Solar Panels --- a bit of a Gimmick

The_Hitman_Fan

3KW Solar System Installation Cost = £7000.
Energy Generated Per Year = 2575KW
FIT Payment = 43.3p per generated KW.
FIT Payments Per Annum= £1115
No Of Years To Pay For Solar System=6 years 99 days
Inverter likely to fail once or twice in 25 years of operation which will cost £600-£800 to repair. (Inverters don't have to be replaced but can be fixed).
Our Electricity bill has reduced by 35% i,e £192.50 per year.
Our FITS payments for 18 years and 266 days will cover the cost of our gas and electricity energy bills from June 1st 2018 until June in the year 2036.
Let the lazy short term inactive thinkers 'moan', allowing those of us with 'get up and go' to plan for a securer energy future for our children and our families.

Cardew

Exactly 6 years 99days eh!

Electricity bills reduced by exactly £192.50 eh

Didn't realise the finances could be worked out so exactly.

Those 'lazy short term inactive thinkers' who live in flats, rented accomodation, or have unsuitable roofs should be ashamed of themselves!

Those lazy people can at least console themselves that they are contributing to your chidren's securer energy future by paying higher electricity bills.

Great post!

grahamc2003

The_Hitman_Fan wrote: »

3KW Solar System Installation Cost = £7000.
Energy Generated Per Year = 2575KW
FIT Payment = 43.3p per generated KW.
...
Let the lazy short term inactive thinkers 'moan', allowing those of us with 'get up and go' to plan for a securer energy future for our children and our families.

Strange, I would have expected an 'active thinker' like you to know the absolutely basic information of the difference between energy and power.

As a matter of interest, are people like me who have solar panels yet critical of the fit system a 'get up and go' type or a 'lazy short term inactive thinker'?

Also, your system will not have paid for itself in 6 years and 99 days - other people will have.

EricMears

grahamc2003 wrote: »

Also, your system will not have paid for itself in 6 years and 99 days - other people will have.

I suppose it's technically correct that other people will have paid rather than the system itself. However, it would be equally true to say that if you ran a market stall selling left hand widgets, the widgets won't be paying for themselves - your customers will. Notwithstanding that, it seems a reasonably common expression to describe an investment as 'paying for itself'

6 years, 99days does seem awfully precise - given that you've no idea what the weather conditions will be like over the next six years (or, in my experience, the next six days !) although there's every chance it won't be too far away from that of the last thirty years. Does that include an estimate of inflation over the next six years ? If it does, it would be an incredibly lucky guess to get that exactly right (nobody in HM Treasury has managd that over the last fifty years !); if it doesn't, payback period would certainly be better than the forecast but nobody can say how much better.

grahamc2003

#86 - Spiced Ham for breakfast.

Fruit_and_Nut_Case

grahamc2003 wrote: »

#86 - Spiced Ham for breakfast.

And that wall of text is so easy on the eyes. Someone ought to sell him some whitespace.

kofi100

had panels fitted 4 days ago in process a water downpipe was drilled through and a window frame was damaged by the scaffolding and been told damage is my fault !!!!!

electrician drills through a wall but missed his spot and drilled through a downpipe !! but instead of telling me i had to find out he,d done it by my grandson getting wet with the water coming out thw holes,
i suppose the guy thought i wouldnt notice as im a dumb female !! but this dumb female reported it but if i hadnt reported it they wouldnt of owned up to it !!:mad:

then a scaffolding pipe was placed over the hinge of a fire escape window upstairs which couldnt be seen from the inside,
and when i tried to open the window it caught the scaffolding pipe and the window wouldnt close , so i reported it to them and they sent a guy up to move it from the hinge so i could close the window, and in the process he told me there was a chip and 3 inch scrape of the frame, so i again reported it and was told it was my fault i did the damage for opening the window:rotfl:
and that they were in the right and that they can block a fire escape window by the scaffolding and that i knew the scaffolding was up and i should not of opened the window !!!!:rotfl:the after care of this company is shocking they will pass the book on any problems they cause
so beware :doh: and make sure you check your property before they leave !!:eek:

Ben84

I'm not currently convinced by solar panels. My main issue is that I just haven't been able to find a compelling case for them based on their cost and environmental and energy security benefits vs spending the money on other things like reducing consumer energy requirements, improving the efficiency of existing power plants or building new power plants using low pollution sources like nuclear or geothermal energy. I have a reasonable suspicion the money could have been spent better.

What I would really like to see in the UK is investment in R&D on energy saving technologies with the money that is being IMHO misspent on the renewable energy FIT. Progress there could save everyone a lot of money as they steadily buy more efficient appliances and use services from more efficient businesses, while also providing valuable patents to the UK which could bring in money and help reduce pollution all over the world. Pollution and energy demands are global issues now, so we should look further than just domestic issues to improve things. For example, making fridges 5% more efficient and getting the technology adopted reasonably widely multiplies up to vast energy savings. Just a few good technologies developed in the UK and used around the world could easily eliminated more energy consumption globally than the entire UK uses. We are after all a small country, but we do have a good size science and research potential, so we should work with what we have for the maximum global benefit.

It's all a bit like those people who become super-green within their own home at great effort and expense, when really finding an easy and appealing way to make most the houses on their street do one single thing better would potentially do more than their entire personal effort. In regard to environmental and energy issues, in general I think most people, businesses and even the government need to start thinking quite a lot bigger than they currently do. The problem is, I suspect partly thanks to typical marketing of various green (and sometimes greenwashed) products, extreme individualism seems to be ruling the modern mindset. We're all encouraged to focus on ourselves and our actions, while there is also a bigger picture to see and important questions about how we should spend our effort to ask. Some of the people out there doing the most for the environment aren't always doing the popular or conventional (yet often limited in impact) green things that are promoted so intensively at the moment.

Martyn1981

Ben, sorry, but I can't agree with a lot of that. I've read several posts on MSE over the last few months where people have said we should do this, instead of that, or have those instead of these. I don't understand why we have to keep choosing between greener generation, or more efficient generation, or lower consumption. They are not competing with each other, we should be doing all of them.

Regarding nuclear, I spent some time last year and the beginning of this year trying to find out the cost of a unit of nuclear electricity, with little to no success. The closest I came was a 10 year old report suggesting 5p/kWh. Lately however with the reported costs of 'our' planned new nukes rising from £5bn to £6bn to £8bn each, there have now been several references to costs of 9p to 13p.

I appreciate the benefits of nuclear with reasonably guaranteed generation, but it is certainly not cheap. Also remember that those costs do not include insurance - no generating company can afford it, and no company is large enough to underwrite it, so the UK govt has accepted that they (us) will insure the proposed plants. Costs also don't include decommissioning, estimated at approx £2bn pa (twice the entire UK's spending on renewables).

In fact it was the rising cost of nuclear and the falling costs of renewables that were cited by the German energy giants as their reasons for withdrawing from negotiations with the UK govt to build new plants.

I agree that we should improve the efficiency of our current gas and coal plants, but fuel prices are still rising, so costs will rise regardless, and will rise even further with the addition of carbon taxes or the addition of CCS technology. At the same time, the cost of renewables is falling.

I think we should be investing in all technologies, remembering that renewables spending (regardless of media hype) is actually tiny. Not trying to find a single magic solution, when there simply isn't one.

As an aside, recent estimates of worldwide fossil fuel subsidies are approx $1 trillion per year, you could get a lot of renewables, efficiency investment, and technological research with that kind of budget.

Lastly, regarding community projects, I agree with you entirely, but it's very hard in the UK to get people motivated. I think until the mixed messages over AGW and renewables stop, the majority of the public simply won't recognise the need to act (and spend).

Mart.

Hobbo2006

Ben84 wrote: »

For example, making fridges 5% more efficient and getting the technology adopted reasonably widely multiplies up to vast energy savings. Just a few good technologies developed in the UK and used around the world could easily eliminated more energy consumption globally than the entire UK uses. We are after all a small country, but we do have a good size science and research potential, so we should work with what we have for the maximum global benefit.QUOTE]


Why should the gvt do this when there are loads of fridge manufacturers out there improving their products to keep ahead of the competition.

As a householder I bet you could make your own fridge more than 5% more efficient, if you really wanted to, by either keeping it out of direct sunlight or turning the heat down in the kitchen.