Green Technologies

Cardew

Martyn1981 wrote: »

are you entirely sure that 5% of 1% or 2% is 0.01%?

Sorry - 0.1% post amended - makes a huge difference.

EricMears

Actually, on a point of information, 5% (or one twentieth) of 2% is one tenth of a percent (0.1%). (though Cardew noticed that & corrected whilst I was typing)

But it's still a small number of course.

I'm not one of Chairman Mao's biggest fans but would still like to remark that a journey of a thousand miles has to begin with a single step.

It is a benefit to council house tenants (and to ratepayers generally) if a councli installs SP on their housing stock and claims the FIT. Any increase in a council's income stream must help to reduce the demands they make on their 'customers'.

You may or may not approve of private individuals claiming government incentives but I can't see that it's any worse than some of the PFI schemes whereby large companies make an investment on behalf of the government and then claim 'dividends' on that investment for many years.

I'm sure I'd have got a much greater %ROI by building a few miles of motorway and claiming 'shadow tolls' but alas my modest savings wouldn't quite stretch to that. Luckily, they did stretch to a SP installation and I'd had the foresight to build a house with a lot of South facing roof (that wasn't actually done with PV in mind but it is a classic design principle to do that in order to maximise solar gain).

The_Green_Hornet

A year of record PV demand has seen the amount of solar installed in the UK exceed 2GW. Demand in 2012 was even higher than the record levels that the UK witnessed in 2011.

UK solar PV installations top 2GW

Martyn1981

Cardew wrote: »

Sorry - 0.1% post amended - makes a huge difference.

Correct, error factors of 10 do tend to make a huge difference.

It's always better to post the truth otherwise you risk getting a reputation for spreading mis-information.

Mart.

Cardew

EricMears wrote: »

It is a benefit to council house tenants (and to ratepayers generally) if a councli installs SP on their housing stock and claims the FIT. Any increase in a council's income stream must help to reduce the demands they make on their 'customers'.

Well firstly the councils are having to pay out capital for the installations so it will be ?? years before the council are 'in profit'.

According to this article the scheme will cost £60million which presumably have to be borrowed.

http://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/news/wrexham_council_launches_60m_solar_housing_scheme

Secondly it is of no benefit to electricity customers outside of Wrexham(in the example shown). They still pay toward the subsidy regardless of it being the council, rent a roof companies or house owners getting the FIT.

Lastly - lest we forget;) - it is such an inefficient way of generating electricity and will not decrease the 'conventional' generating capability in UK by a single watt.

Martyn1981

The_Green_Hornet wrote: »

A year of record PV demand has seen the amount of solar installed in the UK exceed 2GW. Demand in 2012 was even higher than the record levels that the UK witnessed in 2011.

UK solar PV installations top 2GW

Approx 410,000 installs now. Not sure what percentage that is. Do we have 22m or 24m properties (or something else again)?

Anyways 410k/24m = 1.7%.

If that's right, and max potential is around 20%, then we're at 8.5% of 'saturation' already, after only 3 years. I think even Chairman Mao would be impressed with so many footsteps. :cool:

Mart.

Cardew

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Correct, error factors of 10 do tend to make a huge difference.

It's always better to post the truth otherwise you risk getting a reputation for spreading mis-information.

Mart.

Truth! How pathetic!

That really sums up your contributions to this subject!

grahamc2003

The_Green_Hornet wrote: »

A year of record PV demand has seen the amount of solar installed in the UK exceed 2GW. Demand in 2012 was even higher than the record levels that the UK witnessed in 2011.

UK solar PV installations top 2GW

Well 2GW is about the capacity of about 2 nuclear stations.

Do you know how many nuclear stations can be closed due to the 2GW of solar capacity?

I'll give you a clue. The coal stations coming off line this week or next
have been replaced, almost MW for MW with additional gas capacity. Gas - the stuff when you burn it produces co2. No one (except perhaps a few on these green forums) have suggected they couldn't be replace MW for MW due to the 2GW of solar capacity (and incidentally, the few GW of wind capacity too). It's almost as if no matter how many tens of billions we spend on wind and solar, we have to replace any decommissioned coal with new non-intermittent generation (with again more billions spent).

Do you know why that is?

zeupater

Cardew wrote: »

'Many Councils'? - Yet another misleading statement, indeed another myth:

Another extract from George Monbiot's contributions:

Hi Cardew

A couple of posts ago I mentioned that much of what is referenced as evidence on these threads is outdated. I would beg to point out that the article by George Monbiot which is referenced itself references an Ofgem report for FY2010/2011 ( http://www.ofgem.gov.uk/Sustainability/Environment/fits/Documents1/FITs%20Annual%20Report%202010%202011.pdf ) which mentions 403 community & 29265 domestic installs on page 14. However, when looking at page 15 we see that whilst the average domestic installation was 2.8kWp, the average community one was 12.5kWp, this suggests that the 'community' installations are actually true community schemes, such as village halls, churches etc (there are a few of this type of installation around here) and nothing to do with council supported domestic schemes. Simply taking 403 installations with an average capacity of 12.5kWp suggests that the total installed 'community' capacity at the time was ~5038kWp.

Now, considering that the report relates to a fiscal year which ended almost two years ago, here's the latest one, published last December, which relates to data only being a year out-of-date ( http://www.ofgem.gov.uk/Sustainability/Environment/fits/Documents1/FITs%20Annual%20Report%202011-2012.pdf ) .... here we see that a year later, the average domestic installation had increased to 3.1kWp and the community decreased to 11.6kWp (p21). Considering that the newer report has a changed format, reference must be made to the source data ( http://www.ofgem.gov.uk/Pages/MoreInformation.aspx?docid=44&refer=Sustainability/Environment/fits ), therefore we might as well analyse the relevant data to date ....

For pv installations registered as being 'community' the following cumulative number of installations apply at the following dates ...

31/03/11 - 425
31/03/12 - 1385
23/11/12 (Latest available on dB) - 1622

The report demonstrates that there must be a level of concern over the falling level of community installations raised in the comprehensive review, which is also reflected in the analysis above, hence "New measures to assist „community organisations‟ to participate in the scheme" (para:4.10 - page42) which is likely linked to the EPC requirements, which are probably not very easy to attain on 'community' type buildings.

Hope this helps put another 'Monbiot Myth' and it's relevance into context, especially as the number used had, and still has, nothing at all to do with 'council' domestic installations

HTH
Z

zeupater

grahamc2003 wrote: »

Well 2GW is about the capacity of about 2 nuclear stations.

Do you know how many nuclear stations can be closed due to the 2GW of solar capacity?

I'll give you a clue. The coal stations coming off line this week or next
have been replaced, almost MW for MW with additional gas capacity. Gas - the stuff when you burn it produces co2. No one (except perhaps a few on these green forums) have suggected they couldn't be replace MW for MW due to the 2GW of solar capacity (and incidentally, the few GW of wind capacity too). It's almost as if no matter how many tens of billions we spend on wind and solar, we have to replace any decommissioned coal with new non-intermittent generation (with again more billions spent).

Do you know why that is?

Hi Graham

I think that everyone really does understand that, therefore it effectively becomes irrelevant.

What needs to be taken into consideration is that nuclear is also a very emotive subject with many, especially considering the recent events in the far-east. The level of capital investment required for increasing gas or coal fired generation is likely considerably lower than supporting new nuclear, therefore there's an obvious path to CO2 reduction utilising a mixture of carbon fuels and renewables, which if designed correctly will provide a further opportunity to migrate the plant to alternative fuel sources ..... this is exactly what is being done in Germany today if you take time to look at their energy strategy.

I myself have absolutely no issue with technology behind nuclear power, but that seems to be completely at odds with what a considerable proportion of the population seem to think. The last thing we need to do as a nation in the current economic climate is feed vast sums of money into building new nuclear just to pull the plug a few years down the line and build something else. Whilst it looked like the electricity generators were going to build new capacity on a purely commercial basis (ie with no apparent subsidy) there was probably a little more support for what the goverment were doing, but I'm afraid that their change of position in order to extort money (ie subsidy) out of the government (ie us) has won them no friends and lost them many, probably enough to place a seriously large questionmark over the entire future of nuclear within the UK.

As a nation we are very likely to build far more and much smaller gas powered generating capacity which can be fueled by either natural or bio gas as supply dictates, which will be placed in areas where the waste heat can be utilised, either in new housing developments, offices, shops or industrial areas. An added advantage of doing this is that it would be far cheaper to build individual plant and would likely encourage more entrants into the generating sector, displacing much of the capacity currently operated by an effective energy cartel, therefore re-establishing a competitive marketplace.

It's really time to look at the entire picture regarding CO2 reduction .... we either build loads of new nuclear and emulate France, or go the other way and emulate Germany with it's renewables focus. In the UK we probably have a close to unique advantage on the renewables front possessing some of the windiest average conditions in the world and some of the greatest tidal ranges, combined with one of the longest coastlines in the world .... looking at it in such a simplified way is obviously open to controversy, but why not take this approach instead of having a little of this & a little of that and a bit of this?, we're just not big enough, or rich enough, as a nation to be able to support this 'keep everyone happy' strategy any more.

HTH
Z