Does anyone here have an ideological objection to Solar?

spgsc531

After a short time here, I've decided to ignore grahamc2003 and cardew. They ignore questions, or only answer in a way to suit them.

At a guess cardew cannot have or missed the boat for a sweet spot for solar pv. grahamc2003 just seems a dinosaur not living in the reality of renewables and CO2 reduction.

I think people who keep responding to them are just feeding Trolls. Up to you I guess.

I look forward to a much better forum experience not reading their rubbish.

To other reasonable users of the forum, I guess I should apologise. just thought I would explain my thoughts.

spgsc

simplewanderer

Hi
Newbie here, live in NI, so think the whole FIT thing doesn't apply to me.

I live on a small farm, with a nice windy hill. Was considering a wind turbine, however the low maintenance/minimal planning of solar PV is tempting.

Grateful for any advice from those who know more than me [i.e. everyone]

Thanks

grahamc2003

ed110220 wrote: »

Given the urgency of reducing our carbon emissions it is not a case of one low carbon technology or another. According to the latest IPCC report our emissionspath puts us on track for a best estimate of about 4C of warming globally by the end of the century. We will need solar, wind, hydro, tidal and perhaps nuclear power to avoid the full extent of that rise.

I don't wish to move this thread to a global warming debate, but just on this specific point, I thought I would check out the scale behind some of the views in your post.

By 'our' co2 emissions, do you mean the world's emissions or the UK's?

According to the graph on p12 of the referenced report, it looks like the 10 year co2 emission growth in China is about 15 times the total UK co2 emissions (2011 numbers).

In absolute terms, it looks like China's 2011 co2 emissions at about 9,800Mt are around 14 times the UKs at 700Mt.

In pragmatic terms, it looks like any nominal reduction the UK makes will be massively exceeded by the growth in China's. So us cutting co2 is a gesture which, being realistic, won't really affect world emissions, and therefore any consequencies, to any significant extent.

http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/CO2REPORT2012.pdf

grahamc2003

spgsc531 wrote: »

After a short time here, I've decided to ignore grahamc2003 and cardew. They ignore questions, or only answer in a way to suit them.

At a guess cardew cannot have or missed the boat for a sweet spot for solar pv. grahamc2003 just seems a dinosaur not living in the reality of renewables and CO2 reduction.

I think people who keep responding to them are just feeding Trolls. Up to you I guess.

I look forward to a much better forum experience not reading their rubbish.

To other reasonable users of the forum, I guess I should apologise. just thought I would explain my thoughts.

spgsc

Spgsc, just before you ignore me, therefore causing me much malaise, would you mind me asking if you know where Ilovesolarmelike disappeared to around the same time you registered?

I have a tip for your next identity - try to establish your credibiility for more than a couple of days before trying to rally the troops behind you. I appreciate it may be difficult for you to establish credibility, but hey ho, that's life. Ever heard the phrase 'A leopard never changes its spots'?.

doughnutmachine

spgsc531 wrote: »

what renewable energy is guaranteed to deliver energy on a cold winters night?

hydro, tidal, anaerobic gas, landfill gas, coal mine gas....

then we could always invest in ways to increase the efficiency of "traditional" power stations, maybe use the waste heat for district heating etc.

doughnutmachine

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

There is an issue with hydroelectric potential also being variable, although seasonally, as the referenced report acknowledges, the installations considered are not 'domestic scale', averaging ~650kW, and therefore bringing the full potential to fruition would require over 1000 individual planning consents, including 128 new dam projects with all of the impact reports which would be associated with them .... I would expect the planning process to be considerably extended in many instances, with a good proportion being blocked or refused, and all of this would contribute around 0.7% to the UK's annual electricity generation demand. Concentrating on this form of generation at the detriment to all other forms of renewables generation would actually achieve very little, whereas developing hydro in parallel to other schemes makes complete sense ....

HTH
Z

but hydro does provide more power in the months when power demand is high. water can also be stored and used when the electricty demand is greatest ie on a cold winters night.

perhaps it makes sense to have 1000 planning applications as opposed to 2 million small solar fits schemes (the amount required to get the same power generated as the hydro). it must cost a lot to administer the present 200,000 solar installations. money perhaps better spent elsewhere..

no one is saying hydro is the only answer, it just seems the present FIT system has a bias towards solar power. it just seems that the solar fits money could be spent better elsewhere.....

John_Pierpoint

ed110220 wrote: »

Given the urgency of reducing our carbon emissions it is not a case of one low carbon technology or another. According to the latest IPCC report our emissionspath puts us on track for a best estimate of about 4C of warming globally by the end of the century. We will need solar, wind, hydro, tidal and perhaps nuclear power to avoid the full extent of that rise.

My son has this theory that the current share price of the oil companies means that all their reserves have to be pumped up and burnt.

ie all this energy/carbon reduction is just wishful thinking therefore homo sapiens has the 7,000,000,000 joint death wish.

I don't think he sat there with a PC doing the sums himself.

Any idea where this concept was developed?

[No he is not a teenage school boy into conspiracy theory - he is managing a million + budget of your tax money].

John_Pierpoint

On a lighter note has anyone got any thoughts about this place:
http://hagmanheaven.com/ojaimain.html

Martyn1981

doughnutmachine wrote: »

i think in post 219 i gave a strong argument that hydro was better value than solar. your response was that if you ignored the capital cost of solar it worked out cheaper (but of course still considering the full capital cost of hydro). not an accounting method i'm familiar with.

Morning. I think post 219 makes very valid points about hydro, but it still doesn't explain why hydro instead of anything (or everything) else.

Regarding the economics, you need to include the extremely long construction time for large hydro, during that time PV will continue to fall in cost. If you consider my 3p FIT example reasonable (I keep saying it's just an estimate), then large scale hydro may become less economic than PV before it's commissioned and generates a single kWh.

Once again, I don't want to pit PV against hydro, I don't see the point, we need them all, so pointing out any criticisms just weakens the whole renewables market.

I stand by the economics of demand side micro-generation (which includes hydro). Consider the effect on your council tax bill if the council buy a bus. Then consider the impact on the CT bill of your neighbour buying a car.

doughnutmachine wrote: »

at work i'm designing a solar pond (try wikipedia). i've been investigating ways to use the heat generated, ie stirling engine or organic rankine cycle. do you have any professional experience in renewable energy?

No I don't. I've worked with both the EA and the Welsh Office on water resources issues and some grant evaluation schemes. But no direct involvement in the sense you mean.

However I am very interested in all renewables, and all new proposals. However I do need to point out again that you previously suggested putting money into research rather than FITs. But FITs is the final link in the chain in bringing new technologies (from R&D) to mass rollout. If you abandon each idea at this stage, then we'll never get anywhere.

Best of luck with the solar pond, I see that it has a pretty good potential efficiency. As I keep saying, we need everything, hydro + new hydro will not meet our needs, neither will PV.

Mart.

Martyn1981

Cardew wrote: »

You have spent months and months telling everyone that farms were not viable. I can produce loads of your statements to this effect.

as previously, farms are not as viable as domestic. Find a report that thinks otherwise. I'm not arguing with you, I'm simply regurgitating facts.

On current leccy prices and income streams, a farm has to overcome an income that is only approx 65% of the households income.

At current domestic prices, the farm would have to come in at £900/kWp after grid connection fees, and lifetime annual running costs that don't apply to commercial and domestic installs.

Even if that were possible (good luck!) you also have to take into account differing costs of capital and taxation - and that's just to break even with domestic!!

Cardew wrote: »

I haven't done calculations and don't need to do the calculations - how would I know cost of land and all the factors involved?

Clearly you haven't. So you keep posting an argument that makes no economic sense, but defend it by stating that you don't know what you're talking about.

Try some numbers, even loose estimates, then we won't have to discuss this again.

Cardew wrote: »

I keep telling you that it was the Councils and commercial firms(not myself) were planning the solar farms using the lower FIT rate. They drew up business plans and decided it was financially viable. The Government knew this as well - that was the reason for cutting the FIT for farms, suddenly and savagely.

Do you honestly think that all of these organisations had made a mistake with their calculations? and you alone had got it correct.

Already answered and explained in my last post to you. You are going in circles again. All you are saying that is when prices fell far enough, the lower FIT rate for farms became viable. You then try to claim that the higher domestic FIT was 'equally' viable, and draw economic conclusions from there.

You (deliberately?) choose to ignore that the domestic FIT was already viable at a higher cost, so your whole argument is flawed by that initial omission. From there it just compounds the error.

Are you saying that domestic installs wouldn't have been viable at the lower 'farm' rate? If they would have been, and of course they would have at that rate, then why would you rather maintain the farm installs (perhaps by A Shade Greener), than put the money into domestic?

Cardew wrote: »

OR, if you are now conceding solar farms can produce solar electricity for a lower subsidy than sub 4kWp systems on roofs of houses - then our disagreement is settled; and I cannot understand your stance ever since you joined MSE. Also why do you want me to produce numbers when you have now agreed the farms were financially viable in this statement.

No idea how you've come to those conclusions! My stance remains that domestic PV is more viable than farm PV - total costs are similar, income streams are not. (Commercial remains the best).

Cardew wrote: »

Still no comment on George Monboit's article? too painful?

After spending so much time referring to Monbiot's error ridden 2010 anti PV rant, I'd rather look to the facts that this subsidy (national and global variants) has speeded up the deployment of a very good CO2 free energy resource.

Question - what is it about PV/FITs that scares you so much? You spent 2010, 2011 & 2012 desperately trying to find fault. Now that FITs has fallen so far, and progress is so far ahead of even the most optimistic estimates, are you really going to spend 2013 arguing that 'back in 2011 we should have' based on broken logic?

Mart.