Solar ... In the news

zeupater

Cardew wrote: »

A Nissan Leaf has a 24kWh battery that can be leased from £70 a month.

Is that cheap?

... or cost just under £5k, so around £200/kWh (£5k/24) on prices which are probably around 18months+ too expensive in real terms ...

So, £200/kWh on a Power-wall type domestic setup would be around £1500 add something akin to an SMA battery charge control inverter+power monitoring and we have a target basic price before installation of around £2.5k, so £3k fully installed ?. A 7kWh Power-wall battery system should be ~$3000, so around £2300 in real money ... again, prices are around 18months old so should be due a volume related reduction pretty soon ...

So, based on a Leaf battery price we have a 7kWh domestic install cost of ~£3k against a direct Power-wall comparison of £3800 ... not too bad a comparison, but remember that the mark-up for automotive spares is huge, the battery prices are both based on 18month-old economics (which are moving rapidly) and that anyone currently charging considerably more isn't really interested in ecology or long-term business prospects ....

HTH
Z

Martyn1981

Cardew wrote: »

A Nissan Leaf has a 24kWh battery that can be leased from £70 a month.

Is that cheap?

In this context the cheapness (or otherwise) would be measured in comparison to ICE car, and depends on your mileage. But it's pretty easy to work out.

Based on:-
all electricity is bought, not self generated
1kWh costing 13p normal, or 8p E7
1kWh giving you between 4 and 6 miles

standard tariff, 1 mile costs 2.2p to 3.3p
E7 tariff, 1 mile costs 1.3p to 2p

1 gallon of petrol or diesel costing £5
1 gallon giving you approx 50mpg

cost per mile of 10p

we have a cost differential between the two choices ranging from 6.7p to 8.7p

£70 battery lease divided by 6.7p = 1,045 miles per month, or 35 miles per day

£70 battery lease divided by 8.7p = 805 miles per month, or 27 miles per day

So the battery lease is 'cheap' if you do around 30 miles per day or more.

For a very high mileage EV'er, let's max it out at 100miles per day, 3,000 miles per month.

Taking the best numbers (to match high ICE expectations of 50mpg) we have 3,000miles divided by 6miles/kWh = 500kWh at 8p = £40. Add on the battery lease = £110.

v's £300 for the ICE car.


Notes.

If you only do 15 miles per day, ten it's unlikely you are driving on roads that will give an average of 50mpg. If the mpg is halved, the cost doubles, and therefore the battery may be 'cheap' even at this low level of use.

Battery lease will be highly dependent on battery costs. These should fall fast, especially when Tesla's Gigafactory comes on line.

If the environment is of concern, then the EV at 4 miles per kWh is running at approx 75g of CO2 per mile (based on average UK grid intesnity of ~300g/kWh). The average UK petrol car has a CO2 intensity of 320g/mile.

Mart.

Martyn1981

zeupater wrote: »

So, based on a Leaf battery price we have a 7kWh domestic install cost of ~£3k against a direct Power-wall comparison of £3800 ... not too bad a comparison, but remember that the mark-up for automotive spares is huge, the battery prices are both based on 18month-old economics (which are moving rapidly) and that anyone currently charging considerably more isn't really interested in ecology or long-term business prospects ....

HTH
Z

Interesting comparison. The numbers are closer than I'd thought.

Can't wait to see what true mass production of domestic storage will bring. Fingers crossed for 'PV like' cost success.

Mart.

EricMears

Not all EV batteries are leased.

Our VW e-Up! includes a battery guaranteed for 8 years (and I'm on track for doing 10,000 miles per year in it).

VW list price for a replacement battery is a mind-blowing £11k (maybe even +vat and a fitting charge ?) - though hopefully it might be less money for a better battery before that bothers me.

Interestingly though, if you believe the £11k then they've sold me the rest of the car for £4k

edinburgher

Sorry if this has already been mentioned (and not strictly solar, but thought provoking just the same), but it's well worth searching for the FT article Nuclear waste: keep out for 100,000 years. A really interesting article. I haven't linked to it directly as I'm not sure what their stance is on this.

Martyn1981

Welcome to Tesla Town: the new Melbourne suburb with a Powerwall in every home

I enjoy these articles on big deployments as they will hopefully lead to the production scales that will bring the costs right down, just like international FiT schemes worked for PV.

Still hoping for a batt by the next decade, but will 4.5 years of price drops be enough?

Mart.

Martyn1981

A big number:-

China’s PV grid connections hit 22GW in H1 2016

So in 6 months China has installed twice as much PV as the UK total. They don't mess around!

A useful number to point out to those folk who say 'why should we bother when China builds 3 coal powerstations every week' (ignoring the fact that coal consumption has actually fallen for 2 years in China).

Mart.

Martyn1981

As many as 12,500 UK solar jobs lost in the past year, joint PwC/STA survey finds

The sad thing here, is that it's all so unnecessary.

The current FiT rate is 4.25p/kWh, and demand has almost dried up. But at 6p/kWh it would work quite well. Let's say we support 0.5GWp of domestic PV each year for 10 years (equal to 125,000 installs of 4kWp):-

500,000kWp, producing (optimistically) 500,000,000kWh pa at 6p/kWh = £30m in subsidies each year to keep the industry going.

30% of electricity demand is domestic, and there are about 24m households, so the average bill will go up by 37.5p pa.

The subsidy for new installs can be steadily reduced, but even if it wasn't, and we installed 5GWp of domestic PV over the next 10 years, then we'd see PV brought to fruition, and for a total addition to our bills of £3.75 pa. In reality, over the 10 years the subsidy would probably drop to zero, effectively resulting in a total bill increase of £1.88!

Try the numbers for Hinkley, the current subsidy is approx £60/MWh (£99 CfD minus average spot price). So at 95% efficiency it alone will add £20 to each household bill, despite the 60 years of subsidies nuclear has already received from taxpayers.

The PV industry is so close to success, why on earth aren't we finishing the job with a small, but appropriate level of support.

Small cost = sustainable industry, clean generation, jobs, demand side generation, enhanced energy independence. All for less than 38p (and falling)!

Mart.

michaels

Martyn1981 wrote: »

As many as 12,500 UK solar jobs lost in the past year, joint PwC/STA survey finds

The sad thing here, is that it's all so unnecessary.

The current FiT rate is 4.25p/kWh, and demand has almost dried up. But at 6p/kWh it would work quite well. Let's say we support 0.5GWp of domestic PV each year for 10 years (equal to 125,000 installs of 4kWp):-

500,000kWp, producing (optimistically) 500,000,000kWh pa at 6p/kWh = £30m in subsidies each year to keep the industry going.

30% of electricity demand is domestic, and there are about 24m households, so the average bill will go up by 37.5p pa.

The subsidy for new installs can be steadily reduced, but even if it wasn't, and we installed 5GWp of domestic PV over the next 10 years, then we'd see PV brought to fruition, and for a total addition to our bills of £3.75 pa. In reality, over the 10 years the subsidy would probably drop to zero, effectively resulting in a total bill increase of £1.88!

Try the numbers for Hinkley, the current subsidy is approx £60/MWh (£99 CfD minus average spot price). So at 95% efficiency it alone will add £20 to each household bill, despite the 60 years of subsidies nuclear has already received from taxpayers.

The PV industry is so close to success, why on earth aren't we finishing the job with a small, but appropriate level of support.

Small cost = sustainable industry, clean generation, jobs, demand side generation, enhanced energy independence. All for less than 38p (and falling)!

Mart.

Hopefully as we leave the EU we can get rid of the tariffs on Chinese panels at which point the current subsidies will become viable again - after all why should we pay more for PV to protect German manufactuing jobs....

Martyn1981

michaels wrote: »

Hopefully as we leave the EU we can get rid of the tariffs on Chinese panels at which point the current subsidies will become viable again - after all why should we pay more for PV to protect German manufactuing jobs....

If the MIP for PV is removed then that would be similar to increasing the FiT by 1p. That would help.

Edit: The drop in the value of the pound has probably done more damage than the benefit of ending the MIP. So we'll have to see what happens to currencies. M.

Mart.