Solar ... In the news

Exiled_Tyke

JKenH said:Another attempt to divert attention from the fundamental issue by dwelling on the Telegraph. It’s inconsequential whether people “fall for it” or not. It has no bearing on the fact that we have a fundamental issue in that we struggle to respond to demand or supply problems (summer or winter) without using coal. 

More wind and solar roll out in the last decade (without storage) would only have aggravated the problem. If we had doubled our electricity generation from renewables then we would have reduced our FF generation by a commensurate amount and high demand on a poor renewables day would have presented a bigger problem. 

What we actually need is more generating capacity that is able to flexibly respond to an unexpected hiccup in supply or demand. Remarkably despite all attempts to wean ourselves off it, it is coal we turn to because it does the job. It just isn’t possible to ramp up wind and solar on demand to respond to a crisis so being more dependent on them will only add to the problem. 

As you say, with the best will in the world things go wrong so let’s plan some practical back up than can be switched on as needed. 

Couldn't disagree with your more strongly. 

1. It is highly pertinent and right to call out a newspaper on rumour spreading against PV. If people 'fall for it' then it strengthens the case of the climate change deniers and supports the FF industry further. 
2. Yesterday it looks like coal amounted to 0.8% of generation and solar 11.3%.  So (in theory at least) if we'd had in place 7.1% more PV generation capacity than we currently have we wouldn't have needed coal.   Or to put it another (if my calculations are correct) another 5 1/2 Derril Water projects would have covered it. And I'm sure most of us here hoped we'd have massively more PV capacity than this at present and a little storage to go with it and we'd have been home and dry. 

Martyn1981

Personally ET, I find it hysterical now, that PV is getting the blame due to decisions to not roll out as much ..... PV, and because of some issues with an interconnector and two nuclear reactors. The levels of spin needed to blame RE for coal being burnt, rather than simply accepting that less coal (FF's in total) is being burnt now, might be enough to fly a helicopter ..... maybe Silverwhistle will now.  

At this stage, if 'that's all they've got', then RE is really starting to shine.

JKenH

Exiled_Tyke said:

JKenH said:Another attempt to divert attention from the fundamental issue by dwelling on the Telegraph. It’s inconsequential whether people “fall for it” or not. It has no bearing on the fact that we have a fundamental issue in that we struggle to respond to demand or supply problems (summer or winter) without using coal. 

More wind and solar roll out in the last decade (without storage) would only have aggravated the problem. If we had doubled our electricity generation from renewables then we would have reduced our FF generation by a commensurate amount and high demand on a poor renewables day would have presented a bigger problem. 

What we actually need is more generating capacity that is able to flexibly respond to an unexpected hiccup in supply or demand. Remarkably despite all attempts to wean ourselves off it, it is coal we turn to because it does the job. It just isn’t possible to ramp up wind and solar on demand to respond to a crisis so being more dependent on them will only add to the problem. 

As you say, with the best will in the world things go wrong so let’s plan some practical back up than can be switched on as needed. 

Couldn't disagree with your more strongly. 

1. It is highly pertinent and right to call out a newspaper on rumour spreading against PV. If people 'fall for it' then it strengthens the case of the climate change deniers and supports the FF industry further. 
2. Yesterday it looks like coal amounted to 0.8% of generation and solar 11.3%.  So (in theory at least) if we'd had in place 7.1% more PV generation capacity than we currently have we wouldn't have needed coal.   Or to put it another (if my calculations are correct) another 5 1/2 Derril Water projects would have covered it. And I'm sure most of us here hoped we'd have massively more PV capacity than this at present and a little storage to go with it and we'd have been home and dry. 

1. I see you are still attempting to deflect attention away from the fact we are still having to burn coal in June.

2. If we had installed 7.1% more solar then that would presumably have displaced some other (more reliable) generation. Is it economically viable to maintain the capacity of the existing CCGT and coal fleet at the same time as we expand RE generation? If we had displaced the equivalent capacity of FF generation what would we have done in the depths of winter when the sun wasn’t shining and the wind wasn’t blowing? The other point, crucially, you have missed (or chosen to ignore) is that while coal may only have contributed 0.8% of generation over the day as a whole there were times when it was contributing 2.0% and solar just 0.04%. For solar to have covered the coal fired generation at 21.30 we would have needed 50 times as much solar capacity as we have today. Now forgive me if I have got my maths wrong here but isn’t that an increase of 4,900%? The arguments for more RE always look great when viewed as averages and when the intermittency is ignored but looking at it on an hourly or daily or even weekly basis in some cases there are occasions it just can’t deliver.

Exiled_Tyke

That's why I mentioned 'in theory' and also continue to stress that we need: storage; a variety (beyond wind and PV) of RE sources; all our interconnectors working and perhaps importantly TOU tarrifs taking the stress out of the system at 21.30.  

 That's where we should have got today to enable us not to rely on coal.   Of course nobody expects solar to solve the supply problem at 21.30 (and ok I was a little rash in my comment) but the point is still valid. If we'd started addressing the various solutions earlier this wouldn't have happened. Heck we could even have invested in importing solar and wind from North Africa. No rational argument exists for blaming solar on the need to fire up a coal power station.  The elephant here is if we didn't have renewables then the FF consumption for electricity generation would be much higher everyday of the year not just yesterday. 

JKenH

Martyn1981 said:

Personally ET, I find it hysterical now, that PV is getting the blame due to decisions to not roll out as much ..... PV, and because of some issues with an interconnector and two nuclear reactors. The levels of spin needed to blame RE for coal being burnt, rather than simply accepting that less coal (FF's in total) is being burnt now, might be enough to fly a helicopter ..... maybe Silverwhistle will now.  

At this stage, if 'that's all they've got', then RE is really starting to shine.

Why is the RE faction so paranoid about what is said in the press? Everybody is out to get us. That article wasn’t about RE it was about burning coal. We shouldn’t need to be doing it but, until there is a despatchable alternative, coal and gas are all we have to plug the gaps. Our priority should be storage not more and more RE just because it is cheap.

Edit: spelling 

silverwhistle

JKenH said:

Did anyone imagine on a sunny day in June we would need them? No. So whoever’s in charge of the grid must have got their sums wrong. Or are we entering a new era where everything is working as it should and we should expect an energy crisis in June? 

Why criticise the grid, they are doing exactly what they should, based on the precautionary principle, with the resources they have?

It's not their fault that government policy has not been helpful to RE, whether land based wind, policy on both domestic and commercial PV and no drive to get more offshore wind both built and connected. No real efforts to address efficiency issues. More wind and PV would _not_ have aggravated the problem, the logical outcome of your argument is all increases make the issue worse?

Most acknowledge that there need to be changes to many aspects of the current set up, so why do your normal strawman argument technique. Nobody is saying everything is working as it should.

michaels

JKenH said:

Martyn1981 said:

Personally ET, I find it hysterical now, that PV is getting the blame due to decisions to not roll out as much ..... PV, and because of some issues with an interconnector and two nuclear reactors. The levels of spin needed to blame RE for coal being burnt, rather than simply accepting that less coal (FF's in total) is being burnt now, might be enough to fly a helicopter ..... maybe Silverwhistle will now.  

At this stage, if 'that's all they've got', then RE is really starting to shine.

Why is the RE faction so paranoid about what is said in the press? Everybody is out to get us. That article wasn’t about RE it was about burning coal. We shouldn’t need to be doing it but, until there is a despatchable alternative, coal and gas are all we have to plug the gaps. Our priority should be storage not more and more RE just because it is cheap.

Edit: spelling 

Why would the Torygraph mention solar which was supplying at least the average June output rather than Nuclear and Inter-connectors which weren't?  Almost suggests they have an agenda....

Also I would happily have put PV and battery export into the grid rather than putting PV into the battery and the hot water had I been paid to do so but the joke per unit export payments for anyone not on Octopus mean there was no incentive to do so.

JKenH

michaels said:

JKenH said:

Martyn1981 said:

Personally ET, I find it hysterical now, that PV is getting the blame due to decisions to not roll out as much ..... PV, and because of some issues with an interconnector and two nuclear reactors. The levels of spin needed to blame RE for coal being burnt, rather than simply accepting that less coal (FF's in total) is being burnt now, might be enough to fly a helicopter ..... maybe Silverwhistle will now.  

At this stage, if 'that's all they've got', then RE is really starting to shine.

Why is the RE faction so paranoid about what is said in the press? Everybody is out to get us. That article wasn’t about RE it was about burning coal. We shouldn’t need to be doing it but, until there is a despatchable alternative, coal and gas are all we have to plug the gaps. Our priority should be storage not more and more RE just because it is cheap.

Edit: spelling 

Why would the Torygraph mention solar which was supplying at least the average June output rather than Nuclear and Inter-connectors which weren't?  Almost suggests they have an agenda....

Also I would happily have put PV and battery export into the grid rather than putting PV into the battery and the hot water had I been paid to do so but the joke per unit export payments for anyone not on Octopus mean there was no incentive to do so.

Although I am getting bored with defending the Telegraph for having the temerity to point out we were burning coal in June, I will extend you the courtesy of a reply that I might not to others.

The Telegraph was making the point that solar PV falls off in hot weather and in earlier paragraphs of their article had discussed the matter in more detail making a comparison with earlier days in the month and observing:

Solar panels are tested at a benchmark of 25C. For every degree rise in temperature above this level, the efficiency is reduced by 0.5 percentage points.

The temperature level refers to the solar cell temperature, rather than the air temperature. In direct sunlight, the cells can easily reach 60 or 70 degrees.

The article had compared PV with a week earlier and looking at Drax Electric iInsights I see PV generated 0.06 TWh compared to 0.08TWh on the respective dates. That looks like 25% less but there may be rounding errors.

The article also mentioned lower wind output and gas plant closures but, as you say, not nuclear or interconnectors. Ok, fair point but it doesn’t mean they omitted them because they have an agenda. 

The Telegraph pointed out in their headline and text that it was the hot weather driving demand for air conditioning which was the primary cause of the increase in demand. Low solar output was only one factor. 

Now if you or anyone else have decided the Telegraph has an agenda that is anti PV then I am not going to be able to convince you otherwise as AFAIW  you or other critics don’t read the paper. It’s just an urban myth which it suits some to maintain. I can link numerous articles from the Telegraph supporting RE but what is the point as the response will be that the articles are behind a firewall. 

If you wish to pursue the argument that the Telegraph has an agenda (whether that is fact or fiction) it is only reasonable that you also consider whether many of the other sources quoted on these forums, particularly this one, also have an agenda. I may have got the names slightly wrong but I seem to recall PV Magazine (or similar) regularly being quoted. Might they have an agenda? Or CleanTechnica? Or the Guardian? Do you or others ever raise the “agenda” issue when strongly pro RE articles are quoted/linked?

I’m not making an issue of it but the Guardian article didn’t mention the impact of temperatures on solar PV output - one might ask why not? That doesn’t necessarily mean they have an agenda but I recall they quoted some environmental lobby group (maybe Greenpeace - apologies if I misremembered). 

The point I am making here is that whether bias is displayed or whether some publication is perceived as having an agenda is often in the eye of the reader. Bias, when it boils down to it, is no more than an alternative point of view. If we don’t agree with a position it is easy, or you could say lazy, to label it as bias. Shouldn’t we share alternative points of view and discuss the issue without always playing the bias /FUD card?

I think we have done the Telegraph’s agenda to death now. Please come back to me if you wish but I can’t promise to spare the time for a reply.

Now to the second point you raise about the “joke per unit export payments”. Might I enquire what you receive in terms of export payments compared to your import tariff? I may have misremembered again but don’t you have some very low TOU import rate? You mention Octopus. Have you looked at them? If you take their EV tariffs you don’t get a very good export rate but why would a supplier pay you a similar rate to export compared to import when they have additional costs and levies to absorb in what they charge you over and above the wholesale price.

If you think the retail electricity market is unfair then why not try Octopus Agile or Flux. If you go on the Octopus Flux thread you will see PV and battery owners are getting very good returns for being net exporters. I don’t have a battery but over the last few days have been earning £6/7 a day after standing charges and import. A lot of EV owners are fixated on the lower overnight rates offered under tariffs like Octopus Go and IO and don’t consider whether Flux might be a cheaper option. 

QrizB

The following can all be true simultaneously:

• solar PV produces less output when hot;
• warm summer weather is linked to high pressure over the UK which leads to low wind speeds
• generators and the grid schedule maintenance outages for the summer, when electricity demand is lower
• unusually warm weather results in increased electricity demand for refrigeration

The challenge for the grid is balancing supply and demand using the assets that are available at the time. If burning a bit of coal in mhe middle of June is the most effective way to do that, so be it. In a year or two the coal plants will finally be decommissioned and the option to run them won't exist, so the grid will need to use something else.

Sorry, this is only tangentially a "solar in the news" post.

(Edit to fix formatting.)

scubajoe

JKenH said:

michaels said:

JKenH said:

Martyn1981 said:

Personally ET, I find it hysterical now, that PV is getting the blame due to decisions to not roll out as much ..... PV, and because of some issues with an interconnector and two nuclear reactors. The levels of spin needed to blame RE for coal being burnt, rather than simply accepting that less coal (FF's in total) is being burnt now, might be enough to fly a helicopter ..... maybe Silverwhistle will now.  

At this stage, if 'that's all they've got', then RE is really starting to shine.

Why is the RE faction so paranoid about what is said in the press? Everybody is out to get us. That article wasn’t about RE it was about burning coal. We shouldn’t need to be doing it but, until there is a despatchable alternative, coal and gas are all we have to plug the gaps. Our priority should be storage not more and more RE just because it is cheap.

Edit: spelling 

Why would the Torygraph mention solar which was supplying at least the average June output rather than Nuclear and Inter-connectors which weren't?  Almost suggests they have an agenda....

Also I would happily have put PV and battery export into the grid rather than putting PV into the battery and the hot water had I been paid to do so but the joke per unit export payments for anyone not on Octopus mean there was no incentive to do so.

Although I am getting bored with defending the Telegraph for having the temerity to point out we were burning coal in June, I will extend you the courtesy of a reply that I might not to others.

The Telegraph was making the point that solar PV falls off in hot weather and in earlier paragraphs of their article had discussed the matter in more detail making a comparison with earlier days in the month and observing:

Solar panels are tested at a benchmark of 25C. For every degree rise in temperature above this level, the efficiency is reduced by 0.5 percentage points.

The temperature level refers to the solar cell temperature, rather than the air temperature. In direct sunlight, the cells can easily reach 60 or 70 degrees.

The article had compared PV with a week earlier and looking at Drax Electric iInsights I see PV generated 0.06 TWh compared to 0.08TWh on the respective dates. That looks like 25% less but there may be rounding errors.

The article also mentioned lower wind output and gas plant closures but, as you say, not nuclear or interconnectors. Ok, fair point but it doesn’t mean they omitted them because they have an agenda. 

The Telegraph pointed out in their headline and text that it was the hot weather driving demand for air conditioning which was the primary cause of the increase in demand. Low solar output was only one factor. 

Now if you or anyone else have decided the Telegraph has an agenda that is anti PV then I am not going to be able to convince you otherwise as AFAIW  you or other critics don’t read the paper. It’s just an urban myth which it suits some to maintain. I can link numerous articles from the Telegraph supporting RE but what is the point as the response will be that the articles are behind a firewall. 

If you wish to pursue the argument that the Telegraph has an agenda (whether that is fact or fiction) it is only reasonable that you also consider whether many of the other sources quoted on these forums, particularly this one, also have an agenda. I may have got the names slightly wrong but I seem to recall PV Magazine (or similar) regularly being quoted. Might they have an agenda? Or CleanTechnica? Or the Guardian? Do you or others ever raise the “agenda” issue when strongly pro RE articles are quoted/linked?

I’m not making an issue of it but the Guardian article didn’t mention the impact of temperatures on solar PV output - one might ask why not? That doesn’t necessarily mean they have an agenda but I recall they quoted some environmental lobby group (maybe Greenpeace - apologies if I misremembered). 

The point I am making here is that whether bias is displayed or whether some publication is perceived as having an agenda is often in the eye of the reader. Bias, when it boils down to it, is no more than an alternative point of view. If we don’t agree with a position it is easy, or you could say lazy, to label it as bias. Shouldn’t we share alternative points of view and discuss the issue without always playing the bias /FUD card?

I think we have done the Telegraph’s agenda to death now. Please come back to me if you wish but I can’t promise to spare the time for a reply.

Now to the second point you raise about the “joke per unit export payments”. Might I enquire what you receive in terms of export payments compared to your import tariff? I may have misremembered again but don’t you have some very low TOU import rate? You mention Octopus. Have you looked at them? If you take their EV tariffs you don’t get a very good export rate but why would a supplier pay you a similar rate to export compared to import when they have additional costs and levies to absorb in what they charge you over and above the wholesale price.

If you think the retail electricity market is unfair then why not try Octopus Agile or Flux. If you go on the Octopus Flux thread you will see PV and battery owners are getting very good returns for being net exporters. I don’t have a battery but over the last few days have been earning £6/7 a day after standing charges and import. A lot of EV owners are fixated on the lower overnight rates offered under tariffs like Octopus Go and IO and don’t consider whether Flux might be a cheaper option. 

You ok? Were you up all night writing that?