Solar ... In the news

Coastalwatch

Further confirmation that renewable energy supports large scale employment numbers and only likely to rise going forward as the move away from fossil fuels gathers pace. With Poland now forming EU's largest sector then possibly another contributary factor in the shortage of skilled labour here.

Euro solar industry on course to support more than 500,000 jobs this year

Poland was the EU’s biggest solar jobs market last year, thanks to a national rooftop incentive program, but Germany’s push to repatriate solar manufacturing will help the bloc’s PV powerhouse back to the number one slot in three years’ time, according to SolarPower Europe.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/09/22/euro-solar-industry-on-course-to-support-more-than-500000-jobs-this-year/

QrizB

Has anyone else looked at Ofgem's 2021-22 annual SEG report?
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/smart-export-guarantee-seg-annual-report-2021-22

The report includes a spreadsheet full of SEG statistics, including a master list of SEG tariffs offered in the period.

It's striking that Octopus has more than two-thirds of the nation's SEG customers!

There's a new quarterly FIT report too:
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/feed-tariff-fit-quarterly-report-issue-49

Martyn1981

I don't know enough about this issue to know if this is a wise move or not, but it seems the Gov want to expand the guidance that PV shouldn't be placed on land graded 3a and above, to also include 3b which is very popular with PV farms. So not great PV news for a Monday morning.

Ministers hope to ban solar projects from most English farms

The new environment secretary, Ranil Jayawardena, is understood to oppose solar panels being placed on agricultural land, arguing that it impedes his programme of growth and boosting food production.

To this end, say government sources, he has asked his officials to redefine “best and most versatile” land (BMV), which is earmarked for farming, to include the middling-to-low category 3b. Land is graded from 1 to 5, and currently BMV includes grades 1 to 3a. Planning guidance says that development on BMV land should be avoided, although planning authorities may take other considerations into account.

Currently, most solar farms are built on and planned for 3b land, so this move would scupper most new developments of the renewable energy source.

Extending BMV to grade 3b would ban solar from about 41% of the land area of England, or about 58% of agricultural land. Much of grade 4 and 5 land is in upland areas that are unsuitable for solar developments.

michaels

Martyn1981 said:

I don't know enough about this issue to know if this is a wise move or not, but it seems the Gov want to expand the guidance that PV shouldn't be placed on land graded 3a and above, to also include 3b which is very popular with PV farms. So not great PV news for a Monday morning.

Ministers hope to ban solar projects from most English farms

The new environment secretary, Ranil Jayawardena, is understood to oppose solar panels being placed on agricultural land, arguing that it impedes his programme of growth and boosting food production.

To this end, say government sources, he has asked his officials to redefine “best and most versatile” land (BMV), which is earmarked for farming, to include the middling-to-low category 3b. Land is graded from 1 to 5, and currently BMV includes grades 1 to 3a. Planning guidance says that development on BMV land should be avoided, although planning authorities may take other considerations into account.

Currently, most solar farms are built on and planned for 3b land, so this move would scupper most new developments of the renewable energy source.

Extending BMV to grade 3b would ban solar from about 41% of the land area of England, or about 58% of agricultural land. Much of grade 4 and 5 land is in upland areas that are unsuitable for solar developments.

!!!!!!

I wonder who we should write to to express our dissatisfaction.  I wonder what the vested Interest group is that thinks that this makes sense to them, I can't imagine it is farmers themselves or anyone in the food supply chain and obviously it means the loss of lots of jobs in the solar industry.

Are we really screwing the whole country to satisfy some passed retirement age Tory voters who think solar panels 'do not look very nice'?!

By my calcs, PV currently covers 0.1% of all UK agricultural land or 0.2% of all grade 3b land (could someone check this, figures I found was that 80ha PV farm gives about 50MW and we have 11.6GW installed and 72m ha of farmland of which about half is 3b), so doubling PV wold be a rounding error in terms of UK food production so any suggestion that this policy relates to food security is a lie.

Martyn1981

There's a good chance there is more to this than I appreciate, but I'm somewhat baffled by the move.

This isn't a serious argument, just a fun one, but as I understand it plants/crops are about 3% efficient(?) at converting sunlight to energy (I think that's across a year), and even lower efficiency for grazing as there's a second step of conversion from (say) grass to meat. But PV is now around 20% efficient. So ..... and now I'm getting 'well dodgy' with the comparison, but how does importing food compare economically to importing energy, or even UK FF's?

Plus of course, now there are many forms of agrovoltaics, which may deliver 80% of the crop + PV generation of a singular solution, so a net gain, where possible.

I genuinely hope there is a good argument in favour of the Gov idea, otherwise it's getting really depressing, just as PV and on-shore wind restrictions had been loosened a bit.

Screwdriva

Martyn1981 said:

I genuinely hope there is a good argument in favour of the Gov idea, otherwise it's getting really depressing, just as PV and on-shore wind restrictions had been loosened a bit.

The only silver lining here is that the government (and specifically the PM) did actually mention increasing PV on top of commercial structures (warehouses/ distribution centers etc). If they are able to cut the red tape in this area, I would view this as an acceptable trade off (big IF I know)

QrizB said:

It's striking that Octopus has more than two-thirds of the nation's SEG customers!

Indeed. It's likely that this number will increase once Octopus completes its acquisition of Bulb.

zeupater

Martyn1981 said:

I don't know enough about this issue to know if this is a wise move or not, but it seems the Gov want to expand the guidance that PV shouldn't be placed on land graded 3a and above, to also include 3b which is very popular with PV farms. So not great PV news for a Monday morning.

Ministers hope to ban solar projects from most English farms

The new environment secretary, Ranil Jayawardena, is understood to oppose solar panels being placed on agricultural land, arguing that it impedes his programme of growth and boosting food production.

To this end, say government sources, he has asked his officials to redefine “best and most versatile” land (BMV), which is earmarked for farming, to include the middling-to-low category 3b. Land is graded from 1 to 5, and currently BMV includes grades 1 to 3a. Planning guidance says that development on BMV land should be avoided, although planning authorities may take other considerations into account.

Currently, most solar farms are built on and planned for 3b land, so this move would scupper most new developments of the renewable energy source.

Extending BMV to grade 3b would ban solar from about 41% of the land area of England, or about 58% of agricultural land. Much of grade 4 and 5 land is in upland areas that are unsuitable for solar developments.

Hi

Looks like a case of pushing the planning argument away from the agricultural sector towards areas which are likely to have AONB or National Park status, in which case it's likely that the anti-solar warriors are looking to recruit those who actively travel to the countryside for recreation/leisure purposes to swell their disruptive ranks ...

What, with the overeducated (but low IQ) supporting 'everything-warrior' class, newts, ramblers association & National Trust members potentially creating an unholy alliance ... the idea of a carbon neutral Eden's probably stuffed & we might as well open up more open cast coal mines ...  ... which is probably closer to the thoughts of those that financially support & encourage such ideas than most would care to entertain!  

Regional maps of land quality classification available here if anyone's interested .... http://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/category/5954148537204736 ....  

HTH ... Z

Solarchaser

michaels said:

Martyn1981 said:

I don't know enough about this issue to know if this is a wise move or not, but it seems the Gov want to expand the guidance that PV shouldn't be placed on land graded 3a and above, to also include 3b which is very popular with PV farms. So not great PV news for a Monday morning.

Ministers hope to ban solar projects from most English farms

The new environment secretary, Ranil Jayawardena, is understood to oppose solar panels being placed on agricultural land, arguing that it impedes his programme of growth and boosting food production.

To this end, say government sources, he has asked his officials to redefine “best and most versatile” land (BMV), which is earmarked for farming, to include the middling-to-low category 3b. Land is graded from 1 to 5, and currently BMV includes grades 1 to 3a. Planning guidance says that development on BMV land should be avoided, although planning authorities may take other considerations into account.

Currently, most solar farms are built on and planned for 3b land, so this move would scupper most new developments of the renewable energy source.

Extending BMV to grade 3b would ban solar from about 41% of the land area of England, or about 58% of agricultural land. Much of grade 4 and 5 land is in upland areas that are unsuitable for solar developments.

!!!!!!

I wonder who we should write to to express our dissatisfaction.  I wonder what the vested Interest group is that thinks that this makes sense to them, I can't imagine it is farmers themselves or anyone in the food supply chain and obviously it means the loss of lots of jobs in the solar industry.

Are we really screwing the whole country to satisfy some passed retirement age Tory voters who think solar panels 'do not look very nice'?!

That's a very cynical view!

Perhaps an even more cynical one would be to suggest rather than tory voting pensioners being satisfied,  that big oil will be more satisfied,  and its for things like this they "contribute " so much to certain political parties and their representatives 🤐

QrizB

Martyn1981 said:

This isn't a serious argument, just a fun one, but as I understand it plants/crops are about 3% efficient(?) at converting sunlight to energy (I think that's across a year), and even lower efficiency for grazing as there's a second step of conversion from (say) grass to meat. But PV is now around 20% efficient. So ..... and now I'm getting 'well dodgy' with the comparison, but how does importing food compare economically to importing energy, or even UK FF's?

I ran the numbers on growing oilseed for biodiesel vs. PV last year, I think. I can't find the thread now but from memory, PV won out handsomely. Rather than putting 7% biodiesel in road fuel, we'd make bigger carbon reductions by planting the same acreage of PV panels.

Martyn1981

QrizB said:

Martyn1981 said:

This isn't a serious argument, just a fun one, but as I understand it plants/crops are about 3% efficient(?) at converting sunlight to energy (I think that's across a year), and even lower efficiency for grazing as there's a second step of conversion from (say) grass to meat. But PV is now around 20% efficient. So ..... and now I'm getting 'well dodgy' with the comparison, but how does importing food compare economically to importing energy, or even UK FF's?

I ran the numbers on growing oilseed for biodiesel vs. PV last year, I think. I can't find the thread now but from memory, PV won out handsomely. Rather than putting 7% biodiesel in road fuel, we'd make bigger carbon reductions by planting the same acreage of PV panels.

That's an excellent point, I hadn't even thought of a direct comparison to energy crops. Does 3% sound about right? And then we have the additional issue of BEV efficiency v's ICEV. Maybe it is a serious argument after all.

That suggests that PV, possibly with storage, is a much better energy 'crop'. I'm pondering the '+ storage' part as biodiesel, or perhaps bio-mass crops like hemp naturally have a storage element, but if energy production is significantly less then it doesn't really matter.

Adding in the points Micheals made regarding the (minimal) amount of agricultural land used for PV, I wonder how much is used to grow oilseed rape for energy (rather than food (also energy of course)) purposes?