MSE News: Government to appeal High Court solar ruling

jamesd

money-go-round wrote: »

nuclear is great , UNTIL IT GOES WRONG, then nobody knows how to safely clean up the mess properly or quickly.

There's plenty of experience at how to clean up nuclear messes and the first one is don't do it quickly. That's because radioactivity levels drop quite rapidly and a few years or even just months of delay greatly reduces the difficulty and cost of getting things done.

To see an example of the value of time, take a look at the burial site of the SL-1 military reactor. The accident or possible deliberate sabotage in that reactor was just fifty years ago and it's already pretty much harmless unless you deliberately go trying to cause yourself trouble and have bulldozers and cranes to help you get to something that might hurt you. New reactors, including all commercial power reactors, have designs that make what happened with that one impossible.

The mess in Japan won't be much more than a few Three Mile Island cleanups in one place in a while. A few years and most people will be back in evacuated areas and saddened more by the huge loss of life and mess from the tsunami more than anything else. The nuclear stuff is small fry compared to that disaster.

davidanddeirdre

I write as someone who has invested in Solar on my roof and am getting the full FIT. I would say that this pre Dec 12 rate is very generous, and even though we are not ideally facing (slightly east of SE) and have quite a small installation (1.75kWh nominal) we will definitely make more than 10% on the investment in the first year up to April 2012. Anyone in this area with a due south roof and 3kWh+ will be coining it at this FIT.
Basically the govt screwed it up with the whole initial setup. What I think should have happened with FIT is that a) the rate should have been a bit lower to start with, say 30 to 35p/unit, this would still have given a good return, and b) in order to ensure that the cost to the rest of the population was not too onerous on an ongoing basis, to gradually reduce the level of FIT over say 15 years to suppliers once signed down to the level of the average cost of electricity. I certainly would have been happy with that.

John_Pierpoint

If electricity rises in price at say 10% per year and prices rise at say 5% a year, that is what will happen over the life of the FiT deal.
It is the ongoing slump in interest rates on savings, plus the 5% rate of inflation engineered by the government, that made the FiT deal for someone with a South facing roof a "no brainer".

grahamc2003

Well, the government lodged the appeal yeaterday as they said they would - now waiting to see if the courts grant them an appeal hearing.

I had to laugh at the irony in one of the grounds for the appeal, being that the Judges decision was premature since no decisions had been taken by DECC on the level or timing of the cuts, which were simply proposals and leaks. i.e. the timing of the Judge's ruling was improper and can only be made after a decision, not a proposal (that appears to be one aspect of their legal argument).

mysterons

Halloween Jack says
' then everyone`s bills would have rocketd by 500% or more within 6 months'
Got any evidence to back this up or is it just you scaremongering?
It's already been established on here that FITs for PV add around the cost of 20 cigarettes a year to domestic bills and it's entirely up to the supplier how they fund any FIT payments. Hell they could even dip into their profits, that would buy a lot of fags

Cardew

mysterons wrote: »

it's entirely up to the supplier how they fund any FIT payments. Hell they could even dip into their profits, that would buy a lot of fags

How so?

Utility companies are just a 'postbox' for FIT payments i.e. administration. Whatever they payout is claimed from a 'kitty' administered by ofgem.

Some smaller utility companies don't deal with FIT, so I could get my electricity from, say, Ebico and claim my FIT from BG. Ebico would still have to pay into the 'kitty' the same levy on all their customers.

Similarly if I claimed my FIT from Eon I could move to any supplier and carry on claiming FIT from Eon.

If, say, Eon were particularly quick and efficient at paying FIT then over a period of time they could be paying out most of the FIT payments, without any advantage of having those claimants as electricity customers.

rogerblack

mysterons wrote: »

Halloween Jack says
' then everyone`s bills would have rocketd by 500% or more within 6 months'
Got any evidence to back this up or is it just you scaremongering?
It's already been established on here that FITs for PV add around the cost of 20 cigarettes a year to domestic bills and it's entirely up to the supplier how they fund any FIT payments. Hell they could even dip into their profits, that would buy a lot of fags

The FIT component in principle could increase by 5*, due to more people getting panels.
(if the scheme was restarted, the payback time would in some cases be under 5 years. Clearly an insanely good investment).

At pre dec-12 rates, this would be about 50 pounds per household (assuming that the costs of businesses higher electricity rates are also passed onto the consumer), or about 20 quid/year, if not assuming that.

HalloweenJack

the registered installations for november were around 30,000 per week and climbing FAST , with projections of 60,000 per week for the begining of 2012 rising even faster before the april deadline - this is all based upon the massive increase of installations from publically available figures.

if the government hadnt stopped the failure in the FiT scheme when they did the `kitty` would have gone near enough by now (in total) with no end in sight for the installations (and the print free money for the rent a roof comapnies like homesun)

so once the money has gone who pays for it?

since it takes at least 5 homes using electricity to pay for 1 rent a roof scheme bills would then ROCKET to cover the costs.

this simply isnt scarmongering - its fact.

grahamc2003

mysterons wrote: »

Halloween Jack says
' then everyone`s bills would have rocketd by 500% or more within 6 months'
Got any evidence to back this up or is it just you scaremongering?
It's already been established on here that FITs for PV add around the cost of 20 cigarettes a year to domestic bills and it's entirely up to the supplier how they fund any FIT payments. Hell they could even dip into their profits, that would buy a lot of fags

'It's already been established on here ...'

Ah, must be right then. Do you have anything more substantial than posters on here telling you the cost per household is 20 fags?

This years £161m fit budget was already allocated to exiting installations in Sep of last year, so the budgets are bust already, probably by an amount nobody yet knows, but obviously scared the government enough to try chop the tariff before the consultation period was over.

But anyhow, I don't think fits should be seen in isolation. What interests me is the total cost of all these types of 'green' subsidies and initiatives, which I expect adds up well into the billions, and rising rapidly. I'd expect the total cost to each working person is well over a thousand fags a year. (and why use fags, why not the more traditional measure of spending, pounds?)

undaunted

Seems like a ridiculous waste of tax payers cash to me.

Surely all they had to do was allow the consultation period to run it's course and then make their decision - which was going to be the same anyway, regardless of what the consultation said