Solar ... In the news

NigeWick

zeupater wrote: »

As continually reported through the media, Martin Lewis and many, many times on this site, for various reasons there are plenty of people not taking advantage of the most attractive tariffs available on the market

I'm one of them as I'm trying to be green.

We're with Ecotricity for gas as they are trying to use grass to produce it, and, Ovo for renewable electricity in order to get the two years "free" subscription to the Polar charging network. The solar FiT more than pays for the gas we use. I don't like the standing charges as with our water being heated by the solar from late April o early October we don't use gas at all.

Hexane

1961Nick wrote: »

Many lower income households just don't have the capital required to install solar, batteries, ASHPs or a more efficient boiler. For many years, even simple things like low energy light bulbs were prohibitively expensive.

Targeting is fine, but there needs to be a safety net for those that don't have the resources/knowledge to change their consumption.

The fact that low income households are directly contributing to my quarterly FIT payment doesn't sit entirely comfortably.

In reality this is not what happened. A great many solar installs are actually on council houses (therefore lower disposable income) because the FiT benefitted the council - and the occupants benefitted from the lower bills. Other solar installs were of the "rent a roof" variety, which admittedly had various problems such as pigeon infestations, but were still available to lower income households without capital outlay. So that's a very large number of lower-income solar installs being funded out of your (and my) energy bill supplements.

And other government initiatives aimed to reduce emissions (funded in these cases I think by the energy companies but anyway ultimately passing the cost back to bill payers) provided the low energy light bulbs as well. Npower were mailing out free packs of half a dozen low energy bulbs of different sizes to their bill payers, complete with simple instructions on getting the best value from them. Admittedly this is regressive because high earners got them for free too, but it gets the technology out there for the low income households for free.

1961Nick

Hexane wrote: »

In reality this is not what happened. A great many solar installs are actually on council houses (therefore lower disposable income) because the FiT benefitted the council - and the occupants benefitted from the lower bills. Other solar installs were of the "rent a roof" variety, which admittedly had various problems such as pigeon infestations, but were still available to lower income households without capital outlay. So that's a very large number of lower-income solar installs being funded out of your (and my) energy bill supplements.

And other government initiatives aimed to reduce emissions (funded in these cases I think by the energy companies but anyway ultimately passing the cost back to bill payers) provided the low energy light bulbs as well. Npower were mailing out free packs of half a dozen low energy bulbs of different sizes to their bill payers, complete with simple instructions on getting the best value from them. Admittedly this is regressive because high earners got them for free too, but it gets the technology out there for the low income households for free.

Indeed there were plenty of solar installations without any capital outlay by the occupier. But there are also many more low income households that rent privately or live in flats that didn't have the option of solar pv. I have no idea what percentage of Council houses have solar roofs, but I would guess from observations, that it's not that high.

I've had the benefit of a few free low energy bulbs. I've also spent hundreds of pounds replacing the rest of them - spots, candles, globes, golf balls - ES, SES, SBC, which generally were not free. Thankfully, we've now reached the price point where everybody can benefit.

zeupater

Hexane wrote: »

... And other government initiatives aimed to reduce emissions (funded in these cases I think by the energy companies but anyway ultimately passing the cost back to bill payers) provided the low energy light bulbs as well. Npower were mailing out free packs of half a dozen low energy bulbs of different sizes to their bill payers, complete with simple instructions on getting the best value from them. Admittedly this is regressive because high earners got them for free too, but it gets the technology out there for the low income households for free.

Hi

The underlying issue here is that such initiatives, although effectively initially paid for by the customer (whatever their earnings status!) the net effect for all consumers & the environment is beneficial as the payback (through energy use reductions) is (/was) so short.

What needs to be weighed against such schemes are the alternative provisions, which almost certainly revolve around increased generation capacity, something which would cost far more and be chargeable to consumers over a far longer period, so the question of social or economic regression only applies if a myopic analysis is performed ... standing back and looking at the overall net effect what first seems to be regressive becomes an extremely progressive move for low earners as they tend to expend a larger proportion of their income on energy ...

You can scale the effect of such initiatives across other technologies by simply comparing the investment in large centralised generation, for example simply replacing Plasma & LCD televisions with newer LED technology units reduces overall demand by multiples of additional capacity provided by schemes such as HPC at a fraction of the cost, as does replacing CFL lighting with LED lightbulbs ....

This is effectively the issue which blows away the economic argument for smart-metering. The project is justified on consumers employing consumption visibility to enable proactive management to their usage profile (HHM/TOU/HHB driven), resulting in both long term billing savings to the customer through the sector requiring lower capital investment and more efficient employment of generation & distribution resource providing incentives to the industry to chase & invest in further efficiency measures ..... the problem constantly overlooked is that whilst the project has been deliberated over for well over a decade, two of the main contributors to wasteful domestic energy consumption (unnecessary lighting throughout the home & TVs on but not being watched) have been managed through employing energy efficient technology as opposed to information visibility, so much of the savings promised by smart-metering have already been banked & they can't be banked twice (no matter how hard the industry & the regulator work to spin the accounts!) ...

If there is to be talk of regressive cost (/applied indirect taxation) and wasteful use of capital within the energy supply industry, the first place to look would be in meter cupboards & garages all over the country as it's now simply a conduit to move wealth from the (poor) consumer to the (less poor) corporate shareholder ...

HTH
Z

Martyn1981

Hexane wrote: »

In reality this is not what happened. A great many solar installs are actually on council houses (therefore lower disposable income) because the FiT benefitted the council - and the occupants benefitted from the lower bills. Other solar installs were of the "rent a roof" variety, which admittedly had various problems such as pigeon infestations, but were still available to lower income households without capital outlay. So that's a very large number of lower-income solar installs being funded out of your (and my) energy bill supplements.

You are spot on. As the FiT came to an end I think the figures for installs were running at about 20-25% on social housing, so that seems like a roughly even distribution, and of course those residents benefit from lowered leccy bills without any capital investment whatsoever.

But the crucial issue, that is avoided by out of context criticism of the FiT scheme, is that it is fairer than all the other energy generation subsidies, but is the only one that gets attacked ....... for being unfair!

I believe that consumers should pay a fee/levy to clean up our consumption. I hope that seems fair to all.

I believe it's entirely correct that that money gets paid out as subsidies to companies building RE generation, such as wind farms and PV farms, in order to speed up the deployment of said generation.

So we have a situation that seems fair to me, where 'we all pay, but nobody gets any of it' (we being domestic households). And I'm not aware of anyone moaning about that.

But when the Fit came along, and nobody got replaced by some, we suddenly had an outburst of outrage, and cries of 'will no-one think of the poor'.

The anti-FiT argument only works out of context, and in my experience has been a favourite of the NAACB (nuclear-at-any-cost-brigade) - a level of hypocrisy that I am simply not able to comprehend.

Martyn1981

1961Nick wrote: »

I have no idea what percentage of Council houses have solar roofs, but I would guess from observations, that it's not that high.

My observations would suggest the exact opposite, in fact about half a mile east would include a concentration of about 30 social housing properties, and the same west would include about 20-30 installs on 3-storey affordable town-house blocks. I'm sure there are many private PV households I haven't spotted on walks, runs and cycles, but even so, the total would be nowhere near that 50-60 figure, perhaps 20?

GreatApe

1961Nick wrote: »

Makes sense to me.

The UK is in quite a lucky fortunate position and we will be able to meet our electrical grid needs in a clean and mostly affordable way thanks to a combination of being next to France and not too far from Norway plus having lots of suitable offshore wind locations

While offshore wind power will add some costs, inter-connectors should reduce costs plus we have significant existing low cost nuclear which should be kept going for as long as they are safe. So the UK will be able to have an affordable clean grid. We pay half the retail price and come 2023 we will have a grid half as dirty too vs the Germans

With what we have under construction and the commitment of offshore wind we have made we dont need much more of anything esp solar PV . We dont need more nuclear nor more PV or unproven tidal. The interconnectors under construction and the offshore wind under construction and committed to will make the UK grid of 2023 some 75% green and we are committed to significant offshore wind 2023-2030 which will chip away at the remaining 25% plus the two EPRs under construction will come online sometime in the 2020s too

Really solar PV should not play a significant part in the UK grid going forward so the subs should be zero. It is a great technology for regions that have their demand peak in the summer months. It was mostly pointless deploying it in the UK we would have been much better off having spent the money that went to UK PV on interconnectors to France.

In fact if you could turn back time the one significant thing that we could and should have done was to have built 5 links to France in 1986 rather than the one link. Those four additional links would have displaced some 1,800 TWh of Coal/NG over that period and reduced UK wholesale and probably retail prices marginally too. About 1.2 billion tons of CO2 not emitted had we built a 10GW connection to France rather than a 2GW connection.

Anyway, going forward the UK grid is more or less solved by what is under construction and committed too


The next stage is converting gas fired heating to electrical heating
So a program of insulation and converting gas boilers to electric boilers or electric resistance heaters is needed. Starting with the lowest demand properties first. Which likely means Flats first. Then the newer homes. etc. Very difficult task much more so than the period 2010-2030 which solved the electrical grid

GreatApe

Martyn1981 wrote: »

But the crucial issue, that is avoided by out of context criticism of the FiT scheme, is that it is fairer than all the other energy generation subsidies, but is the only one that gets attacked ....... for being unfair!

Erm no it isn't whats fair is what is smart
The UK should have greened its grid in this order

1: Interconnectors. Cheap effective fast. Cost is negative (saves money)
2: Offshore wind power. Adds costs but is Affordable and 30% summer CF 50% winter works well with seasonal demand
3 Nothing else because onshore wind and PV of any type on roofs or land are less effective for a given watt of capacity than #2

You try to paint PV as cheap or cheaper than the nuclear deal agreed. That was a mistake one that wont be repeated so to try and use one mistake to cover another mistake (PV in the UK) makes no sense


Anyway whats all the arguments about
We are where we are
We dont need anymore PV not on roofs not on land
Because the grid of 2023 is already ~75% non fossil fuel
And 2023-2030 we have committed to adding another circa 15 GW of offshore wind

Building any more PV or nuclear or tidal makes no sense in the UK
Move on, the grid is solved. Figure out how the UK is going to solve seasonal heating and that is not by building PV nor is it by making electricity more expensive

GreatApe

1961Nick wrote: »

Makes sense to me.

There really isnt much more to debate about power generation in the UK

We are already on a path to circa 75% non fossil fuels in the UK grid by 2023 and are committed to circa 15GW offshore wind build out during the 2023-2030 period too which will further reduce the 25% that is fossil fuels

Plus I think it is quite likely additional links to Norway/Germany/France will be built in the 2023-2030 period too

Any debate about further PV of any kind, or tidal, or onshore wind, or anything really, is pointless. We are at the end of the line for the UK grid its done its solved (more or less) by what has been built, what is under construction and what is committed to

Likes of Martyn are walking looking straight down at their feet. If they looked up and just looked at 5 years from now maybe he would wake up and stop worrying thinking about the grid. Next stage is fixing heating. Don't waste 5 years arguing about PV or Nuclear or Tidal its all irrelevant debate

Figure out how to solve heating. Start today

1: No FF in new builds bring that forward to 2020 no need to wait to 2025 its a wasted opportunity.

2: Start converting away from gas fired boilers in flats to electrical heating. This can be made affordable by the regulator regulating a smart heating tariff that costs about half of today so 8p a unit but homes are curtailed when the local and national grid is at capacity. If necessary the government is going to have to sub this directly to make it affordable to end consumers in the conversion and ongoing usage a bit like how they sub old folk when the temp falls during the winter

3: Improve insulation so far as is reasonable

4: Move onto electrifying larger properties and commercial and retail buildings etc

This is going to be a huge huge huge challenge and it could cost as much as £35 billion a year for the government to subsidies expensive electricity 15p a unit to be used instead of 5p a unit NG. An ongoing cost so either taxes need to go up significantly for everyone not just 'the rich' or money needs to be diverted from elsewhere (pensions, NHS, Education, Police, whatever)

I think this £35 billion a year subsidy to make electricity affordable for heating is probably an over estimate. I think it can be done for perhaps 1/3rd that figure so a sub of circa £12 billion a year. Still very significant would need roughly speaking the basic rate of tax to go up from 20% to 22% and the middle rate from 40% to 44% and the highest rate from 45% to 50%

Despite the green lobby saying otherwise, the switch to non FF is going to have a substantial ongoing cost. Worthwhile or not is debatable but a significant cost it will be

silverwhistle

zeupater wrote: »

What needs to be weighed against such schemes are the alternative provisions, which almost certainly revolve around increased generation capacity,

Demand side generation and reduced demand through efficiencies also reduces the level of investment needed to upgrade the local distribution network. Now it's less due to increasing individual demand, but due to increased number of households in certain areas. Even back in the 80's, a story I've mentioned here before, a distribution engineer in my company joked it would be cheaper to give every household in an area a few CFL's (!) than upgrade a substation.


On the question of smart meters, they may not give the general reduction in demand for the reasons that you mooted, but as we have seen with the numbers of households with PV more awareness when you produce your own certainly has helped reduce peak demand. (An argument for more demand side PV, perhaps? )



The thread by Zarch is interesting regarding the use of time of day and variable rate tariffs. They obviously need smart meters, although no doubt somebody will come along and say that they're not fair in some way or other.


But it does seem curious how, as Martyn has observed, there have always been some people who seem to object to people having the opportunity to do something themselves and would prefer the monolithic, centralised projects.