Solar Panel Guide Discussion

-MRS_T-

anselld wrote: »

yes, 43.3 for units generated regardless of how used.

Most domestic installs do not have an export meter so you are "deemed" or assumed to export half what you generate. So this amounts to another 1.65p for every unit generated.

Finally you save money off your bell for everything used and this has no effect on th generation or export payments as you don't have an export meter.

Thank you for clarifying I thought this was the case but wanted to be sure.

anselld wrote: »

They have a database of average sunlight throughout the year.

Hence they can calculate an estimated average for each month.

There are other estimation models Eg PVGIS which allow for more details like exact location, slope of roof, climate, etc.

I have seen this PVGIS mentioned in the thread before but it seems quite complicated and I cant really work it. Is there an easier way. Is the database average they have available on google somewhere do you think.

grumpyoldsteve

alterego wrote: »

I don't see much mention on here that the FiT is paid for by all the other electricity users who don't get it, through their normal electricity bills, and is one of the reasons they're going up so much. It's borderline immoral, IMHO, and I'm not surprised the government is backing away from it (although I realise that's a non-sequitur!).

Aside from the debatable environmental benefits (they're energy-intensive things to make and use rare earth minerals) I'm not at all convinced they will last 25 years...

Power stations also don't last much beyond 25 years, and I guess they are quite energy intensive to make as well, and also continue to spew carbon dioxide as well as other pollutants for the duration of their life. I saw it quoted (source eludes me right now) that solar panels are carbon neutral after 4 years. A gas, coal or oil fired power station will never be carbon neutral, unless they sort out carbon capture any time soon. And as for nuclear, we are all still paying for the cleanup from electricity consumed in the 50's, 60,s and 70's.

As for the other point about the poor subsidizing the rich, well if the government slashes FIT's too much then 22000 tenants having solar panels planned by Empower Community, a social housing enterprise (BBC news Business article 15402997 - sorry not allowed to post links) won't get the opportunity to save on their bills either.

And who will pay for the replacement of the ageing power stations as they start dropping offline if we go down that route rather the the much more sensible renewable route? All of us will pay just as we all pay now.

grumpyoldsteve

alterego wrote: »

Aside from the debatable environmental benefits (they're energy-intensive things to make and use rare earth minerals) I'm not at all convinced they will last 25 years...

Maybe solar panels may use rare earth minerals but then so does every other piece of electronic equipment on the planet. All the billions of mobile phones, flat screen T.V's etc. just contribute to the problem of needing to generate power in the first place!

grumpyoldsteve

rogerblack wrote: »

The 'solar industry' being created and lobbying hard for its existence is a fake industry.
It's predicated around the most inefficient way to deliver the goal possible.
It's like encouraging the growing of potatoes at home, by subsidising gardeners to grow them at the rate of 10 pounds a kilo, rather than leaving it to where it's most economically grown - on the farm.
The only actual important bit of the 'solar industry' is the manufacturing of solar cells, and panels, at increasingly low cost. The rest of the current UK schemes to put panels on roofs is a job-creating, money-wasting scheme.

And what is wrong with creating jobs? The last time I looked we had over 2 million unemployed and rising! The 25000 solar industry jobs created in past year has hardly made a dent in that problem!
If you think it's worthwhile manufacturing solar cells, then we also need a workforce to install them - whether it is in poorly performing agricultural land or on rooftops.
The renewable industry is as good a place as any to start dealing with unemployment, as well as helping to deal with what will become a very expensive problem all round as the generating capacity of our aging power stations starts to reduce. There is no cheap solution to maintaining our energy security in this country, and the longer we leave it the more expensive it becomes.
The government bleats on about needing growth and jobs - the flourishing solar (and renewable) industry is one of the few place that gives them that, so I really hope they don't wipe it out by making a bad decision about how much to cut the feed-in-tariffs by, whether it's for solar PV or any other renewable incentive.

mardycow

Scaffolders have arrived and doing their thing, Tomorrow the installation should commence- 3.9 kw system split over 2 sides of the roof. 16 panels and 6 panels with SMA 4000tl. ooh the excitement!

zeupater

grumpyoldsteve wrote: »

And what is wrong with creating jobs? The last time I looked we had over 2 million unemployed and rising! The 25000 solar industry jobs created in past year has hardly made a dent in that problem!
If you think it's worthwhile manufacturing solar cells, then we also need a workforce to install them - whether it is in poorly performing agricultural land or on rooftops.
The renewable industry is as good a place as any to start dealing with unemployment, as well as helping to deal with what will become a very expensive problem all round as the generating capacity of our aging power stations starts to reduce. There is no cheap solution to maintaining our energy security in this country, and the longer we leave it the more expensive it becomes.
The government bleats on about needing growth and jobs - the flourishing solar (and renewable) industry is one of the few place that gives them that, so I really hope they don't wipe it out by making a bad decision about how much to cut the feed-in-tariffs by, whether it's for solar PV or any other renewable incentive.

Hi

In national terms, the difference is the type of jobs created and whether they contribute positively to the trade balance. If most of these mentioned 25000 solar industry jobs are simply supporting the bolting of imported kit onto houses or into fields then it's not doing a real load of good to the trade balance and therefore the economy.

In reality the only creator of wealth is the creation of something physical, apart from that everything else is merely a leach on that wealth, distributing and recycling it around the service and public sectors. This is where successive recent governments have failed, it's not inflation or GDP or GNP which are important to a trading nation, it's the balance of trade and twenty-five to thirty years ago everyone realised it, but in came the 'economic experts' with their experiment on a debt based, service sector economy and what's happened ... it's failed in a BIG way ... so what do these 'clever' economists now tell us, yes you've guessed it, cut the debt, cut the public sector and rely on manufacturing to help through creating an export lead recovery. In summary, these 25000 jobs, well the ones linked to fitting kit manufactured in the UK are fine, but in my opinion there is a negative effect on the economy caused by the ones fitting imported panels, so they might as well not exist ....

Z

John_Pierpoint

zeupater wrote: »

Hi


In reality the only creator of wealth is the creation of something physical, apart from that everything else is merely a leach on that wealth, distributing and recycling it around the service and public sectors.

Z

That is not necessarily true. If the financial system can efficiently reallocate resources within the economy, then 2 + 2 really does equal 5.

Can we say that casino banking has that effect - probably not, by betting against its customers it seems more likely to bankrupt the productive firms in the economy.

Personally my ancestors were so bored knapping flints, that they just had to get a loan from the "Flintstones Bank" and set up a foundry for making bronze arrow heads.

http://www.pasthorizons.tv/tv/view/15/flint-knapping-washingborough-archaeology-group/

TrickyDicky101

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

That is not necessarily true.

It's not just not necessarily true, it's utter sh*te. We could all be making stuff 100% of the time. But with no idea how to market, design, develop, sell or use said items (and a whole host of other 'service-related' skills) we would be in a very sorry state.

grahamc2003

grumpyoldsteve wrote: »

And what is wrong with creating jobs? The last time I looked we had over 2 million unemployed and rising! The 25000 solar industry jobs created in past year has hardly made a dent in that problem!
.

So if the only consideration about jobs is their creation and nothing else, then I assume you'd think it great if we employed 1 million of the unemployed to dig holes in the ground, and the other million to fill them in? There you have it - zero unemplyment, and a bankrupt country.

Jobs have to be useful to society to be of any value. If they only exist by subsidy, then it's arguable whether they can be any use in the long term.

Imv, pouring the earth's resources into subsidised windmills which produce power randomly, sometimes when we need it, sometimes when we don't and sometimes when it a very big pain and expensive to dispense with, seems pretty insane to me, even if jobs are created. As to the greenness - well it wasn't that long ago that environmental organisationes were up in arms about concrete production and it environmental damage, but they seem quite now that hundreds of tons are used to make and install a windmill.

The test of any sensible generation is whether it can be instructed to generate at the period of maximum demand. The coal fired stataions you don't seem to like (the largest and cleanest being 36 years old and not near its end of life, contrary to your post) can be relied upon to produce electricity when needed, windmills and solar panels can't be. No matter how many short-lived windmills (each leaving us with hundreds of tons of waste concrete to deal with) and solar we install, we still have to have sufficient conventional capacity (oil, gas, coal, Nuclear) to meet the maximum demand (plus contingency), so building windmills isn't making coal stations dissappear, it's just causing duplicity (i.e. we pay twice for windmill/solar capacity, and that is in the billions of course).

orrery

zeupater wrote: »

If most of these mentioned 25000 solar industry jobs are simply supporting the bolting of imported kit onto houses or into fields then it's not doing a real load of good to the trade balance and therefore the economy.

Just like Germany did with a similar scheme before us. Now, where is that inverter made that I just ordered? Ah, yes - Germany. Where was the alternative inverter that I was offered made? Ah, yes - Germany.

Our only mistake was not doing it earlier.