MSE News: Legal battle launched over solar subsidy cuts

HalloweenJack

i like the way the wholesale costs of the equipment have been mentioned in this thread ; and how they have fallen at least 30% since march this year...... and how that effects the bottom line of profit for the rent a roof companies...

AdmiralX

It is beyond doubt the country needs renewable energy resources. Energy savings can help but there is limit because population grows all the time... I have not seen a gov plan/report as to where from we are going to get our energy needs in future. Usually the gov should have produced a report (anybody knows?) what will be the impact and consequences of these cuts on jobs and on energy prices.

I suppose cutting subsidies to feed-in solar panels will reduce the output and orders to these PV makers (not good for business) it will also reduce solar energy supply (not good for anybody when we need more); so the demand has to be met by other renewable resources, I do not now what have you there in mind, what else is there.. . So it appears as subsidies are cut, prices of energy will up... so, where is the benefit? However, Isuppose if the subsidies were there the output would up, and we expect prices to lower somehow.

There are of course other sources of renewable energy to be developed but people are caught off guard because this needs human resources to develop more renewables. We have shortase of the human resources as well.

AdmiralX

Yesterday I agreed dual energy fuel with 1 supplier (I had 2) and agreed £250 reduction based on 2011 prices for 1 year for whole 2012. Bargain to death... No other way to do it. Also haggled with somebody for the home care agreement to... death and got £80 off the annl bill.... No other way to survive...

SallyKing

The_Green_Hornet wrote: »

What is it you (and Cardew) find so offensive about Martyn1981 posts? I've read through them all and I can't see what your problem is.

Is it solely because he has had the temerity to disagree with your point of view?

I have to agree.

Cardew and Graham, why are you both giving Martyn such a hard time and being what is in my opinion rude? I have a strong interest in this area and I have to say that Martyn's posts are well informed and add balance to the discussion.

There seems to be a certain amount of typical male chest beating from Cardew and Graham, and I am rather dissapointed as this is a very interesting topic and I am sure that both will have some great input and views if they could just be a bit more civil.

Funny that this is mention as being a 'green' board. Looks to me more like a 'lets do whatever we can to bash renewables board'

Anyway, for what its worth, shale gas is the way until we get the nuclear and renewables in place...

Martyn1981

Cheers Sally, very kind of you to stick up for me.

For what it's worth, some of those posts were worth there weight in gold. I was chatting with a friend this evening and mentioned he may like to take a quick glance at this thread.

He rang me back in tears, haven't heard him laugh so much for years. He was going to put the word out that I was apparently a secret political mole for the PV industry, till he later found me described not just as a 'greenie' but as an ideological extreme greenie.

I admitted to him that I didn't really mind being called green, as my views have softened over the years, blame that on 5 years of New Scientist subscriptions. So I'd actually take that as a compliment now.

However he's now challenged me to explain my name in true 'Carbonholics Anonymous' fashion - so here goes:

It refers to my beloved little baby, that is sadly no longer with me, a 400 cubic inch (6.6 litre) 1981 Pontiac Trans-Am Firebird.

In my defence I fell in love at the ripe old age of 7 watching Smokey and the Bandit and stuck with my dream.

Maybe it's Karma, maybe it's guilt, but going a little green is probably my penance and well over due!

Thanks again, I apologise for any chest beating from deep in here (I'm banging my closed hand on my upper front ribs), and have a great Xmas.

Mart.

Martyn1981

rogerblack wrote: »

This kind of omits a rather important point!

16GW/260 = 61 megawatts per pound of subsidy.
.5GW/1.5 = 333 megawatts per pound.

However, unfortunately, it's not that good for solar, as it generally doesn't do so well at night.
.5GWp will actually be, in the UK, about 500GWh, or divided by the number of hours in a year, about an eighth of that.

41 megawatts a pound.

Hmm - that 1.50 sounds low.
We have 500MW of panels in the UK.
This will generate around 500GWh, 500 million kWh.
500 million * 43p = 215 million.
There are ~24 million households in the UK.
This would seem to indicate not 1.50, but 9 quid!
6 pounds a megawatt, 10* the subsidy of nuclear!

Hope you don't mind me running through some of those numbers, as you're definitely right something doesn't add up, and I've referred to £2 a couple of times for all FITs not just domestic PV.

I'm no expert but your numbers seem sound, though as not all installs will have an optimum orientation, or be shade free, I'd guess that an average generation would be nearer to 900kWh per installed kWp than 1000kWh, so maybe 450GWh in total.

But don't forget domestic electricity only accounts for about 30% of consumption, so £9 * 90% * 30% = £2.43 ish per household.

Hope I've got that right. It's still a lot more than I thought, and that may reflect the substantial growth in installs since the summer from around 60,000 to about 200,000 now. So hands up, I was quoting out of date info, sorry.

Mart.

jamesd

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Edit - Jamesd, just doing a little more trolling before logging off for the evening, and just read some posts reporting the first sightings of sub £8k installs for a 4kWp system next year - £7,795 to be specific. Great news, that's hit my hopeful figure for next summer, so an early Xmas present. I suspect your cunning plan of sitting back and waiting has more and more merit. That also means I was wrong about dropping FITs to 25p now and 21p in the summer, it seems the govt new what they were doing after all when shooting straight for 21p. Nicely played. M.

I wouldn't say that's trolling, it's interesting to see the prices moving and an interesting technology getting more competitive.

rogerblack

jamesd wrote: »

I wouldn't say that's trolling, it's interesting to see the prices moving and an interesting technology getting more competitive.

Considering that global prices of panels are falling through the pound a watt range, meaning the parts to install are in the 5K range, there is still a fair margin, even assuming you need 4 guys for a day, and a van.

8K-5K = 3K. That's 600 each - probably easily 300 each after costs.

Shows there is probably some fat, even at this, for companies with a clue.

Also - for rent-a-roof places, I note much has been made of the lower price they get paid.
However - don't they also critically, not pay VAT on the panels that remain in their inventory, meaning it's the same price effectively?
Or am I confused about the VAT position?

Martyn1981

Roger, glad to see it's not only me that's been pondering such things.

As I don't know any installers I'm having to guess at associated costs. Does this sound reasonable;

£1,000 for the inverter,
£400 for isolators, consumer unit, cabling, roof rails and roof brackets,
£200 for scaffolding,
£600 labour (3*£200 - 1 roofer and 2 sparks, or vice versa)
£1,000 for the company, to cover admin, registration, MCS and REA membership, equipment and profit.

So perhaps £3k to £3.5k plus panels as a possible minimum cost.

Hopefully the cost of inverters will continue to fall, but I assume they are a lot closer to bottom than the panels.

If panels eventually drop to £50 each, then £800 on top, giving a theoretical bottom close to £4k for a large install?

What do you think, realistic, or complete fantasy, very hard to make so many guesses with only one small brain?

JamesD - Thanks for pointing that out, I've now done a little word searching, and was completely unaware of the internet meaning of trolling. I was referring to myself as a fat and ugly bloke plodding around looking for stuff. Oops!

Now, time for The Great Escape, read into that what you will!

Happy Xmas.

Mart.

SallyKing

rogerblack wrote: »

This kind of omits a rather important point!

16GW/260 = 61 megawatts per pound of subsidy.
.5GW/1.5 = 333 megawatts per pound.

However, unfortunately, it's not that good for solar, as it generally doesn't do so well at night.
.5GWp will actually be, in the UK, about 500GWh, or divided by the number of hours in a year, about an eighth of that.

41 megawatts a pound.

Hmm - that 1.50 sounds low.
We have 500MW of panels in the UK.
This will generate around 500GWh, 500 million kWh.
500 million * 43p = 215 million.
There are ~24 million households in the UK.
This would seem to indicate not 1.50, but 9 quid!
6 pounds a megawatt, 10* the subsidy of nuclear!

The omission in the above calculation is that you have missed that industry accounts for around 50% of electricity use (according to DH). So industry and business will take on around 50% of the cost, so more like £4.50 a year per household. Less than the price of a packet of fags....