MSE News: Legal threats over solar subsidy cuts

SallyKing

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

Not quite true:
We need to build "a second grid" for two main reasons:

Sustainable sources of electricity (especially nuclear power and off shore wind) are not well connected to the existing grid, power generation is moving from inland coalfield sites to coastal or highland locations..

As the grid(s) get "decarbonised" the future will be electric, not fossil fuel - so demand for electricity will increase.

That is the theory, personally I will be pushing up the daisies, not plugging in my car for its overnight charge.

According to panaroma the other night the new nuclear power stations need new grid connections. They mentioned one in particular down in Devon.

There was a group of NIMBYs insisting that the cables are buried underground, they had some guy on saying that if they did that it would cost around £1 billion (if I remember correctly) and that it would add to everyones electric bills for the next 20 years.

So a few NIMBYs in devon want the rest of us to pay more so their own personal views are not 'ruined' by some pylons.

SallyKing

rogerblack wrote: »

Hydro in the volumes needed is not 'clean'.
If you want to store solar power to supply the national grid for an day - 1500GWh, you need to raise a cubic kilometer of water by 500 meters. (or ten cubic kilometers by 50m,...)

This pretty much means you're going to be flooding large parts of the mountainous countryside, if there is even enough.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station - for example - stores around 10GWh.
You'd need 60 of these. (they are not 100% efficient)
Assuming they can be built at a similar price, in todays money, that'd cost about 3.3 billion per, or 180 billion total, to install the required storage.

Surely you wouldn't need hydro to supply the entire grid for a day? That sounds a little daft to me. We would have nuclear, coal and gas power stations supplying the grid as well.

grahamc2003

Brian99 wrote: »

No Solar after dark: I'm sure they are working on the best solution to this.
The obvious one is Hydro-electric power, which is easy to switch on and off.

You dont need them when loads of solar panels are generating. Then they start switching on as the sun goes down. This is what they do when everyone swiches on kettles during TV commercial breaks.

More Hydro will be needed, and its clean too

Just like that. Problem solved. It's all obvious.

Just as a matter of interest, how much hydro power would you suggest? How much would it cost? Where would it go? Why haven't the best engineering brains at National Grid stumbled across this obvious solution to our looming woes?

You're not Chris Huhne are you?

Cardew

grahamc2003 wrote: »

You're not Chris Huhne are you?

No he isn't, his wife doesn't get caught speeding!

besti

If we had spent as much money on research for renewable energy as we have spent on wars for oil over the last 20 years we would have cracked it by now.

kevanf1

Actually there has been a great deal of research done into solar photovoltaic electricity production in the last couple or three decades. Ok, I agree not nearly as much as has been spent on war and military spending I first got interested in solar power when I was about 10 years old. It started out with very expensive panels not much bigger than a postage stamp. They were inefficient and, as said, horrendously expensive with a very, very low electricity output. Move on nearly 4 decades and we are now at the stage where we can viably produce electricity for individual homes. Not the full amount of electric needed by the average home but a good amount. I predict that in another 5 years the solar photovoltaic panels that will be available to householders will be a lot better at producing electric and will possibly supply nearly all the electric power needed by individual households. I also predict that the price will fall drastically. Look at the example of any technology to back up my prediction.

What we really need is the widespread adoption of appliances that will run on lower voltages. We are already seeing the greater use of LED bulbs and lighting. These use far less electricity than the old filament bulbs (whether you bemoan their loss of not and I do). If we can adopt greater usage of other lower voltage appliances then we can look at using more in the way of battery power, or onsite stored electricity. These batteries can be charged by the solar photovoltaic panels during the day instead of that extra power going into the national grid. No need for subsidies as you would be using the power generated instead. Surely that's a win win situation?

Of course, we will need to see improved battery or other storage technology made available and at an affordable price.

rogerblack

SallyKing wrote: »

Surely you wouldn't need hydro to supply the entire grid for a day? That sounds a little daft to me. We would have nuclear, coal and gas power stations supplying the grid as well.

If the aim is to - as seemed to be implied by Brian99s post - to significantly reduce the demand on normal power stations by going to solar, then you need a large amount of buffer capacity so that you can even out the solar generation, and spread it over several days - this might be for example filling all of the pumped storage capacity on one sunny weekend, and then as the next week was forecast to be cloudy, using the stored power only for the peak periods of demand, for 3 hours a day.

This amount of 'green' power has very significant costs, both financial, ecological, and amenity.

Putting up oodles of pumped storage isn't going to be popular, as it will severely impact lots of 'pretty' countryside.

Cardew

kevanf1 wrote: »

I predict that in another 5 years the solar photovoltaic panels that will be available to householders will be a lot better at producing electric and will possibly supply nearly all the electric power needed by individual households. I also predict that the price will fall drastically. Look at the example of any technology to back up my prediction.

You may well be correct in your predictions about improving the efficiency of panels.

However they still won't produce at night, and the output is hugely variable depending on weather conditions.

The difficulty is, and I suspect always will be, in developing suitable battery technology to handle the power needed. It is not just the cost, but the safety measures involved in households handling batteries in a domestic environment.

Much as low voltage applications will be OK for low consumption devices, Ohm's law still applies and there will be huge difficulties in handling the current for heating appliances.

However putting those difficulties aside, why on earth is the UK paying such huge subsidies NOW for inefficient solar panels.

The UK is not a leading player in the R & D of Solar - Sharp just assemble Japanese equipment. China doesn't yet see fit(pun) to offer their countrymen subsidies for installing solar on their roofs. The USA a paltry subsidy.

Let us wait until your predictions come to fruition.

magyar

undaunted wrote: »

I can't see that ultimately achieving anything more than a delay in implementation at best but it seems to becoming typical of the Government - announcing it will do this that & the other without properly thinking things through

I think that's the main thought I have. They have done this so many times.

Two years ago, they announced the way that offshore wind farms would qualify for their subsidy (ROCs). In order to get a level which made them economic, you had to sign your construction contracts by April 2010 and then get the first foundation in the water by end 2011.

So obviously everyone working in that industry went and negotiated contracts in accordance with these timescales. Then in March 2010 they announced that it would all change: completely different rules to qualify, completely different timescale.

Anyone who has ever worked on a large project will perhaps appreciate the impact of changing a £2bn set of contracts within a few weeks. Suffice to say there was not much sleep at the time...

magyar

Cardew wrote: »

The UK is not a leading player in the R & D of Solar - Sharp just assemble Japanese equipment. China doesn't yet see fit(pun) to offer their countrymen subsidies for installing solar on their roofs. The USA a paltry subsidy.

Actually they sort of do - they subsidise the manufacturers rather than the homeowners.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/12/how-china-dominates-solar-power