Free solar panel discussion

K4blades

Just out of interest Cardew, as you are so oppossed to Venture Capitalists, who would you expect to fund the solar farms on the factories etc, that you say you are so in favour of.

John_Pierpoint

It seems the "Energy Bill" is on its way through parliament at the moment.
To quote today's "Politics Show" on the TV:
Everyone from Student to Pensioner will be able to afford these energy saving measures (because the reduction in their fuel bills will finance the less than 20 year pay back).

So who is providing the capital?

Hard cases in terms of borrowers and buildings will be financed by the energy companies (the bankrupt government has no money) to the tune of x billion a year (sorry I missed the actual figure).

For a start experience shows that especially "the hard cases" tend to revel in taking most of their savings in higher room temperatures and are then shocked to get the same old poverty inducing fuel bills.

Any body want to pass the hat round for the poor shareholders of the energy companies, who will be financing all this capital investment - or do we think the prices will be going up?

I think the message is "You will have to join the rush because you won't be able to afford not to"

You ain't seen nothing yet.

The booming German economy is only managing to retrofit 100,000 properties a year at a subsidised interest rate of 2.5% - but we are going to retrofit "millions" of homes in the 10 years the scheme is expected to last.

I suppose it might make some jobs for the unemployed - rather than a new generation of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auf_Wiedersehen,_Pet

zeupater

PeterZ wrote: »

For those reading this thread, you should also read this:

http://www.ashadegreener.co.uk/news/

"
A couple of internet forums about free solar panels have been hijacked by some people who don’t agree with Solar Panels and the Free Solar Panel industry and are against what our company is doing.
Some of the people on these forums are saying that homeowners couldn’t possibly halve their annual electricity consumption with our 3.3kw system and that homeowners will hardly make use of the free electricity.
Some of the people on these forums are saying that people won’t be able to sell their property with our systems in place, and that people won’t be able to get a mortgage or re-mortgage their properties.
All of these claims are entirely inaccurate and because we have now had some systems out there for over a year we have concrete evidence to repudiate what these people are saying."




Its a real shame that Sarah from ASG was banned from posting on here (due some small minded people who complained).

:rotfl::rotfl:

I saw that on their site a while back & thought that it was a little disingenuous. I would have thought that the majority of posts relating to the energy savings available to pv, whether owned or 'rent-a-roof' were related to the savings being around £100/year and that the larger the system the higher the percentage of energy produced would be exported.

Without checking through every post on this forum, and that means relying on memory :eek:, I cannot remember one post which says that 'homeowners couldn’t possibly halve their annual electricity consumption' ..... of course they can, as long as they have a large enough system and have a very low level of energy consumption. At a push it is possible that my own household will eventually achieve a 50% reduction from having pv, but, considering that we have been reducing consumption for years through the use of 'high efficiency' goods, this now involves a number of initatives on power reduction such as replacing quite modern televisions which are used in the evening and at night with new generation LED screen units equipped with light level sensors etc. Hitting the 50% target reduction is therefore as much to do with 'other' power/energy reduction initiatives as it would be linked to pv alone, therefore pv will both directly save household energy purchases and act as a catalyst for further savings as people naturally become more energy-aware.

Looking at the on-going debate from a balanced viewpoint, well as balanced as I can be as a pv user, I find that many extravagant claims are made, mainly by those who would be classified as being pro-pv, which simply tend to be questioned with logic, resulting in no logical counter-argument, whilst often addressed by obfuscation, unsupportable claims and unnecessary frustration related deep-seated anger. I for one would welcome any discussion based on logic, especially directly from either MCS installers or 'rent-a-roof' scheme operators, as long as their business interests are declared.

HTH
Z

leicesterlee3

i tried this company bookasurvey after no one answerd my last post they explain every thing if your house is south facing and has enough roof space the installation company will fit the panels for free the instalation company then get the feed in tariff and any benifits from the goverment for 25 years which is the agreement you must sign the home owner gets the use of the electricity the system generates through out the day but the system does not store the electricity.i had the free survey but unfortunatly but house is facing the wrong way so i was not eligable for the free scheme.

Cardew

zeupater wrote: »

:rotfl::rotfl:

I saw that on their site a while back & thought that it was a little disingenuous. I would have thought that the majority of posts relating to the energy savings available to pv, whether owned or 'rent-a-roof' were related to the savings being around £100/year and that the larger the system the higher the percentage of energy produced would be exported.

Z

Likewise I saw the ASG statement on their website. However as they said a couple of internet forums - it could have referred to other websites.

I also am not aware of any statement on MSE that states people 'couldn't possibly halve their annual electricity consumption.'

In discussions when ASG were participating on MSE, they didn't dispute the figure of £100 a year savings for the householder and their argument appeared to be that was a worthwhile saving. It is also in the same ballpark as WHICH estimate.

So if you have a £200 or so annual electricity bill, it is perfectly possible to halve your bill.

Again I haven't seen any post on MSE that states "people won’t be able to sell their property with our systems in place, and that people won’t be able to get a mortgage or re-mortgage their properties."

There has been considerable discussion on the possibility of the panels detering some buyers and anecdotal evidence that solicitors and some Building societies have expressed reservations about signing a legally binding agreement to 'rent' your roof for 25 years - with that agreement binding on future owners.

zeupater

Cardew wrote: »

...... So if you have a £200 or so annual electricity bill, it is perfectly possible to halve your bill ....

Hi

In my case the usage was reduced from well over 4000kWh/y to around 2600kWh/y through energy efficiency measures before even looking at pv .... the 35% saving has nothing to do with pv at all.

It's possible that with what we've done combined with a few more 'tweeks' we'll achieve a further 50%(ish) reduction on energy purchased this year, however, due to a higher proportion of the imported electricity being in the higher price band the average cost/unit will be around 30% more expensive so the overall savings would be around 35% .....

It's hard to save what you think you can save, or are told you can save, the power companies have designed their pricing structure to ensure this remains true, but we're not supposed to know that ..... :shhh: .....

Z

K4blades

Hi Cardew, you appear to have missed my question so I have re-posted it.

Thanks.

K4blades wrote: »

Just out of interest Cardew, as you are so oppossed to Venture Capitalists, who would you expect to fund the solar farms on the factories etc, that you say you are so in favour of.

Cardew

K4blades wrote: »

Just out of interest Cardew, as you are so oppossed to Venture Capitalists, who would you expect to fund the solar farms on the factories etc, that you say you are so in favour of.

As stated many times I think it a nonsense to use a highly inefficient generating medium like solar PV - period.

However if it is decreed that solar will be part of the mix, instead of us(the consumer) paying venture capitalists 43p per kWh for thousands of tiny systems on roofs all over UK, power could be produced with huge systems on factory roofs etc in the West Country for a much lower cost.

As we consumers foot the bill for all solar subsidies, it makes sense to produce the electricity as cheaply as possible, and hence with much smaller subsidies, and pay that to Venture Capitalists.

zeupater

K4blades wrote: »

Hi Cardew, you appear to have missed my question so I have re-posted it.

Thanks.

Hi

Having followed Cardew's posts for a while, it is quite obvious to me, and probably many others, that the reference was more targetted at a business model which utilises the banded level of FiT payments which are available to operators of 'rent-a-roof' schemes for installing what are effectively very large solar farms on a distributed basis in a way which simply maximises returns as opposed to maximising efficient use of available plant and capacity.

I'd be pretty sure that the view is that venture capital is not the issue, however, exploiting a yet to be addressed loophole in the FiT banding scheme by organisations which could be funded by venture capitalists would be.

HTH
Z

### Note: Cross posted with above .... post still stands

K4blades

But surely, venture capitalists, by their very nature will only do something if they can make lots of money out of it Reducing the profitablity, makes it much less of an attractive proposition, so less likely to happen......which is why we never had PVs everywhere prior to FITs.


Not that I'm against your suggestion of using factory roofs, etc, I just think its wishful thinking to expect it to happen without it being heavily funded in some way or another.

Unfortunately, that can be said of much of what we have in the world, such as the transport infrastructure.