Free solar panel discussion

digitaltoast

beedydad wrote: »

"make money" whilst the govt are giving it away.

Just to correct a huge misconception here - the government aren't giving it away. The government are forcing the power companies to increase the fuel bills of those most likely to be in fuel poverty to subsidise owners of large mansions with south facing roofs or huge solar farms on farm buildings. It's not from general taxation, it's a direct transfer from poor to rich.

cathd6 wrote: »

because we're going to pick up some rather nice fines if we don't.

How large are these fines expected to be, and what are they based on? Because the net cost to the country of the solar FiT scheme over the next 20 years is £8.2bn. See here for details: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=43276920&postcount=2496

cathd6 wrote: »

It's not just those who can afford it who benefit from this sea-change in attitudes. My local authority is officially opening a new council development of 18 homes next week where the elderly residents will be paying pennies for gas and electricity, and will have greatly reduced water bills on top.

Water bills? How so? And who do you think is paying the massive subsidy the council is getting for these panels? And where are you getting these figures from? What does "paying pennies for gas and electricity" mean - I pay 6 pennies for most of my electricity, but that's per unit. Are you talking about per unit, per minute, per day?

cathd6 wrote: »

All progress has to start somewhere, and I for one am not in love with paying unnecessarily through the nose to keep the fossil fuel / nuclear industry in profit.

Again, not sure I understand. Electricity is currently bought wholesale for around (6p?) a unit. Solar PV, one of the world's most inefficient ways of generating electricity, costs 45p unit. Most of the electricity is produced at precisely the time it's not needed, and absolutely zero is produced when it's most needed. The total carbon savings are tiny.

Would you read this, then return here and explain how this is all a good thing? Because I'm struggling to see how it is.

grahamc2003

digitaltoast wrote: »

Would you read this, then return here and explain how this is all a good thing? Because I'm struggling to see how it is.

Wow, whatever next - Monbiot catches a dose of common sense. Incredible - support from a very unexpected quater.

Guess he'll soon be working for the Mail instead of the Guardian.

cathd6

Because if one individual household has not used £100 worth of dirty electricity in one quarter then that's a pretty significant carbon saving when upscaled - do you dispute? Wait till we can stick a battery on that - that's not too long coming. To reap the real national and global benefits early adopters are needed - and human nature means that comes at an up-front cost.

Re the new development - I don't have official figures to hand but they'll be paying less than me for gas and electricity. I don't pay for my hot water any more and these houses do not have central heating. I pay under £30/month for electricity in a 4-bed house with kids and they have greater generating capacity and presumably less use. Mains water use cut drastically by rainwater collection. Passive houses. I also have no problem with the council receiving any subsidy, partly because I pay for the council in the first place.

You'd better check how much we're liable for if we don't meet our targets and get in touch with the government if the FIT scheme is going to be more costly because some economists have clearly got their sums wrong.

digitaltoast

cathd6 wrote: »

Because if one individual household has not used £100 worth of dirty electricity in one quarter then that's a pretty significant carbon saving when upscaled - do you dispute? Wait till we can stick a battery on that - that's not too long coming.

Oh dear. Not to sound rude, but you really, really don't understand the properties of either electricity or the national grid, do you?

Example: The HS2 Traction Energy Modelling carried out at Imperial College shows the power consumption pattern for Euston – Birmingham, and for Birmingham – Euston. For most of the journey time, the power drawn down from the grid would be about 12MW.
1MW = 1000kw. 1kw is what 1 square metre of solar panel produces, at best. In the middle of the day. Out of rush hour.

Let's scale up a bit and think wind turbine:

A train drawing 12 MW of power would require the output of 12 wind turbines. HS2 would accommodate 10 trains per hour in each direction in off peak hours, rising to 14 trains per hour during peak periods. So running in peak mode at 360 km/h, 14 trains in each direction would require the output of 336 wind turbines.

To put this in perspective, our largest off shore wind farm off Thanet in Kent, consists of 100 turbines which can each generate 3.0MW of electricity. Enough to power 240,000 homes or 4 HS2 trains per hour in each direction.

Good luck storing that lot for use when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. As mentioned here before, all the pumped storage in the UK can keep us going for an hour at best. What's going to take us overnight from 3pm to 10am in December?

Have a read of "Sustainable Energy – without the hot air" for free here http://www.withouthotair.com/ or buy the book on Amazon.

cathd6 wrote: »

Re the new development - I don't have official figures to hand but they'll be paying less than me for gas and electricity.

Well, let me know the name of the development and I'll put in an FOI request for the figures.

cathd6 wrote: »

I don't pay for my hot water any more

How so?

cathd6 wrote: »

and these houses do not have central heating.

What's the method of heating?

cathd6 wrote: »

Mains water use cut drastically by rainwater collection.

Impressive, when large parts of the country are in drought condition. How many thousands of gallons are you storing?

cathd6 wrote: »

Passive houses.

One of the only certified "passive houses" in the UK is Crossway, featured on Grand Designs. (here and here). I'm pretty sure the build cost alone was over £500,000 - good luck gettting many of them build (that said, it's a good testing ground for future passive house technology)

cathd6 wrote: »

You'd better check how much we're liable for if we don't meet our targets and get in touch with the government if the FIT scheme is going to be more costly because some economists have clearly got their sums wrong.

Well, as you brought the subject up, and I presume you have the figures to hand, why don't you tell us instead?

cathd6

Incidentally I'm pretty familiar with the Monbiot article and was very disappointed with him. For example he mentions a well-worn chestnut about the German government. They didn't reduce the FIT payment because it was a waste of money, they reduced the rate to new registrants to the scheme as was already planned as part of the long-term strategy. The UK government will be doing the same thing early next year - as people take up capacity the rate becomes less favourable to new entrants. It's already built in. The thing is, Monbiot must have known this was crap when he wrote the article - it was already doing the rounds and had been thoroughly debunked. He even uses footnotes to seem academically unassailable - shame that he completely misrepresents the publication he references. And he's not issued any corrections. So why should I have any more faith in George Monbiot than a Daily Mail hack?

We're going to need mixed energy resources in the future - we already do. Solar PV is part of this. From my own example, and our house isn't even set up to best make use of the technologies available at the moment, solar PV is a great help to families with or without FIT. Energy independence is already helping less well-off households and public institutions, and more so as take-up increases. Fines aside, we're probably already to late for some major economic consequences of global warming, let alone social consequences, but at least we're making some steps forward now. This is all perfectly rational, and I think that we should have more faith in our ability to innovate rather than stubbornly clinging to old tech, which has served us well to now but is no longer fit for purpose.

digitaltoast

cathd6 wrote: »

The thing is, Monbiot must have known this was crap when he wrote the article - it was already doing the rounds and had been thoroughly debunked. He even uses footnotes to seem academically unassailable - shame that he completely misrepresents the publication he references. And he's not issued any corrections.

I'd like to read the debunking. Got a link?

cathd6 wrote: »

solar PV is a great help to families with or without FIT.

How so given that solar PV can, by definition, never pay for itself without the subsidy? (For grid-tied houses, of course. For off-grid battery-backed properties, you might want to check the 3-yearly maintenance cost of enormous banks of highly explosive deep-cycle lead-acid batteries).

Anyway, I'm sure you'll want to answer my previous questions first - I don't mind waiting.

cathd6

digitaltoast wrote: »

Oh dear. Not to sound rude, but you really, really don't understand the properties of either electricity or the national grid, do you?

I'm a linguist, my partner is the physicist.

But where we disagree is that I think that powering 240,000 homes by renewable energy represents a carbon saving, in the same way that I've reduced my own burden by not using my modest £100/quarter.

I do agree that I will never quite manage to generate 15% of the UK's energy supply on my own by 2020, nor will one single wind farm.

cathd6

By the way, I'm not going to waste my time doing web searches for you, nor am I going to post my bills, nor am I going to let you know where I live as I try not to post any details that might identify me on public forums! I've not posted anything that is not correct, and it matters very little to me if you don't believe me (For links you could do worse than starting with the publication Monbiot links to himself though...) Everything there is easily verifiable. The problem is that it demands a certain flexibility of thinking.

And regarding the cost of solar PV, do you really believe that it will always be so expensive? Especially as costs have already dropped by a couple of grand since the end of last year. And for the record, I don't think the future solution to storage is going to be "enormous banks of highly explosive deep-cycle lead-acid batteries" I don't think that would be considered viable?

digitaltoast

cathd6 wrote: »

I'm a linguist, my partner is the physicist.

That explains a fair bit. I've said it before and I'll say it again:

Why listen to people with expertise or industry experience, they'll only confuse you with "facts" and "numbers".

Go for it! In fact, get two put up! You just can't go wrong!
Hurry! Quick! Sign up today! Quick! Free money forever! Wheeeee!

cathd6 wrote: »

But where we disagree is that I think that powering 240,000 homes by renewable energy represents a carbon saving,

So, to clarify, you, a linguist, feel you know better than your partner, a physicist, about the ability of renewables to supply the UK and reduce carbon emissions. Is that correct? Hmmm, there's a surprise.

Here's Monbiot again - feel free to debunk with solid links to other studies:

It expects this scheme to save 7m tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2020(5). Assuming, generously, that the rate of installation keeps accelerating, this suggests a saving of around 20m tonnes of CO2 by 2030. The estimated price by then is £8.6bn(6). This means it’ll cost around £430 to save one tonne of carbon dioxide.

Last year the consultancy company McKinsey published a table of cost comparisons(7). It found that you could save a tonne of CO2 for £3 by investing in geothermal energy, or for £8 by building a nuclear power plant. Insulating commercial buildings costs nothing; in fact it saves £60 for every tonne of CO2 you reduce; replacing incandescent lightbulbs with LEDs saves £80 per tonne. The government predicts that the tradeable value of the carbon saved by its £8.6bn scheme will be £420m(8). That’s some return on investment.

cathd6 wrote: »

in the same way that I've reduced my own burden by not using my modest £100/quarter.

cathd6 wrote: »

I pay under £30/month for electricity

cathd6 wrote: »

I've had my own PV system installed and have saved £100 off electricity in the first quarter without any additional energy saving measures.

Hang on...something's not adding up here. Is £30 a month pre or post solar installation?

cathd6 wrote: »

I do agree that I will never quite manage to generate 15% of the UK's energy supply on my own by 2020, nor will one single wind farm.

Nor will it if every single roof carries a solar panel and every single hill sports a wind turbine. Here are those annoying "facts" and "physics" getting in the way again...

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c6/page_38.shtml

The power of raw sunshine at midday on a cloudless day is 1000W per
square metre. That’s 1000 W per m2 of area oriented towards the sun, not
per m2 of land area. To get the power per m2 of land area in Britain, we
must make several corrections. We need to compensate for the tilt between
the sun and the land, which reduces the intensity of midday sun to about
60% of its value at the equator (figure 6.1). We also lose out because it is
not midday all the time. On a cloud-free day in March or September, the
ratio of the average intensity to the midday intensity is about 32%. Finally,
we lose power because of cloud cover. In a typical UK location the sun
shines during just 34% of daylight hours.

If a breakthrough of solar technology occurs and the cost of photovoltaics
came down enough that we could deploy panels all over the countryside,
what is the maximum conceivable production? Well, if we covered 5% of
the UK with 10%-efficient panels, we’d have
10% × 100 W/m2 × 200 m2 per person
≈ 50 kWh/day/person.
I assumed only 10%-efficient panels, by the way, because I imagine that
solar panels would be mass-produced on such a scale only if they were
very cheap, and it’s the lower-efficiency panels that will get cheap first.
The power density (the power per unit area) of such a solar farm would be
10% × 100 W/m2 = 10 W/m2.
This power density is twice that of the Bavaria Solarpark (figure 6.7).
Could this flood of solar panels co-exist with the army of windmills we
imagined in Chapter 4? Yes, no problem: windmills cast little shadow, and
ground-level solar panels have negligible effect on the wind. How auda-
cious is this plan? The solar power capacity required to deliver this 50 kWh
per day per person in the UK is more than 100 times all the photovoltaics
in the whole world

cathd6

Why don't you just google "German government FIT payments" rather than being sarcastic about my sources? Because I might be right?
Sums? I saved £100 over the first 3 months post-installation. My bills, post-installation, are sub £30/month. I don't think there's any maths involved there, it's just two facts.
And I'm not sure what your point about linguists is - except that you must really hate them if you think that word takes an umlaut By the way they are our academic backgrounds, not our jobs.
I really don't agree with you that we shouldn't invest in R&D and promulgating new technology because the costs are high. I am all for adopting a range of solutions by the way. In the end we will find that doing nothing carries the higher cost.

Edited for one final point. If 15% renewables is an impossible target in the UK, I wonder how other countries which have exceeded this target (up to 30%?) have managed it? 19% of Denmark's power comes from wind farms. So it would seem that it's not only stubborn being pessimistic, it's also misconceived and can only hold us back vs other nations.