Green Technologies

EricMears

Of course, there are many churches with steep South facing rooves high enough above street level not to suffer from shading and quite a few of them have indeed installed SPs

Aren't the churches generally reckoned to have a view on "the moral position" ? If the Archbishop of Canterbury manages to live with his conscience and a few megawatts of SP spread around his archdiocese, I'm certainly not going to lose any sleep over my 4 kW

The_Green_Man_2

EricMears wrote: »

Of course, there are many churches with steep South facing rooves high enough above street level not to suffer from shading and quite a few of them have indeed installed SPs

Aren't the churches generally reckoned to have a view on "the moral position" ? If the Archbishop of Canterbury manages to live with his conscience and a few megawatts of SP spread around his archdiocese, I'm certainly not going to lose any sleep over my 4 kW

In some respects, PV is perfect for churches. Apart from some midnight masses, they are generally used during the day, often peak use is one day of the week. Electricity is often just used for lighting (which could utilise low voltage LEDs), a small PA system and perhaps the organ. Pretty low energy use, making it feasible for the PV to supply 100% of the church's electricity requirements.

The fits could then either be used for running repairs to the church or for good works in the wider community. Seems perfect.

Martyn1981

Cardew wrote: »

Truth! How pathetic!

That really sums up your contributions to this subject!

Sorry couldn't agree with you less. I've always felt that true facts and accurate numbers are anything but pathetic.

That is why I've been able to mythbust you everytime.

Mart.

PS Any chance of you suggesting something positive for a change, perhaps even suggesting how you would address AGW, and what technology(s) you favour? M.

Martyn1981

zeupater wrote: »

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

Hiya Zeup. Do you really think we can do without nuclear?

Just to clarify here, I'm not a big fan of nuclear, but I see CO2 as the greater 'evil' at the moment. It would be very easy (and cowardly) for me to just say loads of renewables and no nuclear, but I can't honestly see how we will make it through the next 30 years without an injection of nuclear from year 10(ish). So I can't (yet) condemn nuclear as I'm unable to offer an alternative solution.

What does concern me though, is that to have that nuclear in 10 years time, we have to act now, and that locks us in to some massive subsidies form year 10 to year 50. Hopefully renewables subsidies will be modest by year 10, and the scale of renewables considerable by year 30 - creating an expensive 'nuclear subsidy problem' for years 30 to 50.

I don't want to 'settle' for nuclear, but I'm struggling to see an alternative that doesn't impact on peoples lifestyles, as I can't see us selling that one to the general public. Do you think we can reach year 30 without paying a fortune to EDF?

Mart.

zeupater

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Hiya Zeup. Do you really think we can do without nuclear?

Just to clarify here, I'm not a big fan of nuclear, but I see CO2 as the greater 'evil' at the moment. It would be very easy (and cowardly) for me to just say loads of renewables and no nuclear, but I can't honestly see how we will make it through the next 30 years without an injection of nuclear from year 10(ish). So I can't (yet) condemn nuclear as I'm unable to offer an alternative solution.

What does concern me though, is that to have that nuclear in 10 years time, we have to act now, and that locks us in to some massive subsidies form year 10 to year 50. Hopefully renewables subsidies will be modest by year 10, and the scale of renewables considerable by year 30 - creating an expensive 'nuclear subsidy problem' for years 30 to 50.

I don't want to 'settle' for nuclear, but I'm struggling to see an alternative that doesn't impact on peoples lifestyles, as I can't see us selling that one to the general public. Do you think we can reach year 30 without paying a fortune to EDF?

Mart.

Hi

I think that it's about time we stopped the continuous argument about nuclear and got on and built something, anything. The problem with nuclear is the leadtime and recent history of cost overruns & delays in commissioning, so standard risk analysis would take account of this.

I've come to the conclusion that we either need lots of nuclear, or none at all, there's no point in taking the middle ground as it doesn't provide the economies of scale which all of the supporting infrastructure require ... if we want nuclear we need to get on with a long term storage solution, not at some time in the future, but now. If we build the storage then doubling the capacity would probably only add a few percentage points to the cost, so economies of scale come into play again.

The nuclear leadtime is the real issue - on one hand I blame the politicians, from all parties, they simply concentrate on their career prospects and continually kick the issue into the long grass, and on the other I'm really annoyed with the attitude of the nuclear industry as they've engineered a situation where they are holding the cards and are effectively holding us all to ransom .... so let's just take the pressure off, call their bluff, update the gas distribution network where necessary and build distributed gas-powered plant along with natural-gas microgeneration which could be all brought on line in a fraction of the time of a single nuclear power plant.

When there is no longer the possibility of an 'energy gap' the market conditions move from favouring the seller to the buyer, then we can look at the issue of baseload CO2 reduction again, be that nuclear or large scale tidal generation combined with a massive amount of pumped storage.

Would this be my preference, no, but I really do think that it's necessary .... perhaps all we need is a revolution and a temporary dictatorship for a few years so that things can actually get moveing instead of being debated about on this red-taped up parcel of an island.

HTH
Z

spgsc531

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?

I realise you declare yourself the GURU on all such matters (So many must wish you could educate the Governments of UK, Germany etc. ) but when did anyone say 2GW of Solar PV would replace base load generation nuclear stations? So why are you comparing apples and oranges again? Or is that the GURU way to 'explain' things?

Cardew

zeupater wrote: »

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

Hi Z,

So which do you think is the more accurate - Monbiot's 'myth' or this:

Many councils have/are fitting solar PV to stock, so many 'pensioners' will be benefiting - especially with all-electric heating as so many are - from annual electricity savings of £80-£100? Solar PV FiT contribution was £2(?) per
year in 2011?

You are fully aware that the council social(housing stock and community) systems are tiny in comparison to R-A-R and private. Which was the point Monbiot was making when the justification of FITs is based on the claim that council's benefit.

Just one Rent a Roof firm(ASG) has over 18,000 installations:

Electricity Generated 104,744,473.39 kWh

Free Installs18090

Even if the councils had many times as much generation, it doesn't justify the FIT system; inefficient generation - huge subsidies required - paid for by all consumers - unpredictable output* etc etc!

* Actually unpredictable output is not strictly accurate - we know for certain that it won't be generating a single watt when max generation is required i.e. on a winter's evening. Thus all the PV installations do not reduce the requirement for conventional generation capacity again by a single watt.

EricMears

The_Green_Man wrote: »

I'd love to know how many of these guys spouting on about their green credentials would have installed PIR without the FiTs.

Well I wouldn't for one. Mainly because I carefully researched the idea in 1997 and found that a typical 'payback period' for solar panels was 400 years (not a typo, I do mean four hundred years !).

However, prices of panels had dropped considerably by 2011 and returns offered by the FIT scheme gave a much more favourable return so we went ahead.

Since then of course the stimulus to the SP market from new installations in many countries offering a FIT scheme have reduced prices even further and I may well put up another block of them when I can do so without needing to claim a subsidy.

grahamc2003

spgsc531 wrote: »

I realise you declare yourself the GURU on all such matters (So many must wish you could educate the Governments of UK, Germany etc. ) but when did anyone say 2GW of Solar PV would replace base load generation nuclear stations? So why are you comparing apples and oranges again? Or is that the GURU way to 'explain' things?

Hello spspg or whatever you are called today. Have you noticed your single person 'thanks' have stopped recently? If you are pro everything green and don't get a 'thanks' from a certain quarter (incidentally, the only quarter you ever did get 'thanks' from before an even more eulogised poster pointed out your modus operandi thus ensuring the end of the thanks), then perhaps your posts aren't hitting the spot anymore. Time you got yourself a new username to temporarily pick up some more 'thanks' imo.

zeupater

Cardew wrote: »

Hi Z,

So which do you think is the more accurate - Monbiot's 'myth' or this:



You are fully aware that the council social(housing stock and community) systems are tiny in comparison to R-A-R and private. Which was the point Monbiot was making when the justification of FITs is based on the claim that council's benefit.

Just one Rent a Roof firm(ASG) has over 18,000 installations:



Even if the councils had many times as much generation, it doesn't justify the FIT system; inefficient generation - huge subsidies required - paid for by all consumers - unpredictable output* etc etc!

* Actually unpredictable output is not strictly accurate - we know for certain that it won't be generating a single watt when max generation is required i.e. on a winter's evening. Thus all the PV installations do not reduce the requirement for conventional generation capacity again by a single watt.

Hi

I simply posted to ensure that everyone was aware that the information referenced was (i) outdated & (ii) wrong in the context it was used ..... the reference was made in relation to council schemes, the data referenced actually related to 'community' schemes averaging 12.5kWp (FY2010/11), which is completely different to 'domestic' installations.

The UK FiT scheme, being part of a concerted approach to CO2 reduction by governments on a global basis, can be justified just by considering the reduction in global panel & inverter prices alone. The scheme, as previously stated, is designed to be time limited ... as new installations come on-line the ongoing cost of the scheme per unit generated is being diluted, this effectively being on a daily basis, and will therefore eventually become pretty insignificant. Being able to limit the timescale and overall budget through consumerising the product is a completely different approach to the long history of subsidies to nuclear, gas, coal, CCS, pumped hydro and many other forms of generation, all of which have had the effect of increasing domestic energy bills by a considerably larger margin than pv FiTs, all with absolutely no incentive for the energy generators to reduce capital costs because doing so would have an impact on the bottom-line (ie profit) ...

HTH
Z