MSE News: Legal battle launched over solar subsidy cuts

Cardew

jamesingram wrote: »

Cardew .
I'm sure you're aware of inefficiency when transporting electricial energy over large distances. Is this considered in your 20% figure.
Mircogeneration for onsite(local) usage removes the high losses of primary energy that such farms would suffer.

If the FIT tariff was not intended 'build up the solar industry' then it's clearly been a side effect , kit price is now 50% what is was when the tariff started, one potential reason for this is that UK wholesaler (due to FITS) have the confidence to buy in bulk.

cheers

Yes as you surmise I am aware of transmission losses.

Seems strange that we have a huge amount of French nuclear generated electricity from(mainly South of France) coming under the Channel and in to UK via Kent - any transmission losses there;)

Drax in N Yorkshire generates 3,960MW!

We have a stack of small bio-mass power stations(e.g Glanford 13MW)

Obviously there will be some transmission losses from all of the above and equally from a solar farm.

I am not advocating the use of solar - period. However if our political master mandate its use, them let us produce it as cheaply as possible; and transmissions losses are a very minor issue in the grand scheme of things.

Given that presently every kWh exported from <4kWp sytems costs between 55p and 88p(on average) I think solar farms producing electricity for 20% of that price is a reasonable estimate? or what would your figure be?

The reduction in solar panel prices is hardly driven by the tiny percentage in UK of the world's solar production. However even if it was a factor - how does that detract from the solar farm argument.

zeupater

Cardew wrote: »

.... Is there anything more crazy than having scores of thousands of tiny systems on roofs of houses(often unsuitable roofs) dotted all over the UK and paying them huge subsidies. Don't forget that if a house uses 50% of its generated electricity in the house, the cost of each exported kWh of electricity is 88 pence!

We could achieve exactly the same production of solar energy by having huge solar farms in Devon and Cornwall for a tiny fraction of the subsidy. about 20%?

I think we've been here before ..... distributed generation (microgeneration) reduces the overall requirement for HV transmission over distance and should therefore reduce the need for massive, and costly, grid upgrades.

I believe that the tiny fraction of 20% will become 40% with the reduction of domestic scale FiTs and then allowing for amortising costly grid modifications to transport the energy over distance to the main population centres would probably result in nearer to 80%, a mere whisp away from becoming a cost neutral comparison then ....

HTH
Z

Martyn1981

Cardew wrote: »

I am not advocating the use of solar - period. However if our political master mandate its use, them let us produce it as cheaply as possible; and transmissions losses are a very minor issue in the grand scheme of things.

Given that presently every kWh exported from <4kWp sytems costs between 55p and 88p(on average) I think solar farms producing electricity for 20% of that price is a reasonable estimate? or what would your figure be?

The reduction in solar panel prices is hardly driven by the tiny percentage in UK of the world's solar production. However even if it was a factor - how does that detract from the solar farm argument.

I know I'm banging my head against a brick wall, but you keep going in circles. You don't want subsidies, I don't want subsidies, hopefully in the future there won't be subsidies for domestic or commercial installs. But for PV farms they may have to remain.

Your cost examples still include current subsidies, but the whole point of artificially supporting this industry is to bring forward the day such subsidies are unnecessary. You can't use today's subsidies to knock future PV.

Getting 20% of householders, or industry, or commerce to dip into their own pockets to pay for some of their electricity, up to 40 years in advance, is possible if future prices drop far enough.

I've answered your PV farm v's homes argument repeatedly. The farms will benefit from huge economies of scale but they face 2 massive hurdles.

1. The farms have considerable additional costs compared to domestic / commercial installs. They have land costs, admin, insurance and security.

2. The have to meet and beat wholesale prices to make a profit - supply end economics. Demand side installs only have to meet retail prices, or a combination of retail and wholesale. So at least double the price point for entry.

A third argument, not financial, more altruistic or renewables and future looking. But if in 5 years a household could install a 4kWp system for £5k, then by foregoing a family holiday abroad, or two years depreciation on a new car, or a new bathroom, they could pre buy 100,000 to 150,000 units of electricity. Even allowing for new inverters at y10 and y25 (assuming life expectancies keep going up), then that's 100,000 units at 7p in todays money. Whether consumed or sold wholesale - still green. And to some that may be more important than the financial considerations.

PV farms have a tough, tough job ahead of them. But I wish them the best.

Mart.

Blossom2528

Mart I like the last one. Might be a hrd sell. i'll sit the kids in the garden in august, have a bbq and point at the roof and tell em, happy hols. Better plan I'll send them out to work to pay for it, its there future after all, time they started paying up.

Money isn't eveything after all.

Pennylane

Blossom2528 wrote: »

Mart I like the last one. Might be a hrd sell. i'll sit the kids in the garden in august, have a bbq and point at the roof and tell em, happy hols. Better plan I'll send them out to work to pay for it, its there future after all, time they started paying up.

Money isn't eveything after all.

He said "a family holiday abroad" some people take several holidays abroad in a year.;)

grahamc2003

zeupater wrote: »

I think we've been here before ..... distributed generation (microgeneration) reduces the overall requirement for HV transmission over distance and should therefore reduce the need for massive, and costly, grid upgrades.



HTH
Z

Solar doesn't affect grid upgrades at all. Other in-house microgeneration might, but solar definitely doesn't.

The grid is designed to cope with shifting electrons around at the period of maximum demand.

Solar generates nothing at the period of maximum demand.

Therefore solar doesn't alter the grid design one iota.

Transmission during the day may be (a tiny bit) less, but that really is irrelevant - the transmission capacity requirements (this is the several billions infrastructure spend) won't change due to solar.

If local solar generation did generate at max demand, then it could theroectically reduce transmission capacity.

For similar reasons, total generation has to match max demand. Therefore anything which generates nothing at that period, like solar, must be duplicated by generation which does.

(please could I ask Z if I am explaining this well - I often get the feeling my explanation of this grid/solar attribute isn't very understandable and leaves people confused over what is a simple unassailable concept. A criticism of myself, not others).

If we as a society spend £100bn on solar as some would like, then we would have to spend another £100bn on capacity which will generate on a winter's evening, and if you spend £100bn on that reliable generation, then the requirement for the initial £100bn of solar dissappears under any rational analysis. We would simply have a choice of spending £100bn or £200bn to meet our electricity requirements under that scenario.

ed110220

grahamc2003 wrote: »

If we as a society spend £100bn on solar as some would like, then we would have to spend another £100bn on capacity which will generate on a winter's evening, and if you spend £100bn on that reliable generation, then the requirement for the initial £100bn of solar dissappears under any rational analysis. We would simply have a choice of spending £100bn or £200bn to meet our electricity requirements under that scenario.

I think your explanation is a little simplistic. Electricity consumption varies a great deal throughout the day, it's a lot more at say 7pm than at 3am, and the national grid and associated energy generation has to cope with this anyway, that's part of its design. Simply put, the baseload is generated by power stations that are efficient and/or cannot be started up and shut down rapidly, such as nuclear plants, large coal plants etc. Peak demand is supplied by plants that can be rapidly started and stopped but rely on expensive fuel such as gas. If we provide an alternative electricity source for part of that peak demand then less gas will have to be used.

One should also remember that the larger the area involved and the more different generation types there are, the greater the smoothing effect. Say at 10pm it's dark in Somerset and solar PV is providing nothing, in Scotland the wind may be up and generating away.

Martyn1981

Blossom2528 wrote: »

Mart I like the last one. Might be a hrd sell. i'll sit the kids in the garden in august, have a bbq and point at the roof and tell em, happy hols. Better plan I'll send them out to work to pay for it, its there future after all, time they started paying up.

Money isn't eveything after all.

Blossom, too many H&S regs and CCTV at mines these days, but you could try popping the rugrats up a local chimney or two!

Don't forget, low hanging fruit first - actually, are the kids any good at fruit picking?

Mart.

Martyn1981

Not clear on the need to constantly bash solar PV over the head with the argument it doesn't generate power when there's no solar.

This argument can be applied to all large scale renewables, excluding gas generation with storage.

PV didn't cause the evening peak,
PV doesn't worsen the evening peak,
PV was never tasked with solving the evening peak.

If we didn't have CO2 concerns, then nobody would even be arguing for renewables. Well, not entirely true as the cost rises in the FF sector are placing greater pressures on us, but you know what I mean.

But renewables are here, and they are here to stay. Over the last 5 years the whole world has accepted the need for renewables and diversity of supply. We can't get away from it, so bashing them with variability of supply is simply pointing out the obvious, and missing the big (diversity) picture.

Peak load times present a problem for all generation types in the UK, that's why we have hydro, and about 3GW of pumped storage hydro. These expensive (enormous infrastructure cost) schemes are essential specialists regardless of what mix of generation we have.

As Ed points out, tackling above baseload needs throughout the day can help reduce demand from peakers. Wind can provide on an annual basis, a very predictable amount of power. PV provides an astonishingly predictable month on month supply of power.

The strange thing is, I can understand why anti renewable people dislike the additional costs of renewables, don't we all dislike additional costs, but what I find strange however, is that PV gets such a large amount of the criticism, despite being the one that is approaching financial viability the quickest. It will be interesting to re-visit these discussions in 2 years when we might start to get a better idea of such renewables costs circa 2016 & 2020.

It should also be noted that due to rising life expectancies, and a higher dependence on electrical goodies, our domestic demand for electricity is still rising. Anything that can help to reduce that demand could bring future financial rewards.

Mart.

Blossom2528

Mart, thanks. kids only at project stage. Need to find the time they'll fit up a chimney but cant dial childline. worth thinking long term.

What is a peaker.