BBC on Oil - are low prices here to stay

cells

BTW there is a chance PV can indeed drop to the <$0.70/Wp mark where it works unsubsidised in sunny locations.

And that would be a fantastic achievement and propelled PVs contribution to electricity generation to maybe as much as 25% of the worlds electricity.

The only downside is the other 75% must come from coal and NG

And electricity is about 40% of primary energy so 25% of 40% = 10% of primary energy is what PV could attain if prices fall to a truly competitive level


so it isn't going to change the world but it could be a significant 10% of primary energy

Generali

cells wrote: »

accounting tricks

I don't set out how the energy company bills me. They choose to bill me to wrap up their fixed costs into my unit costs. In doing so they act like most businesses with large fixed costs: a pub doesn't charge me £20 for entering the premises and then £1 a pint.

cells

Generali wrote: »

I don't set out how the energy company bills me. They choose to bill me to wrap up their fixed costs into my unit costs. In doing so they act like most businesses with large fixed costs: a pub doesn't charge me £20 for entering the premises and then £1 a pint.

Whats your point?

As an individual you may benefit from installing PV not so much for the energy produced or saved but by not paying your true usage cost of the grid. If a few people do it so what but if many do it you will be charged one way or another. Its got nowt to do with PV tech but accounting transfers

its like electric cars and people in the uk claiming to save £1.10 a litre of fuel. No they are saving £0.30 in fuel and £0.80 in tax. A few electric cara no problem but many and the lost tax will be put on something else to make up for it.


At the end of the day accounting transfers won't make PV only true value will and its true value to society is the marginal reduction in fuel use....back to my original posts

Martyn1981

cells wrote: »

Daily winter electricity need for a typical home is about 15kWh

I looked up how much kWp of panels you would need to generate that and found a website for daily output from a 1.7KWp system which for jan was 1.5kwh so multiplied by 10

But if you want to share your data from your own 5.58KWp system we can update it. So what was your lowest Jan output in KWh and be honest.

No probs I'm happy to share accurate and real information, rather than assumed, ill-informed info.

Not sure though why you want info on my set-up as it's a shallow pitch off-south system, with lots of GMT month shading, but here goes:

2012 partial data due to extension
2013 87.8kWh 89% of target
2014 86.6kWh 87% of target
2015 113.9kWh 115% of target.

If you want to work out real numbers, then try PVGIS, you'll find it extremely accurate. My lowest month against target is 82% (June 2012 (ESE only)) and my highest 131% July 2013. Because PV is affected by temperature it doesn't vary anywhere near as much as you might think.

A good example of the nullifying effect of temperature would be August last year, when the weather was pretty poor, but the low temps made up for the rather grey and damp weather and I hit 108% of target.

The numbers I gave last post were, as described, south facing with a 50d pitch. However they were based on roof mounted, so a ground mounted system would expect slightly more performance from increased cooling.

On this thread you've been lecturing somebody who lives in Austrlia, so just for fun, and a very basic (and rather poor comparison) lets move that 8kWp set up to Spain (try it on PVGIS). You should find, depending on where you stick the pin, that generation for Dec/Jan will be in the 550-750kWh range! Giving a daily (and more predictable) average of 20-25kWh.

I believe your 15kWh of leccy is way too high, my January import is approx 200kWh (202 this year, 200 last year) (June/July about 70pm) but even assuming all generation is consumed, which of course it won't be, that would only push my total consumption up to 10kWh per day. The real figure is probably high 8 low 9.

Again, I can only suggest, regarding batteries, consumption, generation etc, that you ask the people who are actually doing it, so that your posts can become less negative assumption and more realistic. It really isn't anywhere near as hard nor as expensive as you are trying to claim. Also you'll find that these people simply adapt to work with generation, accepting that each day will be different.

Mart.

Martyn1981

cells wrote: »

At the end of the day accounting transfers won't make PV only true value will and its true value to society is the marginal reduction in fuel use....back to my original posts

But it was the claims in your original posts that led me to ask you for clarification. I've since learned that you were using US gas prices, and ignoring all CO2 savings from your claimed "true value to society".

So your numbers are purely personal opinion, and ironically involve many accounting tricks eg claiming that PV rollout will depend on cost, rather than profitability (differing markets for the income side).

You do, of course have every right to your opinion, but ignoring all carbon costs, because you don't believe it, or claiming that emissions from coal burning are vastly overplayed, simply means that you place no value on any policies/actions that you don't like or agree with - life's not that simple.

Mart.

cells

Martyn1981 wrote: »

But it was the claims in your original posts that led me to ask you for clarification. I've since learned that you were using US gas prices, and ignoring all CO2 savings from your claimed "true value to society".

So your numbers are purely personal opinion, and ironically involve many accounting tricks eg claiming that PV rollout will depend on cost, rather than profitability (differing markets for the income side).

You do, of course have every right to your opinion, but ignoring all carbon costs, because you don't believe it, or claiming that emissions from coal burning are vastly overplayed, simply means that you place no value on any policies/actions that you don't like or agree with - life's not that simple.

Mart.

I didn't say it was based on USA gas costs I said it was based on local energy costs and I gave an example of the USA because I knew off hand that Henry hub prices are below $3 at the moment which equals below 1 cent/kwh

so whatever the local fuel price is, solar or wind or any uncontrollable output source is only worth the fuel saved to that nation.

In the USA that means less than 2 cents value
In the UK its closer to 2.5 pence value

Whatever the local fuel price is debide by 0.55 if its gas and by 0.4 if its coal and you have the value of an uncontrollable source



as for me valuing carbon dioxide emissions at zero, thats been the price since adam from adam and eve were a lad. Your benchmark cost which you haven't even put a number on is the artifical figure whatever it may be. Lets take the artifical EU carbon price of about €6 euro a ton. A PV plant that offsets a ton of co2 from a ccgt thus equals a whopping 0.24 euro cents.

so take the UK value of 2.5 pence per KWh and add another 0.2 pence per kwh for your carbon price and you have 2.7 pence per kwh. Virtually nothing has changed



Also there is no price you can set on CO2 which will make solar viable because no matter what solar is limited due to its uncontrollable nature.

cells

Wind-power also suffers the same problem of its uncontrollable nature but due to its higher capacity factors and a better seasonal correlation (more output in the winter than the summer) it offers much higher capability and usefulness

Solar in the UK can max out at ~15% of UK electricity needs
Offshore wind (or high CF onshore) can get closer to ~60% of UK electricity needs
Nuclear can get to ~90%

The current policy of all three is stupid as they all interfer with each other. UK should have gone wind or nuclear and left solar for someone else or just accepted that fossil fuels work and work well and just upgraded its coal and gas plants in due course.

Martyn1981

cells wrote: »

I didn't say it was based on USA gas costs I said it was based on local energy costs and I gave an example of the USA because I knew off hand that Henry hub prices are below $3 at the moment which equals below 1 cent/kwh

so whatever the local fuel price is, solar or wind or any uncontrollable output source is only worth the fuel saved to that nation.

In the USA that means less than 2 cents value
In the UK its closer to 2.5 pence value

Whatever the local fuel price is debide by 0.55 if its gas and by 0.4 if its coal and you have the value of an uncontrollable source.

That doesn't make sense. How could you be basing it on local costs when you repeatedly stated 3c/kWh as a fact. Your own calculations (when pressed) came out at 4c, and even then, only by selecting the recent low prices, which are about 2/3 of the cost over the last few years since we came out of recession. So the local price would be 4c-6c. Significantly different to the 3c you posted about half a dozen times!

cells wrote: »

as for me valuing carbon dioxide emissions at zero, thats been the price since adam from adam and eve were a lad. Your benchmark cost which you haven't even put a number on is the artifical figure whatever it may be.

I would not presume to place a price on carbon myself, as I'm not qualified, however the US appear to value it at $37+ per ton.

The real social cost of carbon: $220 per ton, report finds

The researchers contend in the paper published in the journal Nature that the social cost of carbon on the global economy is actually about $220 for each ton of carbon dioxide emitted, a far cry from the $37 calculated by the US government.

I chose that article as the title is similar to your choice of words "the real value to society". It also helps to show that your value differs from the majoritive position on the planet that do value CO2 costs, hence the need/actions to reduce it.

Sticking with that report, here's a PWC view:

How should we calculate the cost of carbon?

Clearly we are not going to agree on the cost of carbon, nor the health/social impacts of burning coal, but I will repeat, your assertions on the value of PV generated electricity (and other intermittent generation) are not, as implied, factual, they are simply opinion. And I'm glad that I took the time to investigate how you had arrived at them.


Lastly, going back to PV generation. If you do find it interesting, and want to experiment/play more, then I can't recommend PVGIS more highly, though most PV'ers who report generation on the MSE site do seem to find the numbers a little low. That may be due to the default losses being too high, and explain why my annual generation meets or beats the annual targets despite my shading issues.

I doubt you'll have any trouble using PVGIS, but I have prepared a very basic walkthrough in section 5 of the PV FAQs.

Thank you for the debate/conversation.

Mart.

Martyn1981

Generali wrote: »

I don't set out how the energy company bills me. They choose to bill me to wrap up their fixed costs into my unit costs. In doing so they act like most businesses with large fixed costs: a pub doesn't charge me £20 for entering the premises and then £1 a pint.

This is a point I raised on a thread where MSE is looking for questions to ask Ed Davey, the Secretary of State for energy and climate change when he visits.

I suggested asking if standing charges can be rolled into unit prices:

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Please could you ask if it is possible to get rid of standing charges completely, and switch to a simple unit price, as in the 'petrol forecourt price'.

Any measures that increase the unit price (countered by SC reductions) would encourage energy savings, energy efficiency and own generation via renewables, since the possible savings would be greater.

For clarification, the same company would supply the same leccy to the same people. The only difference would be to take their standing charges and spread them equally across the unit cost. That way low users would pay a little less, high users a little more, and average users, no change. But the savings from "Oi! If you don't need it, switch off that light" would be greater, as would those from spending a bit more on higher efficiency items.

I'm doubtful though that there will be any interest.:(

Mart.

antrobus

Martyn1981 wrote: »

....I chose that article as the title is similar to your choice of words "the real value to society". It also helps to show that your value differs from the majoritive position on the planet that do value CO2 costs, hence the need/actions to reduce it.
..

And in an effort to be helpful, here's a link that explains the economics of it. http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/2207/economics/carbon-tax-pros-and-cons/

The production of carbon dioxide is widely held to contribute to social / environmental problems such as global warming. This carbon pollution is a negative externality. It is a cost imposed on the whole of society and not just the individual who consumes a certain product.