MSE News: Legal battle launched over solar subsidy cuts

jamesingram

Cardew , I my case , i was wonder if your economy of scale estimate for solar farms was related to £/kW installed or £/kW delivered.
Yes lots of large generators around the UK etc. and all these suffer from the large primary to delivered energy losses. thats not a good thing . One advantage of mircogeneration is it reduces this and would need to be considered in comparisions.

Z's point re infastructure make senses , matching generation to demand would give large savings by possible removing need for constant over generation to cover potential spikes.
Interesting re. CET not something I'd thought of but , yes will have a rebound effect

I agree re using factories, schools, hospital, other large roofs would make sense to improve economies of scales to get value for money from PV funding. But I think thier are other benefit from small scale PV other than a per £/kW delivered point of view

From a different angle one thing that may also be worth considering , fields have other uses , where as roofs dont (other than stopping you getting cold and wet) .
Mircogeneration may also have the potential to create a understanding or connection for the end user to thier generation and consumption
may be leading to people realising that depending on other nations energy resources might be unwise longterm. This has a value, though impossible to quantify in financial terms.

zeupater

grahamc2003 wrote: »

Regarding solar/duplicity, it doesn't matter at all what approach you take - it is inherent and an unassailable fact that all solar capacity will have to be duplicated. For every £2 we spend, we get £1 of benefit (that's a first cut approximation, at the second cut, or a more refined estimate, the situation is worse).

And to answer others, that is not 'knocking' solar, renewables or anything else, it is stating a fact, a property of solar generation connected to the grid. I personally would prefer it wasn't a fact - we could then have cheap electricity, but I'm afraid were stuck with it, that's the way the world is. If the wind blew all the time, wind power would be fantastic, we again would have cheap electricity, and if sh*t were grub, there'd be no starvation in the world.

Better to deal with how the world is rather than how we would like it.

Statements such as 'solar didn't cause the peak' are simply meaningless, and indicate a severe misunderstanding of the issues involved.

?? "Statements such as 'solar didn't cause the peak' are simply meaningless, and indicate a severe misunderstanding of the issues involved" ?? .... I've not stated this, so it's not aimed at my post is it ? - if it is that would "indicate a severe misunderstanding " of what was posted.

Anyway, my point is storage, by whatever means, when there's an excess and calling on that storage when there's a deficit. Storage could be in another generation capable system, such as pumped hydro, or, if financially viable, electrochemical, electromechanical or any other form of storage which could be added to non-schedulable generation such as pv in order to complete the system.

HTH
Z

grahamc2003

zeupater wrote: »

?? "Statements such as 'solar didn't cause the peak' are simply meaningless, and indicate a severe misunderstanding of the issues involved" ?? .... I've not stated this, so it's not aimed at my post is it ? - if it is that would "indicate a severe misunderstanding " of what was posted.
HTH
Z

No.

It came after 'And to answer others ...'

Cardew

jamesingram wrote: »

Cardew , I my case , i was wonder if your economy of scale estimate for solar farms was related to £/kW installed or £/kW delivered.

Both! and both by a large factor! Additionally future maintenance costs reduced by a large factor.

Whatever the 'projected' reduction in price of panels, that reduction will apply equally to solar farms.

Take the costs of installing on roofs. Scaffolding, small inverters, labour, metering, accounting and paying subsidies(FIT)

Then deduct 25% to 50% of the generated electricity before export.

The economies of scale for large solar farms must be obvious. Incidentally I said 'brownfield' sites - disused factory/mining sites, scrub land etc(I wouldn't want to have the 'destroying prime farming land card' played;))

All generated output, exported without 25% to 50% withheld.

Future maintenance on roofs.

Scaffolding(Health and safety requirement)

Hundreds of thousands of installations to visit in far flung locations.

Diagnosis and repair - replace inverters - roof repairs - hundreds of thousands of client's accounts.

Just a little easier and more efficient with a solar farm methinks!

P.S.
We have scores of small wind farms, and other renewable generation facilities all over UK of a similar size to wind farms 5MW - 10MW etc. Distribution problems haven't seem to stop their proliferation, seems it is only solar farms??

grahamc2003

zeupater wrote: »

?
Anyway, my point is storage, by whatever means, when there's an excess and calling on that storage when there's a deficit. Storage could be in another generation capable system, such as pumped hydro, or, if financially viable, electrochemical, electromechanical or any other form of storage which could be added to non-schedulable generation such as pv in order to complete the system.

HTH
Z

Well the point about storage is that it is the holy grail of electricity. If it were cheap to store (by any means, direct or indirect) then we again could have very cheap electricity. But this fact is already known by National Grid (hey, that's why they designed Dinorwig), and hundreds of Universities over the world who are working on the problem, and have been more or less since electricity was generated by man.

Again, it's along the lines of sh*t and grub, or 'If there were no wars, the world would be a better place'.

To answer others, my view on wind power, (formed from having detailed knowledge of how the grid operates and how intermittent generation interacts with the grid operation) is that it is a very expensive technology with very small returns and, like solar, any capacity (well, about 97%) has to be duplicated with reliable capacity to avoid power cuts. Wind also requires increments of primary and secondary reserve, which is a high cost (and incidentally, the provision of which when supplied by coal or oil stations, emits co2).

zeupater

grahamc2003 wrote: »

No.

It came after 'And to answer others ...'

Okay, thanks .... I tend to agree that duplication is necessary .... to complete the system, there needs to be provision for storage and/or duplicated generation capacity .... the likely form of storage would be pumped hydro, but that would require massive and long-term civil engineering infrastructure projects which would have substantial opposition at the planning stage, so short term it's a case of duplicating renewables capability by whatever combination of technologies possible, which unfortunately means that clean, dirty and undesirable sources must be considered in the short-term in order to be able to afford to fund the long-term solutions without turning the lights off (metaphorically :D).

HTH
Z

Cardew

grahamc2003 wrote: »

To answer others, my view on wind power, (formed from having detailed knowledge of how the grid operates and how intermittent generation interacts with the grid operation) is that it is a very expensive technology with very small returns and, like solar, any capacity (well, about 97%) has to be duplicated with reliable capacity to avoid power cuts. Wind also requires increments of primary and secondary reserve, which is a high cost (and incidentally, the provision of which when supplied by coal or oil stations, emits co2).

I remember visiting Reading(Earley) power Station as a small boy many years ago - my Uncle worked there. Although mainly a coal fired station, they had some Proteus gas turbines that could be on-line within a minute or two. Small capacity(2MW each iirc) hugely expensive to run and noisy beggars.

Cardew

jamesingram wrote: »

matching generation to demand would give large savings by possible removing need for constant over generation to cover potential spikes.
.

Not sure if I understand your point.

Matching generation to demand is of course the primary objective of the engineers running the National Grid.

It is the sheer unpredictability of solar and wind generation that is their problem.

albyota

so why is it that other countries are actually doing it......?

Renewable electricity supply in the 20-50+% penetration range has already been implemented in several European systems, albeit in the context of a integrated European grid system:[8]

In 2010, four German states, totaling 10 million people, relied on wind power for 43-52% of their annual electricity needs. Denmark isn't far behind, supplying 22% of its power from wind in 2010 (26% in an average wind year). The Extremadura region of Spain is getting up to 25% of its electricity from solar, while the whole country meets 16% of its demand from wind. Just during 2005-2010, Portugal vaulted from 17% to 45% renewable electricity.[8]

Minnkota Power Cooperative, the leading U.S. wind utility in 2009, supplied 38% of its retail sales from the wind.[

edit - added info

The Combined Power Plant, a project linking 36 wind, solar, biomass, and hydroelectric installations throughout Germany, has demonstrated that a combination of renewable sources and more-effective control can balance out short-term power fluctuations and provide reliable electricity with 100 percent renewable energy.

HalloweenJack

the population of london exceeds that of the entire of denmark - so if we had 5 million only in the uk - we could meet 100% of electrical needs with what we have allready....

also - the population of london + birmingham and glasgow exceed that of those 4 german states, so whilst its `awesome` they can have such a large percentage of users on renewables - we have over 62 million in the uk , so have a way to go