Fourth Anniversary Results

Cardew

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

Must say though, the FiT scheme has worked far beyond expectations as evidenced by the huge reductions in the FiT tariff.
Z

Hi,


The other way of looking at it is that the FIT rate was far too high to begin with, and encouraging tiny sub 4kWp systems on houses was, and is, a nonsense.


It doesn't matter how much the FIT is reduced, the principle is wrong.


Also what is the point in attempting to compare Nuclear, which is dependable and generates 24/7 in all weathers, with solar PV which can only be relied upon with 100% certainty not to generate at night.


You could cover the UK with billions of solar PV systems and we would still need exactly the same number of conventional/nuclear power stations as solar contributes zero/zilch/nothing when we have peak load on the grid.


It really smacks of desperation for the 'solar disciples' to justify solar subsidies on the grounds that nuclear also gets subsidies.

theboylard

Just for you Cardew Although I'm sure the Sunflower/dandelion is going to have a huge effect on shade?!

A qwuestion for you Cardew - your little survey, that you were hoping to use to reinforce your wobbly opinion, but actually turned into a really good look at the cost benefits of the FiT scheme as applied to pv, was a load of twaddle really wasn't it? You've clearly stated:

A perfect illustration of the stupidity of the solar PV FIT system.

But as Eric and many others here were early adopters and thus paid a lot more for their investment in the future generation needs of the country, surely they should receive a higher incentive rate for their forward thinking?
It is no worse than that for companies investing in wind, tidal, hydro or indeed nuclear.

The difference though is that an individual can be rewarded for that investment directly, as opposed to buying shares in a foreign company to get that reward.
That's it!!! You've got shares in EDF haven't you?!!! And your bummed that we get a better return and without paying tax on the divis!!!

theboylard

Just my 2p - I do believe we need nuclear, just not to the extent currently planned, and certainly not with the massive costs associated. Smaller, smarter gas stations and decent investment in other reactor types (thoirum for example) should be accelerated.

But, Solar PV is cheap, and getting cheaper with next to no onging costs and is many orders of magnitude safer than nuclear, so it gets my thumbs up.

silverwhistle

Cardew wrote: »

So because you consider that Nuclear generation attracts subsidies, your logic is that private house owners with tiny systems were justified in being given stupid subsidies for solar PV?

Well, your logic seems that only subsidies for PV need to be criticised since I've never seen you rail against subsidies for any other technology including nuclear. That is why I find you narrowly focused criticism tiresome when you intrude on threads in this way.

On a more related point to the OP I had my second anniversary on Saturday. I joined a group of people who have invested their own money in the infrastructure of this country, have a degree of control of their own energy usage, act as first line demand managers, improve the balance of payments and reduce carbon production. I make only small demands on peak usage although I'm using quite a bit at the moment as I've been writing up a translation on my desktop: 122 watts at this precise moment. Despite my best efforts I still export a fair bit too.:D

And related to theboylard's comment: I've got a nice chunk of SSE shares that have been doing very nicely thank you, so again I'm helping the economy by investing in a British owned company. Unfortunately nobody will have shares in EDF. :-)

Cardew

silverwhistle wrote: »

Well, your logic seems that only subsidies for PV need to be criticised since I've never seen you rail against subsidies for any other technology including nuclear. That is why I find you narrowly focused criticism tiresome when you intrude on threads in this way.

On a more related point to the OP I had my second anniversary on Saturday. I joined a group of people who have invested their own money in the infrastructure of this country, have a degree of control of their own energy usage, act as first line demand managers, improve the balance of payments and reduce carbon production. I make only small demands on peak usage although I'm using quite a bit at the moment as I've been writing up a translation on my desktop: 122 watts at this precise moment. Despite my best efforts I still export a fair bit too.:D

And related to theboylard's comment: I've got a nice chunk of SSE shares that have been doing very nicely thank you, so again I'm helping the economy by investing in a British owned company. Unfortunately nobody will have shares in EDF. :-)

Bravo - you should be very proud!

Martyn1981

theboylard wrote: »

Just my 2p - I do believe we need nuclear, just not to the extent currently planned, and certainly not with the massive costs associated. Smaller, smarter gas stations and decent investment in other reactor types (thoirum for example) should be accelerated.

Sadly, I'm also of the opinion that we need nuclear, but it's getting harder and harder to justify. If the reactors were on line now, and reducing our CO2 emissions now, then not so bad. But in 10 years time, when large scale PV and on-shore wind are already cheaper, it's getting harder and harder to justify.

Off-shore wind is currently bidding £120/MWh and some of the latest installs are operating at a 45% capacity factor, so that's also chasing down nuclear. Costs should continue to fall, whilst nuclear rises to £120 in 2025.

I'm very doubtful about CCS (carbon capture and sequestration), and it could result in an increase of upto 50% in fuel consumption, but even that would mean gas generation costs rising from around £80/MWh to £120MWh, and that would be rampable, and work with intermittent renewable generation.

Yet another nail in the coffin of nuclear, is Icelandic geothermal generation. The cost of the 'proposed' interconnector is enormous, but the leccy would be extremely cheap, perhaps £20/MWh, so it might come in, in the £80 to £100 range, and provide 2GW.

Norway has recently announced that they could add 20GW of additional supply/storage to Europe through pumped storage. I'm not sure what the storage level (GWh) will be, but assume it will be substantial as they have enormous levels of hydro storage, so this would mean adding catchment lagoons (for pumping back up) and additional grid infrastructure. The old Desertec proposals had Norway as Europe's battery, able to store excess generation from those countries over-producing, and supply power to those under-producing, as wind, solar, hydro, tidal etc fluctuated across western Europe.

Not sure about Thorium. I think there's a test plant, but unfortunately despite 30+ years of research it hasn't managed to make it yet. It's certainly far safer, but research monies may now be shifting into fussion. I think the Chinese are giving Thorium another try.

It all comes down to the price we are willing to pay for 24/7 nuclear leccy. Though 3.2GW of 35yr nuclear subsidy is not the end of the world, it's just disappointing that after 50 years of subsidy support, and a current decommissioning bill of approx £2bn pa for 100+ years, the actual price has risen from "too cheap to meter" to more expensive than even PV in 'sunny' UK.

theboylard wrote: »

But, Solar PV is cheap, and getting cheaper with next to no onging costs and is many orders of magnitude safer than nuclear, so it gets my thumbs up.

Price is very important. I was doing some pondering a few weeks back on the cost of storage. It seems that for domestic purposes it's possible to get down to 10p/kWh. That's looking at the cost of batteries, their lifetime, their scrap value etc, then dividing that cost by potential storage over 10 years. The off-gridders on the Navitron forum have got costs down to 4-6p but that's using big banks of lead acid batteries.

Next I pondered PV and wind prices, v's nuclear in 2025. If nuclear rises to £120/MWh, and PV and on-shore wind are now £80/MWh then they should fall some more, before inflationary pressures push them up. Hopefully the cost of PV and wind will be around £70/MWh in 2025.

Stick with me, this is getting tricky!

Next, remember that not all intermittent generation needs to be stored, only that which is excess to demand at the time, so if we assume 50% needs storing.

So generate 2MWh of PV (or wind) costing 2x£70 = £140, or
2MWh of nuclear costing 2x£120 = £240.

That £100 difference gives us £100/MWh for storage (10p/kWh), which is doable on a domestic level, so would be cheaper on a large scale, especially with falling costs as deployment reaches scale.

[Disclaimer - storage costs are irrelevant until such time as generation exceeds real time demand. For PV, that could happen on a sunny weekend afternoon in the summer, with around 20-25GWp of PV. We currently have around 8GWp.]

All interesting stuff ..... I think!

Mart.

EricMears

Intelligent rearranging of your own demand does a lot to reduce the need for storage. e.g. during the winter I run our dishwasher etc on 'half price' E7 but at this time of year can (usually - but not today !) run it during the daytime on 'free' generated power.

zeupater

Cardew wrote: »

Hi,

The other way of looking at it is that the FIT rate was far too high to begin with, and encouraging tiny sub 4kWp systems on houses was, and is, a nonsense.

It doesn't matter how much the FIT is reduced, the principle is wrong.

Also what is the point in attempting to compare Nuclear, which is dependable and generates 24/7 in all weathers, with solar PV which can only be relied upon with 100% certainty not to generate at night.

You could cover the UK with billions of solar PV systems and we would still need exactly the same number of conventional/nuclear power stations as solar contributes zero/zilch/nothing when we have peak load on the grid.

It really smacks of desperation for the 'solar disciples' to justify solar subsidies on the grounds that nuclear also gets subsidies.

Hi

From an engineering viewpoint, isn't that a little myopic ?

Yes, FiTs were initially high, but you must be aware of the reasoning ... if there wasn't sufficient initial incentive to drive take-up then the market would continue to stagnate. As it is, since the UK FiT scheme was introduced, the cost of average installations have reduced by ~75%, with the level of FiT support reducing by almost the same level (Tariff*Period) ...

Considering the success of the UK FiT scheme and it's international equivalents, the reasoning was correct from a product and market development viewpoint, leaving the old ideological objection based around 'the poor' paying a disproportionate percentage of income towards supporting the scheme .... well, from a myopic position, totally ignoring context, it's possibly correct, but let's stand back look at that position from an objective viewpoint ...

The growth of global renewables has mainly been over the past ~5 years, that's a period in which although many global economies have been suffering, there's still been a general increase in output, consuming more and more energy ... however, for various reasons, there's been a recent 'brake' applied to energy costs, significant drivers being renewables and the development (&threat of development) of shale energy reserves. The UK in 2014 generated around 20% of electricity requirements from renewables sources ..
( https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/437937/Renewable_energy_in_2014.pdf )
.. this cannot be ignored and must have an impact on both the cost of carbon based fuel generation prices and the negotiation of nuclear supply prices, so the question shouldn't revolve around how much is paid gross, but what the nett effect is .... so, from a standard engineering nett-benefit viewpoint, what's the nett effect of the various renewables support schemes ? ... positive, or negative ?

With regard to capping price rises on any commodity or product, encouragement of competition is a healthy approach. Take for example a situation where the price of energy is based purely on carbon sources and the capital cost of generation equipment is huge. In this scenario there's no real incentive for either fuel providers or generators to not become efficiency complacent and margin hungry and charge whatever they believe the market will stand, thus describing the situation for almost the entire time that anyone reading this has been around. Now, let's upset the cozy market a little and throw in a consumer owned micro-generation technology, which effectively creates direct competition to the large-scale centralised generating concerns. What happens to the psychology of the generators? ... well, firstly they see a price cap for their product which would be based on the consumer's cost of production based on investment, not only that, it's a falling cost, therefore a reducing cap .... should their sales & marketing be worried and flag the issue - of course they should (& almost certainly have) ... so where's the spin?, where's the defence ? ... well, it's to concentrate on the shortfall of any intermittent renewables source, then along comes the possibility of affordable storage. Initially the storage technology will require a large capital investment, but importantly an integrated generation & storage solution places a firm cap on energy prices, effectively meaning that a competitive price point cap has been set on industries which have been out-of-control for years .... renewables increasing from next-to-nothing to comprising 1/5 of UK electricity requirements in a reducing demand energy environment in well under a decade must have already held energy prices back ..
( https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/449424/Chapter_5_Electricity.pdf )
.... so, by how much ?? ... well, it's a couple of years old and didn't foresee the recent rapid increases in renewables capacity which would bring many of the benefit timescales forward , but here's a reasonable assessment ..
( https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/172923/130326_-_Price_and_Bill_Impacts_Report_Final.pdf )
... not bad, you could sum up the report and simply say that support actually has had somewhere between a neutral cost impact on current consumer bills through to having around an 11% annual bill reduction impact by the end of the decade.

Regarding 'billions of solar PV systems', well, what about flooding a few valleys and creating mega-pumped storage schemes which would also integrate with other renewables resources ? ... throw in relatively cheap standby generation based on distributed shale-gas and nuclear could even become questionable from a cost benefit viewpoint ....

And finally, should it really be considered desperate 'to justify solar subsidies on the grounds that nuclear also gets subsidies' when the latest generation of nuclear capacity will supply on a guaranteed high price (CfD) paid primarily by the consumer, guaranteed by the taxpayer - how is that any fairer than the objection posed for FiT support for pv considering that the 'the poor' would be paying a disproportionate percentage of income towards supporting the cost of nuclear ... the issue isn't support for this-or-that, simply standing back and looking at the issue objectively, it's simply one of expenditure as a proportion of income ...

HTH
Z

Martyn1981

zeupater wrote: »

Considering the success of the UK FiT scheme and it's international equivalents,

HTH
Z

Hiya. Just wanted to add something. It's a personal opinion, and a little preachy, but sums this all up for me, and comes under the green & ethical heading, rather than money saving:-

India has very recently started to change it's whole approach to energy policy. Up to now they were saying that they were entitled to everything the wealthy nations already enjoy - a not unreasonable argument. And that CO2 emissions shouldn't prevent their economy from growing. Their approach was a little confrontational, but again, not unreasonable.

However, they have now started to change their approach. They are aware that CO2 is a cost that they'll bear quite heavily, and combined with rapidly falling renewable costs, and a willingness by the wealthier nations to invest in renewables in India, they have responded to this situation.

A couple of interesting things have resulted, one is that they have increased their 2022 target for PV from 20GW to 100GW, and recently set out the annual target/timetable. They also recently attacked Tony Abbott's position (the rabid anti-renewables prime minister of Australia) that coal helps with poverty. They have pointed out that the expansion of coal generation in India hasn't had any significant impact on the number of people without electricity (approx 150m) and that PV is actually cheaper than coal due to the high cost of building 'poles and cables'.

India and countries like them, who are cash poor but sun rich, would not now be in this position to roll out PV (and other renewables) and change course on energy policy, had the wealthier nations not thrown their support and money behind what were highly expensive forms of generation.

Now, the UK's contribution might have been quite small, especially compared to Germany and Italy, but then so was our financial spending too. The combined actions and efforts of those countries that did act, has resulted in the possibility of clean and affordable renewable energy in countries that would otherwise need to deploy (even more) fossil fuel generation.

Coal is not the answer to India's energy poverty, whatever Tony Abbott says

India’s population of 1.24 billion comprises 247 million households, 68% of whom live in rural villages. According to the 2011 census, 45% of these rural households – 75 million – have no electricity. Of urban households, 6 million remain without electricity, or about 8% of the total.

These figures have not changed appreciably since 2001, though around 95,000 MW of new largely coal-based electricity generation capacity was added during the intervening decade.

Studies have shown that when a village is more than 5km from the grid, the cost of supplying electricity from solar and other off-grid solutions is far below the costs of supplying from conventional sources such as coal.

This is due to the high cost of building out the poles and wires to provide access to coal electricity and the technical losses involved in transmitting and distributing electricity to the consumers.

Burning coal, whether local or imported, generates large quantities of fly ash containing toxic pollutants like lead, zinc, arsenic, cadmium, sulfur, mercury and radioactive uranium/ thorium isotopes, which adversely affect the health of the people near the power stations, often the rural poor, whose disadvantage is worsened by these health impacts.

Studies on people residing near coal-based power plants along the border of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have revealed unsafe levels of mercury in their blood samples, at times as high as 110 parts per billion. Similarly, studies around a coal power plant in the Punjab have indicated widespread radioactive contamination of the environment, impacting the health of pregnant women and children.

Mart.

Cardew

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

Considering the success of the UK FiT scheme and it's international equivalents, the reasoning was correct from a product and market development viewpoint, leaving the old ideological objection based around 'the poor' paying a disproportionate percentage of income towards supporting the scheme .... well, from a myopic position, totally ignoring context, it's possibly correct, but let's stand back look at that position from an objective viewpoint ...


HTH
Z

Of course the scheme is a 'success' if you judge 'success' by the number of people attracted to a scheme that pays huge subsidies. Pay huge money for hamsters in revolving cages that drive generators and that would also be a 'success'. They at least could generate at night;)

Why is it 'myopic' and 'out of context' to point out that the scheme is funded by all electricity consumers - including the less well off. That is exactly the situation.

Quoting from the Guardian article posted by Sterling times:

Jim Watson, the director of the UK Energy Research Centre said the contribution of solar to the RO was “relatively small” whereas the industry benefits from the vast majority of FiTs.

I am sorry but(unusually for you) you are not IMO looking at this from an objective viewpoint. You base your argument on the assumption that Solar is essential - and it ain't! Objectivity is to appreciate that the only certainty about solar is that it doesn't generate at night; and does nothing to reduce the UK's dependency on conventional/nuclear power stations.