Solar ... In the news

Martyn1981

digitaltoast wrote: »

Good points about the Gridwatch, too. You seem to know a lot about it - do you run it?

Hiya DT. I wish I had the skills to put something like that together. I think it's a wonderfully elegant site. Very simple, yet also extremely comprehensive.

If you want to learn more, then it's well worth spending 5 mins just hovering your mouse cursor over the dials and reading the hidden extras.

digitaltoast wrote: »

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!

:T Possibly 4+ years of arguments on these threads, summed up in a couple of sentences. We have criticisms of transparent subsidies, and the need to 'pay to change' the way we are doing things, combined with an ignorance or even denial of the substantial subsidies being paid out in various forms to the older current breed.

Hopefully by the end of the decade this will all become more transparent, and any hysteria over the (admittedly) high initial subsidies will have evaporated as costs/subsidies all head towards a similar pricing point.

[Elephant in the room is off-shore wind. Current (incoming) CfD is about £150MWh. It's important because its scale is so huge, much larger than on-shore wind and PV, making the impact on bills far greater. So this needs to come down a lot. The industry claims that costs will fall dramatically as larger turbines are installed, methods improve, and specialised ships come into use. Fingers crossed.]

Mart.

Martyn1981

Some interesting charts and numbers for worldwide PV (2012 data). The Genie is definitely out of the bottle:

7 impressive solar energy facts (+ charts)

For chart 5, the UK would probably score about 2%, with ~2GWp installed out of ~100GWp. End of 2013, probably a little over 3GWp, out of ~140GWp, so just over 2%.

Estimates for new installed capacity next year are 45-55GWp, so even if the level of rollouts don't keep increasing (but I bet they do), that will still mean around 500GWp by the end of this decade, up from 1.4 at the start. Wowza!

Mart.

spgsc531

http://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Trends/China-hands-death-sentence-to-75-of-solar-cell-makers

digitaltoast

silverwhistle wrote: »

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

Going back to the percentage of payments going to wind farms to not generate, I wonder if it included the latest data...

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/naturalresources/article3958948.ece

Wind farm operators have been paid a record £30 million to switch off this year.
The National Grid’s huge bill for wind farmers to leave turbines idle has shot up from the £5 million paid out last year, according to figures released by the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF) charity.
It found that about 40 wind farms shared £2.4 million in “constraint payments” to switch off over one weekend in September alone.

spgsc531

http://news.uk.msn.com/uk/big-6-inflated-electricity-prices-2

The_Green_Hornet

spgsc531 wrote: »

http://news.uk.msn.com/uk/big-6-inflated-electricity-prices-2

According to Labour.

zeupater

The_Green_Hornet wrote: »

According to Labour.

... or more relevant .... "over the last three years, Labour has claimed." ..... love the spin on this ? .... so they would like us to believe that they weren't aware that it was happening before the last general election ? ....

Three possible viewpoints on this .... they either knew and did nothing -or- they were completely incompetent -or- (almost certainly) both !!

... will they ever learn ?? ... when you've pulled the trigger & your fingerprints are on the smoking gun, it's better to keep quiet than run around shouting "over 'ere, it's 'ere, the copper's got it, it's 'im wot done it !!" ... oh the stupidity of the briefing line which 'Ms Flint' must toe .... shame, shame, shame - just another reminder of how untrustworthy the British political system has become .... sack the advisers and make the elected representatives accountable for what they say & do !! .... (as if !)

Z

Martyn1981

Bit brutal, but I guess this is how they keep 'winning'.

China cuts the cord on struggling solar manufacturers

The Chinese government has excluded almost 80% of operating manufacturers, including Shunfeng and LDK Solar, from benefitting from domestic support measures as it looks to curb oversupply and increase the quality of its solar manufacturing sector.

“Most producers will be eliminated rather than acquired. This may sound cruel, but is the reality as they are technologically uncompetitive,” he said.

The application process will be repeated every six months giving companies time to upgrade their facilities and practices to meet the criteria.

Mart.

zeupater

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Bit brutal, but I guess this is how they keep 'winning'.

China cuts the cord on struggling solar manufacturers

The Chinese government has excluded almost 80% of operating manufacturers, including Shunfeng and LDK Solar, from benefitting from domestic support measures as it looks to curb oversupply and increase the quality of its solar manufacturing sector.

“Most producers will be eliminated rather than acquired. This may sound cruel, but is the reality as they are technologically uncompetitive,” he said.

The application process will be repeated every six months giving companies time to upgrade their facilities and practices to meet the criteria.

Mart.

Hi

They've certainly taken note of the failure of British state support for the automotive industry in the 3rd quarter of last century which was effectively 'support everything' thus wasting vast sums on real basket cases and starving the successful marques & models of the necessary investment .... simply deciding on which brands are least cost efficient or technologically advanced (and therefore almost certain to fail) to fail earlier allows the necessary focus on brands which will become the 'world leaders' as well as weeding out potential 'quality issues' which would impact on brand 'China.Ltd' ...

... makes sense to me

Z

Martyn1981

I'm a bit shocked at this story, especially given the cheapness of gas in the US. But as they say, 'don't look a gift horse in the mouth.'

Minnesota judge backs solar in favor of gas

The decision marks the first time that unsubsidized solar energy has gone head-to-head with natural gas and come out on top as the best option, both economically and environmentally.

A judge in the U.S. state of Minnesota ruled last week that solar energy was a more economical and better environmental investment for the state than gas producers.

Administrative Law Judge Eric Lipman said utility giant Xcel Energy should therefore invest in solar developer Geronimo Energy instead of natural gas generators.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission ordered the proceeding to force energy companies to compete on price as the state seeks the most cost-effective projects to deliver an extra 150 MW of new capacity by 2017.

Geronimo submitted a plan to the Commission last year for an unsubsidized 100 MW project consisting of 20 arrays in 17 counties in the state budgeted at a total of $250 million.

Mart.