MSE News: Legal battle launched over solar subsidy cuts

SallyKing

Martyn1981 wrote: »

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 So hands up, I was quoting out of date info, sorry.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.

Martyn, just spotted your post - I had also spotted that industry use was not taken into account, but had a figure of 50%. Would be interested to know the correct figures if anyone has a source.

Merry Christmas to everyone by the way!

rogerblack

Martyn1981 wrote: »

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.

Some of the above I was ignoring - or assuming larger economies of scale than may be feasible for 'one man and his dog' type operations.

For example, it would possibly make sense to bring the scaffolding in-house, and, while brackets may be that expensive to purchase in small quantities, they are fundamentally quite simple objects, such that if you go to a local engineering company, or indeed china, and request 10000 sets, the price will drop considerably.

I'd say the inverters have not finished coming down in price.
For a comparison, PC power supplies are currently about 100 quid for 1kW in bulk.
The circuitry - while not identical, is certainly very similar.
4kW would therefore run about half the price.

This is admittedly handwaving, but a lot of the components required are broadly similar - there is a voltage converter at the front-end, and regulation from that to another output voltage.

To make an inverter, you need different, components, but some of the requirements are simpler.

I'd be happy to do a full teardown analysis on the cost of manufacture of one, if someone'd ship me a broken one, but this seems unlikely

In addition.

If panel prices dropped far enough, at some point it may be worth dropping 5% off the efficiency of the inverter, which makes it considerably cheaper.

I note also that almost all these costs would go away if it was legal to simply net-meter, and install the panels yourself on a frame in the garden, as some could.

Martyn1981

Sally, not particularly up to date, but page 9

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file11250.pdf

and, April 2011 page 2 (have to do some maths but looks like 35%, maybe)

http://www.eprg.group.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/EPRG-WP-1116_complete1.pdf

My £2.50 figure for domestic PV, may be miles off, as I've learnt nothing is simple. Also, if FITs continue to reduce over the next 5 years, perhaps annually by 4/5p, so 21p, 16p, etc and we get 100k annual installs then expect another £2 or so on top before this part of FITs stops adding more to bills (obviously the £5 (let's round it off) would continue for 25 years).

Total long term effect, even more guesses, but if an average install of about 2.5kWp produces 2,250kWh pa, then that represents approx 65% of an average household demand. Multiply up by approx 20% of houses being suitable, then that could give approx 20% * 65% = 13% of domestic demand. But unless it is financially worthwhile, that scale of investment remains only hopeful.

Bad news, as many will tell you, that is a variable supply, so conventional supply still required to sit in the background, doh! Partial solution, spread it all over to avoid local weather patterns and all or nothing fluctuations.

As always, the enemy of renewables is variable supply, and difficulty of storage.

The more you spread it about, the less we need to worry about variability, that's where a European renewables super-grid comes in, but now we're really stretching the thread, and any attempt at discussing the 'short-term'.

Such a grid would unite Europe and N Africa with inter connectors (like those that link the UK to Ireland and France).

All countries would have a variety of renewables, whilst also specialising. Ireland and the UK would provide wind, France Nuclear, Spain, Italy, Greece (the med etc) PV. Southern Spain, Portugal, and N Africa concentrated solar power (CSP). Germany biomass, Iceland geothermal, and Norway the battery storage through hydro.

But do we get on well enough, and the enormous cost of the super-grid is terrifying.

Apologies, you asked a simple question, and I delivered yet another lecture, sorry.

Time for a lie down and a movie.

Mart.

Pennylane

I'm on the R-a-R scheme and I can buy my solar panels for less than £5000 in the next year if I choose to and each year the price comes down more.

All I've forked out is £500 and for that I get all the panels, the scaffolding, the inverter and other gubbins in the garage and the services of an assessor and a surveyor. The scaffolding alone saved us a couple of hundred quid because we needed to do other jobs here while it was up.

Hungerdunger

SallyKing wrote: »

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....

... until industry and business put their prices and charges up to cover their increased costs.:snow_laug

grahamc2003

Hungerdunger wrote: »

... until industry and business put their prices and charges up to cover their increased costs.:snow_laug

Only the lucky companies will be able to increase prices to pay for the increased costs.

Most heavy industry, where the green costs in one form or another are the death knell, will end up in situations like the old British Steel. Their finances will get in such a state that they'll be bought for peanuts by foreign companies, Tata in this case. Over the following years, production will be phased out in the UK (high energy costs being the reason/excuse) and transfered to cheaper areas of the world - India in Tata's case. Being the highly enregy intensive businesses, the industries will have massive carbon credits which, with the production now out of the eu, are free to be sold on the open market (in Tata's case, the value is in the billions).

So the result of the extra costs on what's left of our energy intensive industries, if they follow the Bristish Steel situation, is that

- energy intensive production is exported from the uk with high emission requirements, to areas of the world with low or no emission requirements, so production increase co2 emissions

- workers in the uk get made redundant (hence why each 'green' job costs over 2 other jobs in the economy)

- areas like S!!!!horpe almost solely dependent on a single industry like steel become socially deprived and a highly likely source of social unrest in the future

- we lose the benefit of exporting steel to the world, and instead import it, making the Uk's economy even worse, and further increasing co2 for those who are concerned

- the value of the carbon credits ultimately is paid for by eu consumers. (Note the idea of carbon credits is to reduce co2 emissions, but in Tata's case, co2 emissions are increased, and we still pay billions for the system).

Cardew

grahamc2003 wrote: »

- areas like S!!!!horpe QUOTE]

In case anyone wonders that is the swear filter kicking in!!!!

S c u n t h o r p e

Martyn1981

Pennylane wrote: »

I'm on the R-a-R scheme and I can buy my solar panels for less than £5000 in the next year if I choose to and each year the price comes down more.

All I've forked out is £500 and for that I get all the panels, the scaffolding, the inverter and other gubbins in the garage and the services of an assessor and a surveyor. The scaffolding alone saved us a couple of hundred quid because we needed to do other jobs here while it was up.

Do you happen to know the size of the system, as for only £5k it might well be worth it to take over the FIT payments. Depending on orientation, you could be receiving up to £400pa per kWp.

Mart.

bris

Pennylane wrote: »

I'm on the R-a-R scheme and I can buy my solar panels for less than £5000 in the next year if I choose to and each year the price comes down more.

All I've forked out is £500 and for that I get all the panels, the scaffolding, the inverter and other gubbins in the garage and the services of an assessor and a surveyor. The scaffolding alone saved us a couple of hundred quid because we needed to do other jobs here while it was up.

RAR schemes are free with most of the big installers, what did you pay the £500 for? Do you realise that it could take 5 to 10 years in electricity savings just to get your £500 back.

GreenBee_2

Wow! shows what can be done with financial incentives!!!