Solar ... In the news

Martyn1981

Kernel_Sanders wrote: »

Sorry Mart, I just don't believe that.

j

I remembered the numbers from a post on here about a year ago. Can't be bothered looking for it, so just googled Co-op + fridge doors:-

Co-op supermarkets extend fridge door scheme

Half of all power used by the Co-op stores shops is for refrigeration, and energy bills are the chain's second biggest cost after staff, Roberts said. Closing the fridges means there is no longer heating in one part of the shop and refrigeration in another, and the new fridges do not need such large motors and break down less in hot weather, he added.

In France, supermarkets have signed up to a voluntary agreement to put doors on three-quarters of their 450 miles of fridge aisles by 2020. The measure is expected to reduce the country's electricity bill by 1%. In the UK, supermarkets use 5% of all electricity.

Next time you are in a supermarket have a think about two things:-

1. The sheer amount of fridges and freezers. And the amount that will be behind the scenes too.

2. The vast amount of open chillers (large cold shelving) and how cold it is to walk around those parts.

By reducing there leccy demand by 20%, this reduces the national demand from 5% to 4% equal to a national reduction of 1%.

Shocking isn't it!

Mart.

zeupater

Cardew wrote: »

Hi Z,

These days it is government grants that are a huge factor in bringing foreign firms to UK.

That tends to 'cloud the issue'.

Hi

That may have been a heavy influence a couple of decades ago, but everything on that front has tended to have been moderated recently.

A couple of £million in incentives wouldn't go a long way towards balancing a doubling of embedded energy costs in an energy-intensive materials product, so it's an obvious strategic move by a global manufacturing company which has effectively been forced upon them by a lack of a coherent UK energy generating capacity policy by the previous government, which has resulted in the current incumbents holding such a weak negotiating hand (time-wise) .... won't stop the political baying and finger-pointing by the real culprits though - it's a funny old world having a political system without any real accountability ....

... it just makes you wonder how a referendum on 'fracking' would play-out in that part of North Wales at the moment ...

HTH
Z

Martyn1981

zeupater wrote: »

Hi All

Looking at Sharp's recent group announcements they seem to be running at a substantial loss and have needed to revisit their strategy. The Wrexham plant is reported as running at full capacity, so a further investment in plant&machinery is obviously required.

HTH
Z

Hiya Z, more info here.

Sharp shuts down Wrexham solar manufacturing facility

Seems Wrexham is supplying Japan with panels, fabricated from parts supplied by Japan. Whilst China is supplying Europe. Now Japan may be turning to China for supply, making the situation even more complex.

It's a shame that we can't match the manufacturing costs (nor might) of China. Especially given that PV manufacturing/installations are still rising at an astonishing rate, possibly 45-55GWp next year. But it seems the success of panel price reduction is biting the old guard on the backside.

I'm with silverwhistle on the wind issue, more important than PV. How we aren't the world leaders in this technology is so sad.

Mart.

tunnel

Looks like the RPI in November stayed the same but looks set to rise again in December,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25413641

So not just the energy companies looking forward to a nice increase.

Martyn1981

Looks like small PV installs will hit the 500,000 mark this Xmas.

Industry closes in on half a million UK homes with solar

Over 495,000 homes across the UK are now solar powered, according to the latest statistics published by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

The week ending 15 December saw 10.88MW of capacity added to the grid, lifting the total number of <50kW installs under the feed-in tariff to 495,459. Almost 96% of those installs are in the sub 4kW domestic sector.

Mart.

digitaltoast

Martyn1981 wrote: »

The week ending 15 December saw 10.88MW of capacity added to the grid

Where can we see how much was actually contributed to the grid, both as a percentage of installed PV capacity, and as an overall contribution to the requirements of the grid at this time on a "cost per kW" basis?

silverwhistle

Interesting article about load management in today's Guardian:

http://http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/20/strictly-come-dancing-bbc-national-grid?commentpage=1

The engineer doesn't seem too bothered about the intermittency issue...

Comments below the line are as interesting as ever.

digitaltoast

silverwhistle wrote: »

Interesting article about load management in today's Guardian

Indeed. And remarkably vague, too.

a wind power record was set of 6GW – equivalent to six big power stations and 14% of all electricity at the time

1: Define "big".
2: What was the time at the time? 3am? 9am?

98% of payments to companies to stop generating when the grid is getting overloaded go to coal and gas, not wind.

98% of what? As a volume or quantity?


At this point in time, the dials ( http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ ) show coal and gas account for 57% of the generated power with wind at 12%.
That's exceptional, as usually wind contributes half the amount it's currently doing in these exceptionally windy conditions.
So if wind contributes 6% and accounts for 2% of "stop" payments, I'll admit that's not bad.

But I'd really like to know whether he means "there were 100 payments of £100 and wind accounted for £200 of that £10000".
But he could perfectly validly say the same words but mean:
"There were 98 payments of £100 and 2 payments of £100,000". Wind would still account for 98% of the payments.

(You can probably tell I've been listening to More or Less lately, but these things are important!)

Would also like to know the relative per kw/h cost of those gas, coal and wind inputs, but as this thread is about solar, I'd especially like to know the same for solar, too...

Martyn1981

digitaltoast wrote: »

Indeed. And remarkably vague, too.

"a wind power record was set of 6GW – equivalent to six big power stations and 14% of all electricity at the time"

1: Define "big".
2: What was the time at the time? 3am? 9am?

Hiya DT, I'll have a go, but you might want to try Google.

1. Big, in the example given would presumably be 1GW (6GW/6).
2. If you take another look at Gridwatch, you should spot it. It ran for approx 48hrs between 28 to 30 Nov. At that time the virtual dial (for wind) was upgraded by the virtual engineers to a larger virtual 8GW (from 5.5GW)

digitaltoast wrote: »

"98% of payments to companies to stop generating when the grid is getting overloaded go to coal and gas, not wind."

98% of what? As a volume or quantity?

Presumably volume. Though only constraint payments for wind tend to make the news. Also, due to their location(s) and upgrade works, you may find that such payments are and/or will vary over the following years as bottlenecks in the grid infrastructure are dealt with. So the percentages may go up or down (I don't know). Here's an article (there are many):

Analysis: The media lays into 'rip-off' wind

Although windfarms account for only 4% of total constraint payments, it is only wind turbines that hit the headlines for getting 'paid to do nothing'.

digitaltoast wrote: »

At this point in time, the dials ( http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ ) show coal and gas account for 57% of the generated power with wind at 12%.

Note that the 'wind' dial relates to metered (supply side wind), and that there is probably about another 50% more of embedded supply side. This won't show up as supply, but rather as reduced demand.

[However, I assume (me personally) that since large scale wind is expanding fast, the additional element will start to fall off in percentage terms (but not in actual size).]

The same will apply to PV, only in reverse as the majority is demand side (and therefore demand reducing). Hopefully as the scale of supply side PV grows we'll get to see a dial added, and a corresponding graph trace.

digitaltoast wrote: »

Would also like to know the relative per kw/h cost of those gas, coal and wind inputs, but as this thread is about solar, I'd especially like to know the same for solar, too...

How long is a piece of string I suspect. The oft quoted figure for the cost of leccy generation is £50/MWh. Some comparisons can therefore be drawn by looking at the CfDs being offered, but since costs (and subsidies) are still falling, it might be wiser to look towards the end of decade CfD's.

You can find many articles on these, but very briefly, the on-shore wind, PV and nuclear CfD's for 2020 (approx) are about £100/MWh. Off-shore wind may be nearer £130/MWh(?)

Please note though, that the current figure (of £50) doesn't truly reflect the real cost. It omits:
1. Current nuclear subsidies that are hidden, and paid out of general taxation.
2. Health issues. Air quality from coal etc emissions recently estimated to cost the EU €43bn pa.
3. The expected cost impacts of CO2 emissions.

Note, this is certainly note comprehensive, just a quick attempt to find you some answers.

Mart.

digitaltoast

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Hiya DT, I'll have a go [...] Note, this is certainly note comprehensive, just a quick attempt to find you some answers.

Hmmm, OK, thanks Martyn. Have a "thanks!". You've offered that rare thing of a researched post which responds to the points! Good points about the Gridwatch, too. You seem to know a lot about it - do you run it? There's still a lot of vagueness here, but that's not your fault.

I suspect if we had complete, politics-free 100% transparency of ALL the costs and subsidies of all the inputs (including the interconnects), the argument might look different to both sides, and we'd have a rather different grid too!