Solar Panel Guide Discussion

Martyn1981

Cardew wrote: »

The point is that we(the electricity consumer) are paying out a subsidy for solar electricity to be generated and none reaches national grid. Thus not only is the house owner getting the subsidy we pay him for generating electricity, but he has all that electricity free of charge.

This is why I've kept mentioning that the FIT is effectively a grant towards the infrastructure cost of the installation, though admittedly it's paid in relation to generation, but that seems sensible since it encourages better orientation, shading etc. Otherwise you could have the silly situation where the panels are just stuck in the loft, not on it. So it's not related to export, but to creating an industry.

The export tariff is what is paid for actual export (though for most domestic installs, it's only estimated - deemed at 50%). If a farm used all the leccy, then no export would be paid.

Now working on the assumption that the farm would have needed to import leccy to grow plants etc, then the grid is still boosted by the same amount, but total grant expenditure will be less.

This leads on to another point I've mentioned a few times, as and when PV subsidies disappear, a house installing PV will get nothing for generating, and only get paid for export. If that house doesn't export all of it, then the grid (everyone else) benefits from reduced demand, but at no cost for the non-exported element.

Of course, nothing is that simple. What we've been referring to at 7.1p are either very large installs 250kWp or more, or stand-alone. If they are stand-alone then they aren't connected to a property, farm etc, but export only.

Once we start talking about sub 250kWp installs that are connected to a property, then the subsidy is actually 11p - 11.5p, which at 100% export would be 16p, which is pretty close to domestic at 18.25p and shortly to be reduced to 17.69p.

Nothing in life is simple, so maybe this discussion wasn't pointless afterwards, since these issues are more complex than might at first appear.

Mart.

EricMears

Cardew wrote: »

This is just getting silly.

:T :T :T :T :T :T :T

I keep looking at this thread because it pops up in bold in the topics list and I keep hoping that someone will really have posted something on the subject of "Solar Panel Guide Discussion".

Short of blanking out everyone who has contributed recently (which would be a shame because some of them seem to make quite sensible points in other threads), is there any way of stopping the topic from showing up in bold ?

Martyn1981

Oh, and Cardew, if you want something to complain about, then I'm happy to join you on this conundrum:-

Large installs of 50kWp+ will get 11.5p, but if situated on the roofs of companies such as Tesco's, Asda, B&Q etc, then they'll probably consume 100% of generation (give or take early/late Sunday and Xmas day).

With install costs falling fast, I'd guess that the savings on electricity costs (at retail rates) will probably make those schemes viable now, if located southern Britain, without additional support, so the additional FIT is pretty generous. But ....

The problem though, is that not all businesses will run 7 days per week, or for PV farms, will make money at wholesale rates. So we have a split need, but only one tariff.

As I said above, nothing is simple.

Mart.

Edit: Oops, sorry Eric.

Cardew

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

their subsidy is in the form of ROCs which are a form of monopoly money which has a market value for conversion into what we all can spend .... the ROCs will be awarded based on their metered generation whether they use it in house or export it, therefore ...."If we have a solar farm, that uses nothing in-house, we pay a lower rate of subsidy and they provide electricity to the National Grid" .... is incorrect, they receive the same number of ROCs in both cases and actually lose out on their contracted supply price by wasting their production, ....

HTH
Z

ROCs are for over 5MWp farms, under 5MW get FIT.

So have I to state a solar farm under 5MW each time to stop you going off at a tangent?

So my statement ""If we have a solar farm, that uses nothing in-house, we pay a lower rate of subsidy and they provide electricity to the National Grid" is correct.

Do you, of all people, really have to take an obviously facetious remark about heating a swimming pool, and disect it? I would expect it of Martyn - but not you!

X thousand 3kW heaters indeed.

You haven't even attempted to answer the central point of houses with sub 4kWp systems being paid a subsidy for each kWh they generate and being able to use all of it, and in theory export nothing.

John_Pierpoint

Cardew wrote: »

Originally Posted by Cardew
3. Transmission losses? We bring in huge amounts of electricity generated by Nuclear in the South of France to Kent and then to the grid. Indeed it has been muted that solar farms in Spain or even North Africa could supply UK. But transmission losses for a solar farm a few miles from a town is a problem? Get real please.


They have Nuclear Power Stations all over France

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France

I would respectfully suggest that most (all?) of our electricity imported from France, comes from this large power station, a short booze-cruise from Kent.:

The Gravelines Nuclear Power Station is the fifth largest nuclear power station in the world, the second largest in Europe (after the nuclear power station of Zaporizhia, Ukraine) and the largest in Western Europe. It is located in Nord, France, approximately 20 km (12 mi) from Dunkerque and Calais. Its cooling water comes from the North Sea. The plant houses 6 nuclear reactors with a unitary power of 900 MW. In 2006 the plant produced 38.14 TWh, 8,1% of the whole amount of electricity produced in France. Two reactors entered service in 1980, two in 1981, and two in 1985.
The site employs 1680 regular employees. As of the 2nd of August 2010, it became the first nuclear station anywhere in the world to produce over one thousand terawatt-hour of electricity[1].

The exercise is one of minimum cost accounting, the unit of measurement is the tonne of carbon. We are measuring a gas that is poisoning our planet. Once upon a time, we traded using the caret of gold (the weight of the widely available carob seed), Then we swapped between the world wars to accounting in fiat currency, though this was initially linked back to the gold standard. Now we have a new unit of measurement of something toxic and the name of the game is trying to minimise its output, not maximise output, because we live on a finite planet.
It is difficult to appreciate the new situation in a world motivated by maximising income production & consumption.

So the FiT is a reasonably honest tax, in that the politicians cannot deficit finance it by printing more FiT.

However it may not be the most cost effective way of reducing carbon dioxide production, though it does have the useful effect of allowing the individual to monitor their own carbon saving.

One of the major attractions is that as fiat money is devalued by deficit financing techniques, the FiT maintains its value. To the gold standard add the personal carbon standard, as a store if wealth.

Martyn1981

Cardew wrote: »

Do you, of all people, really have to take an obviously facetious remark about heating a swimming pool, and disect it? I would expect it of Martyn - but not you!

X thousand 3kW heaters indeed.

You haven't even attempted to answer the central point of houses with sub 4kWp systems being paid a subsidy for each kWh they generate and being able to use all of it, and in theory export nothing.

Firstly all these personal attacks on me, are not because I'm being pedantic, but because you can't understand the issue. You are mis-representing the situation in order to wrongly criticise this part of the scheme. When I point out the 'simple' fact that you are missing, you attack my numbers, rather than sitting down and having a really good thunk.

All I (and Zeup) have done is 'attempt to answer' your point, over and over - for so long now, that Eric is on the brink of a breakdown!

Those sub 4kWp systems didn't previously exist, now they do, so they are boosting the grid, either through export, or by no longer taking out what they used to take out. The net effect is exactly the same. If they produce 3,000 units, export 2,000 and no longer need to import 1,000, then the grid is boosted by 3,000 units. This isn't a trick.

So boosting your 2:1 ratio to 3:1 is a complete myth, and totally misinforms those reading your posts.

Mart.

Edit: Lastly, rather than complain about the way I (or anyone else) treats your facetious remarks, why not just stop making them. It's these very distractions and noise that prevent a logical, and rational debate. M.

Martyn1981

Does anyone mind shifting this argument over to the 'Solar PV Feed In Tariffs - Good or Bad?' thread?

Martyn1981 wrote: »

As above from 'Solar Panel Guide Discussion' thread.

Mart.

Mart.

EricMears

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Does anyone mind shifting this argument over to the 'Solar PV Feed In Tariffs - Good or Bad?' thread? Mart.

No, please don't - some people will keep posting here, some will switch and the rest of us will have two 'new pages' to avoid each day.

zeupater

EricMears wrote: »

No, please don't - some people will keep posting here, some will switch and the rest of us will have two 'new pages' to avoid each day.

Hi Eric

I for one agree with your sentiment .... I'm just continuing to post where I see errors in logic, on both sides ... It doesn't matter whether the discussion moves to tax, potatoes, large systems, negative demand or whatever we seem to have two camps with pre-set ideas who, through a selection of, or combination of, a need to argue for the sake of argument, poor understanding, political stance or sheer bloody-mindedness continue to raise the same illogical and mainly incorrect points time after time ....

The discussion regarding 'public purse' although not yet being in consensus on the minor point of the definition of 'public purse' did actually result in the major point that the levy charged on electricity was actually a tax being conceded, so there's now no need to raise that one again ....

The discussion regarding potatoes was a diversion, it's no more or less complicated to discuss potatoes than electricity, so it needed to be shown to be so, hence the 'Tale of two Farmers' post ... it was silly, but simply shows that the analogy of potatoes was simply an unnecessary distraction ...

The term 'negative demand' is a virtual concept and cannot exist in reality and is therefore an unnecessary distraction ... there is supply and there is demand which translates to generation & consumption - so why complicate matters.

The issue on these threads isn't to do with FiTs, if it was it would have been considered within scale, context and reason some time ago .... the fuel for the discussion is simply misplaced politics, misunderstanding and saving face ...

HTH
Z

zeupater

Cardew wrote: »

ROCs are for over 5MWp farms, under 5MW get FIT.

So have I to state a solar farm under 5MW each time to stop you going off at a tangent?

So my statement ""If we have a solar farm, that uses nothing in-house, we pay a lower rate of subsidy and they provide electricity to the National Grid" is correct.

Do you, of all people, really have to take an obviously facetious remark about heating a swimming pool, and disect it? I would expect it of Martyn - but not you!

X thousand 3kW heaters indeed.

You haven't even attempted to answer the central point of houses with sub 4kWp systems being paid a subsidy for each kWh they generate and being able to use all of it, and in theory export nothing.

Hi Cardew ....

I for one am not going off at a tangent ... if the discussion goes of at a tangent towards potatoes, I've followed it, if it goes from small systems to large systems, I've followed it ....

Regarding your point "ROCs are for over 5MWp farms, under 5MW get FIT." - in a theoretical world only. Consider the following .... Large pv Farms <5MWp exist which do not show-up in the MCS database, is this because the owners have decided to not claim subsidy ?, is it possible that no-one read the DECC consultation document referenced earlier in the discussion ..... (http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/11/consultation/ro-banding/6338-consultation-on-proposals-for-the-levels-of-banded.pdf) .... excerpt below ...

Page 6 Section 1
1. Executive Summary


"2. We are considering whether to issue a separate consultation on a proposal to exclude new solar PV installations at, or below, 5MW from the Renewables Obligation (RO) so that they would be supported only through the Feed-in Tariffs (FITs) scheme."

.... so DECC themselves are now looking at defining the cut-off between FiTs & ROs ..... maybe this is where all of the larger systems <5MWp are currently registered, so why do we keep illogically concentrating on assuming FiTs are paid on these systems ? .... :cool:

Regarding the swimming pool, as it was illogical to need to raise it, I simply followed the thought process and took it to it's illogical extreme .... no tangentalism there ...

Regarding ... "You haven't even attempted to answer the central point of houses with sub 4kWp systems being paid a subsidy for each kWh they generate and being able to use all of it, and in theory export nothing" .... are we talking about large systems or small systems, I thought that the recent discussion was pv farm size installations and am totally surprised that we seem to be going off at a tangent towards sub 4kWp systems again, however, in order to address the point please consider the following (that is a real please ... please not only read, but understand too) .....

The FiT was and is set at a level which will return the capital investment of the installation over a period of time, with an additional incentive to join the scheme .... the level of the incentive is in reality no different to that offered by various government agencies and local authorities to encourage capital investment in other schemes and projects. There is no contractual agreement to supply anything to the grid within the actual FiT payment. Additionally the 'deemed' export payment is simply a measure to compensate for true export meters not being generally available ... the deemed element, or the metered export is all that can be considered as a payment for grid supply .... To support this, logic would dictate that as the FiT is payable to off-grid customers who would be unable to supply the grid it must be related to capital equipment only, off-grid systems are, by definition, unable to feed into the grid and therefore are not eligable for the deemed payment ....

I hope the above is pretty clear .... the FiT has absolutely nothing to do with supply of all, or even the smallest proportion of generation to the grid, therefore it is totally illogical to continue to assume or state that it is ...

Where next ?? ...

HTH
Z