MSE News: Government to appeal High Court solar ruling

Cardew

This whole discussion on solar production is based on the assumption that tiny solar installations are to be fitted on the roofs of houses, rather than huge solar farms.

It is rather like discussing the logistics of moving tons of Coal to Newcastle and dismissing train, trucks or boats in favour of individual bags of coal being transported by Taxi.

grahamc2003

Martyn1981 wrote: »

PS any chance of clarification regarding:

"It still looks totally impossible to me for (roof mounted) solar to ever get anywhere near the generation as current Nuclear output, even in theory let alone practice, by a very long margin, for both financial and a variety of technical reasons."

Thanks. M.

You'll have to wait until after I've spoken to the bloke down the pub on Saturday. I'll go a bit early to catch him before he's had too many bellyfulls.

Martyn1981

grahamc2003 wrote: »

You'll have to wait until after I've spoken to the bloke down the pub on Saturday. I'll go a bit early to catch him before he's had too many bellyfulls.

So that'll be a no again to providing any referenced information. Should I even pretend to be surprised. At some point even accidentally, there has to come a point where you actually research something before you say it. Perhaps.

Still, looking on the bright side, 2 weeks ago, you were saying that PV would never even reach 1% of domestic installs.
That it could never reach financial viability.
That it could never supply a sizeable percentage of UK electricity needs.

You may still not believe it, but at least you now know that at least the possibility is there. So hopefully a little progress has been made to help you avoid accidentally posting misleading information in the future.

Hope I contributed, if only to a small extent.

Have fun tomorrow, and have one on me, I think you've earned it.

Mart

rogerblack

One interesting possibility for several years down the line would be if batteries or other energy storage devices get substantially more long-life (not even cheaper).

I bought 1kWh of battery for 100 quid, which is specified for 1000 cycles.
This is - coincidentally - about 10p/kWh of power stored.

With 6kW of panels, 10kWh of batteries (assuming the same cost, and that they don't wear out), for 6000 pounds, at current electricity prices it'd pay back in ~20 years.

This is with no export at all, it'd provide me with all my electricity for 10+ months of the year. (I'm a low user)

Martyn1981

rogerblack wrote: »

One interesting possibility for several years down the line would be if batteries or other energy storage devices get substantially more long-life (not even cheaper).

I bought 1kWh of battery for 100 quid, which is specified for 1000 cycles.
This is - coincidentally - about 10p/kWh of power stored.

With 6kW of panels, 10kWh of batteries (assuming the same cost, and that they don't wear out), for 6000 pounds, at current electricity prices it'd pay back in ~20 years.

This is with no export at all, it'd provide me with all my electricity for 10+ months of the year. (I'm a low user)

Roger, glad you raised this. More as a mental exercise than anything else I tried to work out similar about 6 months ago. Quickly realised that this is a bit of a technical minefield, needing expertise and experience.

My best guess was that an investment of £1,000 could save £100pa, but that current battery tech, might mean only 10 years life if looked after carefully.

Am I in the right ball park, can I even see the ball park from where I am?

Some amazing new battery tech appearing in New Scientist last year or so, but not with us yet.

Mart.

rogerblack

Martyn1981 wrote: »

My best guess was that an investment of £1,000 could save £100pa, but that current battery tech, might mean only 10 years life if looked after carefully.

Unfortunately, no amazing technology has come round.
There are various sorts of battery, but in general, with the exception of nickel-iron (invented and commercialised by Edison!) they wear out fast enough that you can store about the same cost in electricity in them as they cost.

Regrettably, it's been my experience that battery technology reports should be entirely ignored until you can buy them with an x year warranty.

One thing that might be a game-changer would be large-scale storage technology getting better - there are a number of companies trying to commercialises flywheel energy storage for utilities.

This could mean that large scale solar could supply peak evening loads.

John_Pierpoint

HalloweenJack wrote: »

http://www.decc.gov.uk/media/viewfile.ashx?filetype=4&filepath=11/stats/publications/energy-in-brief/2286-uk-energy-in-brief-2011.pdf&minwidth=true


have a read - figures for 2010 - and to answer my own awesome question;

biomass is 83% of the renewable output (once you take out wind) - and solar is way down the list

in 2010 , 363 TWh were generated , out of that

nuclear was 56 TWh , wind was 10TWh and `other` was 13TWh - remember 83% of other was biomass.

so in the scale of things - solar is very very small compared to nuclear

top of the pile was gas at 171 TWh and coal at 102 TWh

Many thanks, these figures help put things in perspective .

Does anyone know why "Hydro" output appears to be falling?
Shortage of rainfall?

While touring France, I have noticed that many weirs on ordinary modest rivers have an attached hydro electric building.

Martyn1981

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

Many thanks, these figures help put things in perspective .

Does anyone know why "Hydro" output appears to be falling?
Shortage of rainfall?

While touring France, I have noticed that many weirs on ordinary modest rivers have an attached hydro electric building.

Tried to work it out but also failed. I think your rainfall guess is the most sensible, whilst the last couple of years have had wet summers, I think there has been less overall rain.

Mart.

jamesd

Fuel cells might end up offering a competitive storage method sometime. Maybe also hydrogen or other electricity-produced fuel shipping between high efficiency equatorial solar areas and those less suitable. Some significant cost and safety issues for both but there are a couple of very promising developments for hydrogen fuel cell costs, enzymes and platinum-free catalysts. If those work out the fuel cells should have much longer life cycles than what we have now and may significantly help with some of the intermittent renewables issues. Though at a cost, as always.

Martyn1981

jamesd wrote: »

Fuel cells might end up offering a competitive storage method sometime. Maybe also hydrogen or other electricity-produced fuel shipping between high efficiency equatorial solar areas and those less suitable. Some significant cost and safety issues for both but there are a couple of very promising developments for hydrogen fuel cell costs, enzymes and platinum-free catalysts. If those work out the fuel cells should have much longer life cycles than what we have now and may significantly help with some of the intermittent renewables issues. Though at a cost, as always.

James, I saw a documentary on an American whose done a lot of this himself. I can't find him on google unfortunately.

He's ex NASA or aeronautics and has added a huge amount of solar panels to his property. Next he built his electrolysis system, and fuel cells for the house, and converted his car to fuel cells. When overproducing solar, he makes hydrogen. This sounded scary at first, but he showed the 6(?) large, low pressure tanks he has, and explained, any minor leak and it just goes straight up.

When he needs more power he runs the domestic fuel cell off the hydrogen, and fills his car off the hydrogen too.

Very clever man. Cost, gets eye watering, he estimates about $250,000, but it is a one off self build. Fascinating.

Mart.