion of the return email:

Thank you for sending us the photo of the meter. We have now sent your reading 1375 for payment.

That was from End of January to mid May as it turns out, so we read again in August!

I hope this has been of some help to people and thanks to those that have 'liked' the post previous to this..
Oh yes, I live in middleish England , so if you are up on your weather its been a bit hit and miss so far, I cant imagine what it would be like on non cloudy full daylight days!

FYI, on a light note, my husband comes home and says... hello darling has it been a good day... ????

NO, hes NOT asking me if my days been good... hes asking what the meter reads! LOL

John_Pierpoint

Would you be prepared to put up the specification of your system?
Number and size and nominal output of panels, manufacturer, inverter capacity and manufacturer, forecast v actual performance, price (broken down if possible), etc....................