Free solar panel discussion

digitaltoast

PeterZ wrote: »

Yes, exactly - as your graphs show the output from solar is from ramping up by 10am and continues through at a good level until 5pm. It s a good fit.

Are we looking at different graphs here?

At 8am, the national grid demand is 36GW, the output from the solar panel is 1/10th of its capacity at 600 watts (enough to bring my kettle to 1/3 temperature or have 1/12th of a shower - whooopee!)

At 10am, grid demand has peaked and is now falling to about 35GW, the panel is at 3/5th capacity.
At 2pm, grid demand has troughed for the afternoon, the solar panel is outputing pretty much 100%.
At 8PM, grid demand is back for its evening high of 36GW, the output from this panel and every other panel across the entire country added together totals.... 0W.

Can't quite tally these graphs with what you're telling me, I'm afraid.

EDIT: Or as PeterZ appears to have just posted in much more elegant graphical form above.
Edit #2. Er, hang on, you ARE PeterZ! So you've kind of just proved your own point.

Incidentally, that graph shows a highly optimized "split" SE/SW twin-array. Almost all other arrays would be fixed south-facing, so would have nothing like that spread of even-ness throughout the day. So I've been kind of generous there!

I feel like I've just walked in on an atheist and a Christian having an argument, but it just turns out to be one person!

PeterZ_2

digitaltoast wrote: »

and let's say one in every 4 houses has panels

So some say 1 in 100 houses, I say 1 in 20, you say 1 in 4.

That is by far the most optimistic prediction I have heard by a long shot. Could you explain your reasoning a little further?

Even 1 in 20 would present many challenges and would probably take around 30 years before we get there.

PeterZ_2

digitaltoast wrote: »

At 8am, the national grid demand is 36GW, the output from the solar panel is 1/10th of its capacity at 600 watts (enough to bring my kettle to 1/3 temperature or have 1/12th of a shower - whooopee!)

Not really sure what your point is, its a bit like saying nuclear is rubbish because it only supplies 13% of our electric.

So nuclear can only bring my kettle to 13% of its temperature - whooopeee!

Hydro must be even worse, it only supplies 2.3% - what on earth are we going to do with that! And even worse, hydro dries up in the summer, just when we need it most to run the air conditioning.

http://www.fullermoney.com/content/2011-04-11/Originofenergycountry.pdf

Cardew

PeterZ wrote: »

I think you are being a little pessamistic, I think its feasible for around 1 in 20 houses to have solar pv. If you then add in some warehouse roofs and community projects then that target could be reached.



This combined with some modern design nuclear power would give us energy security and independance.

Solar contributing to energy security and independance in sunny UK; you are joking of course?

We also get no sun at night and, as the name 'solar' suggests, the sun is a vital ingredient for solar power;)

We explained before that the peak demand in UK is on a winter's evening when Solar is contributing Zilch - nothing - zero. So we need the generating capacity to cope with that load without considering any solar generating capacity.

So if solar + nuclear can give us 'energy security and independance', when the sun is shining and solar is producing masses of power, I assume you suggest we 'switch on and off' the nuclear power stations as required.;)

digitaltoast

PeterZ wrote: »

So some say 1 in 100 houses, I say 1 in 20, you say 1 in 4.

That is by far the most optimistic prediction I have heard by a long shot. Could you explain your reasoning a little further?

Even 1 in 20 would present many challenges and would probably take around 30 years before we get there.

Before we fly off at a tangent, can we deal with the graph?

However, I'll answer your question:

http://www.towngatetechnologies.co.uk/news/3/the-guardian-reports-on-the-feed-in-tariff

According to British Gas, “As many as half of Britain’s homes could earn around £600 a year from roof top solar panels and some as much as £1000.”

The Guardian reports that “The UK is on course to meet its 2020 renewables target. A new report from the National Grid has published these exciting findings and statistics on the proposed uptake of microgeneration, with people producing their own power using technology such as solar panels.

A capacity of 31,950 megawatts of existing and proposed renewable energy generation will be connected over the next ten years. Around 4,950 megawatts of renewable generation capacity is already connected to the transmission network, with proposed projects this year totalling a further 27,000 megawatts.

This means there would be enough to power more than 20m homes and would surpass the 29,000 megawatts estimated by the National Grid that would be needed to meet the 2020 target of 15% of the country’s total energy demand through renewable energy.

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c6/page_39.shtml

Photovoltaic (PV) panels convert sunlight into electricity. Typical solar
panels have an efficiency of about 10%; expensive ones perform at 20%.
(Fundamental physical laws limit the efficiency of photovoltaic systems to
at best 60% with perfect concentrating mirrors or lenses, and 45% without
concentration. A mass-produced device with efficiency greater than 30%
would be quite remarkable.) The average power delivered by south-facing
20%-efficient photovoltaic panels in Britain would be
20%× 110 W/m2 = 22 W/m2.

Figure 6.5 shows data to back up this number. Let’s give every person
10 m2 of expensive (20%-efficient) solar panels and cover all south-facing
roofs. These will deliver 5 kWh per day per person.

North, South, East, West. I would assume that one quarter of houses would face south. 1 in 4. 25%.

Oh, but hang on, we're not even close.

According to http://www.esru.strath.ac.uk/EandE/Web_sites/01-02/RE_info/hec.htm

"a single Person uses 3,084 kWh of electricity per day".

So let's go back to the Cambridge report above. It concludes:

The solar power capacity required to deliver this 5 kWh
per day per person in the UK is more than 10 times all the photovoltaics
in the whole world.

Oh dear, we're gonna need a lot more than 1 in 4 roofs then!

PeterZ_2

Cardew wrote: »

We also get no sun at night and, as the name 'solar' suggests, the sun is a vital ingredient for solar power;)

No !!!!!! sherlock!!!! What you mean solar panels dont work from moonlight! Of course they dont work at night, even my 5 year old knows that:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

PeterZ_2

Cardew wrote: »

We explained before that the peak demand in UK is on a winter's evening when Solar is contributing Zilch - nothing - zero. So we need the generating capacity to cope with that load without considering any solar generating capacity.

Electricity isnt all about that winters day. We use a lot of electricity in the spring summer and autmun as well.

We have some great engineers in this country and they have already formed their plans for the future of the national grid, see this:

http://www.nationalgrid.com/uk/Electricity/Operating+in+2020/2020+Consultation.htm

No one is saying its going to be easy, but when the gas and oil runs out and gets really expensive we need to have an alternative in place.

You seem like a smart guy and seems a shame that you focus your efforts on trying to shoot others down, rather than looking at positive solutions.

PeterZ_2

"The solar power capacity required to deliver this 5 kWh
per day per person in the UK is more than 10 times all the photovoltaics
in the whole world. Oh dear, we're gonna need a lot more than 1 in 4 roofs then!"

Who ever said that we were going to get all our power from solar? I certainly didn't and you shouldn't imply that I did.

Renewables will be part of the mix, this is the government strategy and I think the correct one. Some think we can get 100% renewables:

"The EU has set a binding target that 20% of our total energy should come from renewables by 2020. The REA believes the UK can and should achieve this level, and we should aim for 100% renewables by the end of this century."

I think 100% is not realistic and while possible would be too expensive. Nuclear really is our best bet to make up the bulk of our supplies, of course since Japan confidence has been lost, but it really is the lesser evil.

digitaltoast

PeterZ wrote: »

No !!!!!! sherlock!!!! What you mean solar panels dont work from moonlight! Of course they dont work at night, even my 5 year old knows that:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Great, perhaps you can get him or her to explain to you why having every single square metre of the entire country covered in solar pv won't help one jot at 5pm on a December evening.

PeterZ wrote: »

Electricity isnt all about that winters day. We use a lot of electricity in the spring summer and autmun as well.

We have some great engineers in this country and they have already formed their plans for the future of the national grid, see this:

http://www.nationalgrid.com/uk/Electricity/Operating+in+2020/2020+Consultation.htm

No one is saying its going to be easy, but when the gas and oil runs out and gets really expensive we need to have an alternative in place.

You seem like a smart guy and seems a shame that you focus your efforts on trying to shoot others down, rather than looking at positive solutions.

No, we look for REALISTIC solutions. And yes, I know about the National Grid, thanks. I used to work for them. And you won't find a single advocate of solar PV anywhere near the place. It's a nightmare for the grid.

I've also visited renewable, fossil and nuclear plants - as I mentioned earlier in this thread - I've toured Didcot (coal), Sizewell (Nuclear), Hoover Dam in the USA (hydro), one of the world's largest wind turbine farms near Palm Springs (USA) and a geothermal facility in New Zealand, and I got the pics to prove it too (except Sizewell, no cameras!).

There are others on this thread who've worked for the grid, or have engineering or financial qualifications. It's not a case of "trying to shoot others down", it's a case of feeling you've walked into a lunatic asylum and trying to help the people inside realise that the world isn't run by lizards and Elvis really isn't alive.

PeterZ wrote: »

I think 100% is not realistic and while possible would be too expensive. Nuclear really is our best bet to make up the bulk of our supplies, of course since Japan confidence has been lost, but it really is the lesser evil.

NOW we're talking - but while people are prattling about generating false economies/ponzi schemes based on (I'll say in once again) the most inefficient and unreliable method of generating energy in the UK known to man, they could be spending the £8BILLION or so on research into Thorium reactors, a nuclear technology based on a fuel hundreds of times more abundant and 200x as potent by mass than uranium, yet with a "decayed to safe" life of 200 years, not thousands, and inherently safe being activated by an active beam of protons, all reactions stopping upon removal of beam.

More info on that here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00fvlq9/One_Planet_The_metal_that_may_save_the_world/

Which do YOU think the £8 billion would be better spent on?

PeterZ_2

digitaltoast wrote: »

Great, perhaps you can get him or her to explain to you why having every single square metre of the entire country covered in solar pv won't help one jot at 5pm on a December evening.

Now its your turn to start stating the obvious, once again where did I say that solar pv would help at 5pm in december? It doesn't!

Does it help at 10am in March? Yes!
Does it help at midday in June? Yes!
Does it help at 3pm in Spetember? Yes!

There are plenty of other days inthe year when solar pv does help.