Solar PV Feed In Tariffs - Good or Bad?

don0301

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Oy, what's with all the Welsh 'stuff' today. John wants to cover Wales in batteries, and you want to add another invasion point (why do you think we only charge on the bridges to get in)! I tell you, it's more than a WelshBoy can take some days.

HJ, if you want to make a start, I've got a couple of bags of cement in the shed that won't be much use soon. Tidy!

Mart.

can i hear:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=TKX4m_l1_Qk

in the background?

zeupater

albyota wrote: »

Thanks Cardew, I wonder if it would be worth graham or Ze or Mart or indeed your good self actually doing some projected 2012....2013....2014....2015 figures......lets face it we can't go back, and must look to what this means for the future......

Hi

Okay, I'm up for that one, so here's my basis .... the early growth of the pv capacity in Germany .... why ?, because they're a number of years ahead of us, have had reductions in FiTs and due to reductions in materials costs the prediction is likely to be conservative .....

The total generation in Germany in 2004 was 556GWh, similar to our ~500GWh capacity as at 2011 year end .... so let's simply see what Germany did over the next few years and anticipate that the same growth will likely be achieved/exceeded here ...

Total generation GWh (Years transposed Germany/UK)
2004/2011 - 556
2005/2012 - 1282
2006/2013 - 2220
2007/2014 - 3075
2008/2015 - 4420

(Source - http://www.erneuerbare-energien.de/files/english/pdf/application/pdf/ee_in_deutschland_graf_tab_en.pdf)

... so in four years time following this model we'll likely have somewhere around 8x the generating capacity (4420/556), however, I would stress that this is very conservative ..... the period running up to the reduction of FiTs (approx 8 weeks) showed what the capacity of the installation industry has, especially to the industry itself, has raised awareness to the general public and most importantly the reduction in prices as a result of the change in FiTs has greatly increased the potential market ..... let's just see where the next 6-8 months take us, I think that many will be surprised :D

HTH
Z

Martyn1981

Z. I hope you're right, but I fear a bit of a slow down here, both through FITs reductions and the EPC C rating. Also those that were in the position to jump, jumped.

There is of course the psychological side that might help. If the return on investment is similar or less, but the actual initial outlay reduces then maybe more people will jump in. There's something far less scary about £8k than £12k and so on. Also, when I installed in Aug, I needed to speak to someone for reassurance. Now I realise that PV is dead easy. Hopefully as more and more 'giant billboards' appear on roofs, the scary factor will go. (Does any of that make sense?)

I like my numbers (no, honest I do), but there's so many factors here that I don't know where to start guessing.

One bright side, is that if commerce get behind this, and 'IF' they can make 6% or 7% returns (before FITs) then maybe 2012/13 might see a push from that side. Tesco's and the like, try hard to appear green, even if it's just 'greenwash', slapping 40kWp of panels on all their roofs, bit by bit, would be something to shout about. And if one started, the rest would have to follow!

So to sum up, my best guess - 2012 no idea at all!
2013 onwards - I'll see how 2012 goes and start number crunching.

Mart.

zeupater

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Z. I hope you're right, but I fear a bit of a slow down here, both through FITs reductions and the EPC C rating. Also those that were in the position to jump, jumped.

There is of course the psychological side that might help. If the return on investment is similar or less, but the actual initial outlay reduces then maybe more people will jump in. There's something far less scary about £8k than £12k and so on. Also, when I installed in Aug, I needed to speak to someone for reassurance. Now I realise that PV is dead easy. Hopefully as more and more 'giant billboards' appear on roofs, the scary factor will go. (Does any of that make sense?)

I like my numbers (no, honest I do), but there's so many factors here that I don't know where to start guessing.

One bright side, is that if commerce get behind this, and 'IF' they can make 6% or 7% returns (before FITs) then maybe 2012/13 might see a push from that side. Tesco's and the like, try hard to appear green, even if it's just 'greenwash', slapping 40kWp of panels on all their roofs, bit by bit, would be something to shout about. And if one started, the rest would have to follow!

So to sum up, my best guess - 2012 no idea at all!
2013 onwards - I'll see how 2012 goes and start number crunching.

Mart.

Hi

I follow your point, however, I would think that it would be correct to say that any downturn would be linked to greed within the installation and distribution industries within the UK, not a change in the tariff banding values.

To support this let's look at the effect of the additional reduction within the German FiT in 2010 - here are the German capacity installation figures for the 6 months running up to a FiT reduction at the beginning of July 2010, followed by the 12 months post reduction (further, but smaller, reductions were also made in October & December2010) ....

(Figures in MWp)

01/2010 - 222.247
02/2010 - 163.280
03/2010 - 331.378
04/2010 - 454.045
05/2010 - 573.176
06/2010 - 2108.905
07/2010 - 663.064
08/2010 - 363.394
09/2010 - 654.368
10/2010 - 334.910
11/2010 - 365.448
12/2010 - 1143.463
01/2011 - 266.138
02/2011 - 99.710
03/2011 - 147.356
04/2011 - 198.948
05/2011 - 370.739
06/2011 - 664.000

.... note that the FiT reduction was telegraphed by the German government early in 2010 which caused an installation/registration frenzy in 06/2010 similar to that seen in the UK at the end of last year, but to a far greater scale, also note that the UK installed capacity as of mid 2011 which we were discussing earlier in the thread was 200MWp, this means that in 15(*) of the 18 months described, Germany installed more capacity every month than the total UK installed pv capacity as of August last year .... this certainly describes how much penetration into the potential UK market has been achieved to date ..... ...... That aside, the interesting information to be gleaned from the figures is that if the year 2010 is split in two, ie pre & post FiT reduction we get ...

pre reduction - 3.85GWp
post reduction - 3.53GWp

.... a split (52%/48%) which seems to suggest that the installation frenzy to beat the deadline simply raised the profile of pv and the reduction in FiT made very little (/absolutely no) difference to the willingness of people to invest in the technology .....

This is why I believe that the success of the UK pv industry lies with the attitude of the industry ... paint a negative picture and remain relatively greedy they may just get what they plan for, but the German experience suggests that it's not the case ...

HTH
Z

(*) - 04/2011 excluded 198.948=200 within a small margin of error.

albyota

albyota wrote: »

WWF has produced this.......we live in hope eh?

http://assets.wwf.org.uk/downloads/2011_02_02_the_energy_report_full.pdf

Has anybody started reading this......its a long haul over 200 pages.....but persevere....there'll be questions later......:eek:

ed110220

HalloweenJack wrote: »

forget solar and just build the tidal barrage on the severn river

The Severn Barrage would probably be a good idea in my opinion, though it would have some negative environmental impacts and have a long payback period, though its operation costs and life would be good (probably much like some of the large hydro-electric plants that have been operating since the 1930s).

However even such a large scheme would still only supply maybe 5% of the UK's electricity. To reduce fossil fuel consumption in electricity generation will need a lot of different technologies in my opinion:- new nuclear plants, tidal power, wind power, solar, pumped storage, more interconnections with neighbouring countries to export when demand is low and import when it is high etc.

Successive governments have really neglected the issue by allowing nuclear plants to approach the end of their lives without replacements being planned.

John_Pierpoint

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Oy, what's with all the Welsh 'stuff' today. John wants to cover Wales in batteries, and you want to add another invasion point (why do you think we only charge on the bridges to get in)! I tell you, it's more than a WelshBoy can take some days.

HJ, if you want to make a start, I've got a couple of bags of cement in the shed that won't be much use soon. Tidy!

Mart.

Currently, although the technology required to harness tidal energy is well established, tidal power is expensive, and there is only one major tidal generating station in operation. This is a 240 megawatt (1 megawatt = 1 MW = 1 million watts) at the mouth of the La Rance river estuary on the northern coast of France (a large coal or nuclear power plant generates about 1,000 MW of electricity). The La Rance generating station has been in operation since 1966 and has been a very reliable source of electricity for France. La Rance was supposed to be one of many tidal power plants in France, until their nuclear program was greatly expanded in the late 1960's. Elsewhere there is a 20 MW experimental facility at Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia, and a 0.4 MW tidal power plant near Murmansk in Russia.

http://www.oceanenergycouncil.com/index.php/Tidal-Energy/Tidal-Energy.html

Nothing new under the sun:
http://www.oracleireland.com/Ireland/Countys/down/nendrum.htm

Much pre-dates those new fangled "windmill" buildings with their sails and unreliable energy supply.

I think the point that the science journalist was trying to make was:
Using fancy new carbon fibre type technology, it is now possible to make a battery with an internal active storage surface the size of Wales.

Mind you I am old enough to remember the A bomb factories built to produce electricity too cheap to meter
&
ZETA the doughnut that would produce limitless supplies of energy by harnessing the power of the H bomb.

If course I knew it was all possible as I read "The Eagle" comic and was all set to be the first tourist on the moon.

HalloweenJack

ed110220 wrote: »

The Severn Barrage would probably be a good idea in my opinion, though it would have some negative environmental impacts and have a long payback period, though its operation costs and life would be good (probably much like some of the large hydro-electric plants that have been operating since the 1930s).

However even such a large scheme would still only supply maybe 5% of the UK's electricity. To reduce fossil fuel consumption in electricity generation will need a lot of different technologies in my opinion:- new nuclear plants, tidal power, wind power, solar, pumped storage, more interconnections with neighbouring countries to export when demand is low and import when it is high etc.

Successive governments have really neglected the issue by allowing nuclear plants to approach the end of their lives without replacements being planned.

5% means it could replace Drax (well in theory as the barrage would provide power at peak times for the tide)

the problems we have now are thanks to `OMG NIMBY` for new nuclear/wind/tidal - so it rumbles on and on and suddenly we have to do something and the cost is massive compared to a slow build over the last 20 years - thank the green`s for this , FoE etc - who still vocally complain , but have NO ANSWERS

Martyn1981

John, just a quickie (so to speak), but the barrage is absolutely perfect for tackling peak demand. And if combined with interconnectors and pumped hydro (possibly Norway) could be a solution (expensive infrastructure costs) for peak loads even when the tide is too 'far away' from evening peak. Big picture, big costs, but what else are we going to do!

Mart.

Edit: PS Al, had a quick skim, wow, that's thorough. Will enjoy a little read each day. None of it looks like rocket science, just needs us to wake up to rocketing fuel prices, and bite the bullet. I used to think the European super-grid was just a nice idea, but I've been surprised just how easily it could be done (and to a degree is being done). But of course easy does not mean cheap, then again, what in life ever is! M.

John_Pierpoint

I think FoE would rather we wrapped our homes in "Aerogel" first.