Does anyone here have an ideological objection to Solar?

Energetic_2

doughnutmachine wrote: »

by any chance have you had experience in selling double glazing?

You should be able to tell from my posts that i'm no salesman, i'm an electrician, not some highly paid shiny suited BMW driving sales executive like some of you seem to think.

Martyn1981

Cardew wrote: »

Have you noticed that not one of your supporters and sympathisers have actually come on MSE and agreed with you on that statement.

Still waiting for an answer from you, should I assume one from you, given your clear disapproval with my view?

So let's simplify this right down for you,

Q1. Do you think that farm PV (at wholesale rates) is more viable than domestic PV (at retail rates) in the UK?

Q2. Do you think that farm PV can ever become viable at current wholesale rates in the UK, without subsidies?

Very simple, just asking you to say what you believe, rather than trying to misrepresent what I believe for a change.

One last question (since I don't expect you to actually answer any), how do you envision reducing our carbon emissions, that is, what package would you put together?

Mart.

Cardew

Your questions are illogical, in fact absolutely stupid! -They have no relevance to the issue - namely that farm PV can be produced at a lower subsidy(FIT) than domestic. Or at least the organisations that prepared business plans(done the figures!) were/are prepared to go ahead with a lower FIT than domestic FIT.

As for carbon emissions, if a finite sum is allocated for the FIT subsidy - say £1million, with domestic systems that will produce x kWh of solar PV electricity.

With solar farms getting a lower subsidy, there will be Y% more solar electricity generated for the £1million - 'more bangs for your bucks' as our American cousins say.

Have you not persuaded anyone to agree with you about domestic PV being more economically viable than solar farms

zeupater

Cardew wrote: »

I thought you might have been aware that FITs are not part of 'Government Spending'.

They are funded by a levy on all electricity consumers, that includes the poorest in the land, and not from general taxation ....

Hi

Once again, as you have been made aware of before .... HM Government themselves classify the levy as 'Tax Revenue' and the FiT as 'Government Spending'.

Here's my previous post on this ... you'll note that it's not my opinion, or yours, or 'Hero' Monbiot's - it's the opinion of the actual Government Department responsible for 'Government Spending', HM Treasury ....

zeupater wrote: »

.... For reference, here, again, is the document describing/defining the levy as a tax ....

HM Treasury
Control framework for DECC levy-funded spending
March 2011
section2 ... page 6

"Levy-funded spending will not be regarded as a regulatory burden to be covered by the „One-in One-out‟ commitment, but as taxation and spending overseen by the Treasury"
(http://hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/control_framework_decc250311.pdf)

... I cannot see how it would be possible to interpret the phrase in any other way, especialy considering the source ... HM Treasury themselves ....

It is really unfortunate that this approach needs to be adopted, however, as I see it it would be much better to establish consensus on the issue of taxation once and for all in order for this 'little gem' to not be raised on numerous future occasions ....

HTH
Z

.... simply ignoring or overlooking this official definition does absolutely nothing for the credibility of a long term and mainly well-respected member. Additionally, deliberate disinformation in order to maintain a position is not something which an engineer should consider doing, well none of the engineers which I've ever worked with would consider it !

HTH
Z

zeupater

Cardew wrote: »

Your questions are illogical, in fact absolutely stupid! -They have no relevance to the issue - namely that farm PV can be produced at a lower subsidy(FIT) than domestic. Or at least the organisations that prepared business plans(done the figures!) were/are prepared to go ahead with a lower FIT than domestic FIT.

As for carbon emissions, if a finite sum is allocated for the FIT subsidy - say £1million, with domestic systems that will produce x kWh of solar PV electricity.

With solar farms getting a lower subsidy, there will be Y% more solar electricity generated for the £1million - 'more bangs for your bucks' as our American cousins say.

Have you not persuaded anyone to agree with you about domestic PV being more economically viable than solar farms

Hi

I think that it's pretty obvious that you've overlooked my post #311 in this thread which addressed the points raised above, before they were posted ....

Martyns point is pretty easy to understand and has been made and explained that many times that even a 1 month old goldfish will understand and remember it by now ..... leaving FiTs aside, because they complicate the issue, in a location where there is potentially grid-parity for solar pv, a proportion of the returns for a domestic scale system will be based on domestic energy pricing (with additional potential for sale of exported units at wholesale rates), whilst farm-scale installation returns will be on a wholesale only basis .... If the proportion of self-use is significant then the return per Wp installed will be significantly greater for domestic scale systems, in the UK this would likely be a on a ratio of approx 3:1 if self consumption was high .... this simply leaves the relative capital investment between the systems - if the capital cost/Wp ratio between domestic and farm-scale systems is less than the apparent ratio of domestic to wholesale energy pricing then the domestic system simply is "more economically viable than solar farms" and I would agree, as would any engineer, accountant or economist worth their salt.

HTH
Z

grahamc2003

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

Once again, as you have been made aware of before .... HM Government themselves classify the levy as 'Tax Revenue' and the FiT as 'Government Spending'.



HTH
Z

I'm not sure whether this is too precise or pedantic for most here, but your extract does not say it is government spending at all. It says very explicitly that it should be regarded as government spending, form which it's a simple step to deduce that it definitely isn't government spending.


HM Treasury
Control framework for DECC levy-funded spending
March 2011
section2 ... page 6

"Levy-funded spending will not be regarded as a regulatory burden to be covered by the „One-in One-out‟ commitment, but as taxation and spending overseen by the Treasury"


Quite clearly, it is most closely Supplier spending, since it is the supplier who pays the fit, and reclaims those payments from its customers, albeit dictated by the government.

Until recently, it was both not government spending, and not regarded as government spending. It was purely an EU ruling quashing the government's view that fits were not taxation, thereby ruling it is taxation, which meant the government had to regard fits as government spending (even though it isn't).

zeupater

grahamc2003 wrote: »

I'm not sure whether this is too precise or pedantic for most here, but your extract does not say it is government spending at all. It says very explicitly that it should be regarded as government spending, form which it's a simple step to deduce that it definitely isn't government spending.


HM Treasury
Control framework for DECC levy-funded spending
March 2011
section2 ... page 6

"Levy-funded spending will not be regarded as a regulatory burden to be covered by the „One-in One-out‟ commitment, but as taxation and spending overseen by the Treasury"


Quite clearly, it is most closely Supplier spending, since it is the supplier who pays the fit, and reclaims those payments from its customers, albeit dictated by the government.

Until recently, it was both not government spending, and not regarded as government spending. It was purely an EU ruling quashing the government's view that fits were not taxation, thereby ruling it is taxation, which meant the government had to regard fits as government spending (even though it isn't).

No ? ...... where is your source to justify this ? ... it is government spending, it is on the books and it is accounted for and reported on accordingly, both by HM Treasury and the relevant department.

You cannot seriously post "Until recently, it was both not government spending, and not regarded as government spending." and maintain that it isn't in the same breath ... the important part to note is "Until recently", which suggests that you yourself agree that it is now considered as being "Government Spending", so why the need to attempt obfuscation ? ....

HTH
Z

grahamc2003

zeupater wrote: »

You cannot seriously post "Until recently, it was both not government spending, and not regarded as government spending." and maintain that it isn't in the same breath ... the important part to note is "Until recently", which suggests that you yourself agree that it is now considered as being "Govern ment Spending" ....

HTH
Z

Well, I can and did seriously post it.

And you seriously misunderstood it.

I said until recently it was (not GS) and (not regarded as GS),

I now consider it (not GS) and (regarded as GS)

I do not consider it as (GS) and (regarded as GS).

I also consider I explained that quite unambiguously and perfectly clearly in my post.

zeupater

grahamc2003 wrote: »

Well, I can and did seriously post it.

And you seriously misunderstood it.

I said until recently it was (not GS) and (not regarded as GS),

I now consider it (not GS) and (regarded as GS)

I do not consider it as (GS) and (regarded as GS).

I also consider I explained that quite unambiguously and perfectly clearly in my post.

Hi

Still love the obfuscation ....

I think that there is a misconception in what is meant by 'should' and what is meant by 'shall' or 'will' within the bounds of legislation, policy documentation and generally accepted terms .....

You will note the use of "will", not "should" within the referenced document - therefore whatever you consider it as being is completely irrelevant ... the use of the term 'regarded' simply relates to it being 'considered as being' or 'seen as' or simply 'is' .... anyway, it makes no difference because it exists on both sides of the argument and the important word is "will" .... everytime I've written policy documentation relating to legislation changes & compliance (and that's quite a few !) I've needed to check the content with various legal departments and in my experience they have always been consistent on the advice given regarding terms such as 'should', 'shall' & 'will', I would therefore expect that the government departments releasing such documents would need to do the same and apply the same logic, in the same way ....

HTH
Z

Cardew

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

I think that it's pretty obvious that you've overlooked my post #311 in this thread which addressed the points raised above, before they were posted ....

Z

No I didn't overlook your post, I just didn't and don't think it relevant to the issue.

Addressing, the General Tax versus a Levy. You know full well, as did Energentic, that the subsidy doesn't come from general tax - i.e. Income Tax, VAT etc etc.

If you have a £500 electricty bill and earn £1million a year, you pay the same amount toward the FIT subsidy, as a pensioner on subsitence income, with a £500 electricity bill.

No amount of semantic juggling will change that situation.

On the second point, are you prepared to agree with Martyn that:

domestic PV is more economically viable than farm scale PV.

It really is a simple question.