Solar Panel Guide Discussion

Cardew

Martyn1981 wrote: »

So paying PFD to get no extra fuel is fine, but paying FITs and export tariffs to get increased supply is bad?

Also if no electricity is going into the grid, how do you balance the equation, since supply has increased but demand hasn't?

Also, if you're happy to pay PV farms 100% for the benefit of all their generation, why aren't you even happier to pay householders only 50% for the benefit of all theirs?

Mart.

Once again I weaken and respond - I cannot believe your posts!

You get worse - read your silly post again and please don't attribute that sort of nonsense to me, and then pose a question based on that stupidity.

No more from me! until I weaken again.

zeupater

Cardew wrote: »

Hi Z.

Absolutely incorrect! Of course I wouldn't!

My consistent position has been that the FIT scheme is, (to quote Monbiot,) grotesque! It is a 'tax' taking money from the poor and transferring it to the well-off. That 'tax' takes no account of the income or wealth of those who have no option but to pay.

As John_Pierpoint stated in his post above:



With respect Z, your method(on some issues) is to pose the 'When did you stop beating your Granny' - questions and hope people will fall into that trap.

The situation with the FIT scheme is quite simple - it is a levy(tax if it makes you happy) on electricty customers taking no account of their financial situation, and transferring that money to the 'well off'. Thus the very poorest in the land pay toward profits for house owners who can afford £xthousand and venture capitalists behind Rent a Roof firms.

If you and others want to believe you are Pioneers' paving the way to a Green Utopia - carry on.

QED

Hi Cardew

No granny trap here ... just simple questions and the car is still heading towards the tree in the centre of the road - and I now have even less idea what you've been arguing about for the last few days ....

I'll explain .... The recent debate has been fueled by the 'tax' being unfair, not the payment .... now it seems to be the payment, I'll explain why .....

"It is a 'tax' taking money from the poor and transferring it to the well-off. That 'tax' takes no account of the income or wealth of those who have no option but to pay." ... so it's yet another regressive tax, one where the poorer pay proportionally more of their income than the more well off ... however this is simply one amongst many examples of such taxes, as the recent discussion regarding the petroleum tax has attempted to convey ... in substance there is no difference in the levying of either tax, therefore your issue cannot be based on this ...

... that leads to the administration of both collection and distribution, which would likely cost more if dealt with by government or government agency, so debating that the same people should contribute more just to cover a higher administration cost is illogical, bordering on an immoral misuse of public funds ....

.... so that simply leaves a political position on subsidy .... If as a result of the 'wealthy' investing in pv the long-term effect is that the 'poor' notice that their energy inflation rate is reduced, will that be worth the investment .... ?

I really do hope that the same viewpoints are applied equally elsewhere ... consider the funding of recent NHS hospital newbuilds ... just like the installation of MCS approved pv systems have no contractual agreement to provide energy to the grid, the builders of the new hospitals have no contractual agreement to provide the doctors, nurses or other personnel .... it's simply an agreement to provide capital up-front to achieve a preset target without the investment going onto the government books as up-front expenditure .... in this case it's either improve service levels or reduce carbon emissions .... the way I see it though is that when the next generation of hospitals is required they will again be funded from the 'public purse' or from similar PFI schemes, whilst the next generation of pv will be purely privately financed .... now how do we reduce the cost of hospitals ?, that would be an interesting debate ... :D

Regarding 'green utopia', quite a good thought you've had there :cool::D ... I wonder what would happen to electricity prices if we were in a utopian position where almost everyone could produce & contribute to a significant energy surplus utilising various generation and storage technologies ? ... what is this year's increase looking like, 9%?, now I wonder how they get away with that ???

HTH
Z

Martyn1981

Cardew wrote: »

The situation with the FIT scheme is quite simple - it is a levy(tax if it makes you happy) on electricty customers taking no account of their financial situation, and transferring that money to the 'well off'. Thus the very poorest in the land pay toward profits for house owners who can afford £xthousand and venture capitalists behind Rent a Roof firms.

Yet again your steadfast determination to only focus on today (or yesterday) means you continue to fail to see tomorrow.

So, a couple of percent of house owners get subsidised PV, allowing another 18% (perhaps) to purchase non subsidised PV. The whole benefit of their generation will be felt by the grid either through actual export, or an amount equal to the reduction in demand from non import.

The benefits of increased supply (or reduced demand) will be felt by those that can't afford such systems, or whose properties aren't suitable. An additional benefit is that whilst all of the increased generating capacity will benefit customers, the grid will only have to purchase some of it.

Much the same benefits would be felt by car drivers or those with GCH if demand for petrol or gas was reduced (or supply artificially increased) via 20% of households producing their own petrol or gas.

Once again - big picture tomorrow, not small picture yesterday. PV is happening, it works, the FITs scheme has been a far greater success than could ever have been hoped only 2.5 years ago. Finally a scheme and subsidy that can be seen to deliver results.

Now, if only we could see similar progress in wind costs, tidal / wave technology and nuclear fusion, we'd be sorted. :cool:

Mart.

Martyn1981

zeupater wrote: »

Regarding 'green utopia', quite a good thought you've had there :cool::D ... I wonder what would happen to electricity prices if we were in a utopian position where almost everyone could produce & contribute to a significant energy surplus utilising various generation and storage technologies ? ... what is this year's increase looking like, 9%?, now I wonder how they get away with that ???

HTH
Z

That's something I've been thinking about. Since renewables have no respect for fluctuating energy prices on the spot market, they will (as seen in Germany) make life harder and harder for conventional energy generation. I'm not sure how competitive the current generators are, as regards technological improvements, and truly chasing down efficiency gains. But if push becomes shove, they are going to have to up their game, and hopefully improve their performance.

I think?

Mart.

Cardew

zeupater wrote: »

"It is a 'tax' taking money from the poor and transferring it to the well-off. That 'tax' takes no account of the income or wealth of those who have no option but to pay." ... so it's yet another regressive tax, one where the poorer pay proportionally more of their income than the more well off ... however this is simply one amongst many examples of such taxes, as the recent discussion regarding the petroleum tax has attempted to convey ... in substance there is no difference in the levying of either tax, therefore your issue cannot be based on this ...


HTH
Z

Hi Z,

One last try!

Of course there are taxes where the poor pay a proportionally more of their income. However those taxes go into the Public Purse for spending on hospitals, pensions and aircraft carriers.

This is a levy that everyone pays on electricity bills that goes straight to those in receipt of FIT. So that means the poorest in the land pay directly to the well off.

You know full well that for all your semantic juggling with the term 'taxes' and and 'public purse', this is simply a transfer of funds from the less well off to those in receipt of FIT.

QED

zeupater

Cardew wrote: »

Hi Z,

One last try!

Of course there are taxes where the poor pay a proportionally more of their income. However those taxes go into the Public Purse for spending on hospitals, pensions and aircraft carriers.

This is a levy that everyone pays on electricity bills that goes straight to those in receipt of FIT. So that means the poorest in the land pay directly to the well off.

You know full well that for all your semantic juggling with the term 'taxes' and and 'public purse', this is simply a transfer of funds from the less well off to those in receipt of FIT.

QED

Hi

.... And could it possibly be this way because although the government are open to ringfencing the energy levy to expenditure and allowing the energy companies to handle this little part of the total tax take in order to reduce the cost of administration, they don't want to hand over the funding for the rest of government at the same time ?? ... it's quite a simple concept to consider & I'm surprised that it is taking so long to grasp ....

Regarding the last paragraph .... and yet again, those in receipt of FiT will have invested in capital expenditure up-front and, as you well know having expended considerable effort conveying this very point over the past few years, will not see a return on the capital for some time. The return of capital is no different to any large PFI project such as a Hospital, so in what way are FiT financed pv systems & PFI financed Hospitals substantially different ?? .... would you rather the 'public purse' pays funds to the relatively 'poor' individual owners of the pv systems or the considerably 'wealthy' corporate bodies who finance and build government infrastructure projects which return vast profits and, of course, their band of considerably 'wealthy' shareholders ...

HTH
Z

Martyn1981

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

.... And could it possibly be this way because although the government are open to ringfencing the energy levy to expenditure and allowing the energy companies to handle this little part of the total tax take in order to reduce the cost of administration, they don't want to hand over the funding for the rest of government at the same time ?? ... it's quite a simple concept to consider & I'm surprised that it is taking so long to grasp ....

HTH
Z

Zeup, apologies for creating another tangent, but having read this paragraph this morning a couple of thoughts occurred.

An alternative to this 'PFI' approach would be to front load the funding through a grant to pay for the install itself. Which anyone could apply for, including the poor. But of course this means finding all the monies up front, and such schemes never seem to deliver proper competition. But .....

something else occurred to me, and I may be miles off, but can the government run such schemes (as opposed to mandate them, through ring-fencing industry monies) since the energy sector is one of the EU state aid sectors. This is not an area I know much about, but it may well be that the government can force the investment in green technology, through the industry, but not actually take the monies (from various tax sources) then support the industry.

Better to let the industry get on with it (semi-efficiently). Or is that a wild tangent?

Mart.

Edit: Actually, scrap that, I think clean energy is exempt from State Aids restrictions - hence the recent battle between the Lib Dems and Tories, as the Tories attempt to redefine 'green' as 'low carbon' in order to allow public sector subsidisation of new nuclear.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2012/jun/01/nuclear-energy-emr-uk?intcmp=122

M.

orrery

Martyn1981 wrote: »

An alternative to this 'PFI' approach would be to front load the funding...

You could do this by simply leaving the FIT at a generous level but not indexing it after install (but keep the export at market rates). That way you get most payback in the early days, with it tailing off. That would have been enough to hook me.

zeupater

Martyn1981 wrote: »

... An alternative to this 'PFI' approach would be to front load the funding through a grant ...

Hi

Kick starting the market was attempted with grants for years, although on a smaller scale, and it did absolutely nothing other than line the installer's pockets due to the limited funding & scope. The up-front costs would need to have been hugh to deliver what has been achieved through FiTs and without doubt a great deal of the funding would have been claimed by large enterprises ....

I have always thought that the easiest form of administration fully within the public sector would be to subsidise the initial capital investment made by householders through a council tax reduction on the property for a fixed period, the level which would be based on the estimated annual production on the MCS certificate and would be capped at a maximum proportion of the annual council tax bill, the percentage being reduced in line with system price reductions ..... the local authority would simply need to amend the householder's DD payments, aggregate the value of the 'payments' and claim funding from central government .... probably just as efficient as the way it's done now, but knowing LAs they'd certainly find a way of screwing the process up, probably by adding cost and complexity through demarquation (that little used word which would likely be extinct if it were not for public sector unions ) .... mind you, Cardew would likely be happy as even though the administration would cost the same or more and the outcome would be exactly the same - at least the process would pass the prophet Monbiot's taxation fairness test ....

HTH
Z

John_Pierpoint

.......but surely poor people have smaller roofs that rich people (if they have a roof of their own). Perhaps it should be a set number of £'s (inflation proofed) on the first (say) 2kW installed per council tax address; so that cheaply run areas (usually Tory ?) might have people living in terraced houses paying zero council tax (While the guys are up there they might as well slap a few extra panels on larger houses, without further subsidy, Those in terraced houses should be able to club together and do two or more houses at once? ).

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

Wandsworth London Borough Council

Main article: Wandsworth London Borough Council
Wandsworth is administered by 60 councillors, 3 apiece from 20 wards. Since the 2010 election, 47 of these councillors are Conservative and 13 are Labour. The Conservatives have had an overall majority on the council since 1978, despite demographics that would suggest a higher level of support for Labour and the Liberal Democrats. In 1994 the Conservatives were instructed to desist from their policy of "Priority Group Sales Areas" (the targeted sale of Council flats and houses in specific wards) as it constituted gerrymandering, which partly accounts for the difference between electoral results and demographics.
The other likely contributing factor to the political configuration of the Council is the low level of the Council Tax. This has always been set at the lowest national level of charge since it replaced the Poll Tax - apart from one year when Westminster Council set a lower charge. The Labour Government introduced controls on Council Tax levels partly as result of the repeated huge increases and decreases implemented in Wandsworth. The Council receives a substantial share of "Damping Grant" towards its revenue budgets. This was a Grant introduced to lessen the impact of the change from Poll Tax to Council Tax, and by setting a zero Council Tax in the reference year, the Council managed to secure a large amount of Damping Grant, which it has continued to receive since the early 1990s.

If someone out there understands how the subsidy system from central government to local government works - please do try to explain it to me. You must be one voter in 1000.