Fourth Anniversary Results

Martyn1981

Cardew wrote: »

And the relevance of Tony Abbott's views, Australia and India to the UK's scheme of Solar FITs is??

Pretty much everything, because without understanding that this is a global scheme to tackle a global problem, you'll never understand why this nation, or any other should invest in low carbon generation. And that includes nuclear, as we have now learned that it is anything but cheap.

However, all of this is a mere distraction to the real big news this week, which is .........

Well, from late 2011 through 2013 and some of 2014, I probably asked you approx 50 times what form of electricity generation you would suggest. You always refused to answer, or claimed it was a strawman argument.

A couple of years ago I even posted that you couldn't answer as it would reveal you as a hypocrite, since you were either a FF supporter, wasting peoples time on the G&E board, or a nuclear fan criticising subsidies. Finally you've come out.

So, over 6 years (admittedly you took most of the last 12 months off) and an estimated 5,000 posts, you've been attacking PV on the basis:
1. It gets subsidies.
2. They are paid by all, including the poor.
3. Not all households receive them.

Whilst secretly supporting nuclear, which:
1. Has, over the past 50 years, received more subsidies than PV could ever even dream of, and will be receiving 35 more years of the same at rates higher than PV will receive.
2. Subsidies paid by all.
3. That are paid to no households (making PV infinitely fairer).

You can try to dodge with distractions about night time generation. You can try (but you'll fail) to mislead with claims about not all generation goes to the grid, when we all know that offset is the same as export. You can even moan about diversionary switches, though they probably account for no more % generation, than supply side generation loses in grid losses.

But at the end of the day you are simply sore that subsidies are going to your neighbours rather than to a French and Chinese corporation. And that PV is the only technology that can supply sizeable demand side generation.

Mart.

Cardew

theboylard wrote: »

So, what I get from all this is that you have a grievance that you have an unknown percentage of £10 added to your bill, per year, that we get paid for having used our own money to reduce our demands on the generating infrastructure (just like a commercial operation, but cute and small), and exporting surplus back to the grid, for less than the generators are guaranteed to be paid for?

Well what 'you get' is absolutely incorrect and you compound that by making quite the silliest statement I have seen on these boards.


The OP in his first post gives figures that show he has received nearly £7,000 at an average of 47.5p for every kWh he has generated.


So he has been paid that subsidy for every kWh he generates and he doesn't even need to export a single kWh if he can find a way to use it 'in house'.


Can you not understand that you don't reduce demands on the generating infrastructure when it counts, as the maximum load on the Grid is when solar is generating zilch.


With the odd exception, there isn't a thinking person on this thread who doesn't appreciate the points I make about the stupidity of the FIT system for solar are accurate. Yet there is this desire to justify the FIT system rather than accept it as a nice little earner - totally disingenuous in many cases.

EricMears

Cardew wrote: »

Can you not understand that you don't reduce demands on the generating infrastructure when it counts, as the maximum load on the Grid is when solar is generating zilch.

Admittedly it was a few years ago now but I used to be responsible for planning the operation of a very large industrial electricity user. As far as I recall, the peak prices for imports (and hence I assume the peak demand hours upon the national grid) were around 5pm - a time when Solar Power contributes nothing in December but quite a lot in June. An equally fragile recollection is that import prices were at a minimum between 11pm and 5am - when of course Solar Power supplies very little in June and nothing at all in December.

As explained earlier in this thread, when I shift demand from the hours immediately after 1am to around Noon by operating my white goods on Solar Power rather than E7 I am making an effective contribution to reducing demand on the overnight baseload generators. Surely that's worth a few brownie points ?

Cardew

EricMears wrote: »

Admittedly it was a few years ago now but I used to be responsible for planning the operation of a very large industrial electricity user. As far as I recall, the peak prices for imports (and hence I assume the peak demand hours upon the national grid) were around 5pm - a time when Solar Power contributes nothing in December but quite a lot in June. An equally fragile recollection is that import prices were at a minimum between 11pm and 5am - when of course Solar Power supplies very little in June and nothing at all in December.

Peak demand, which can be around 50GW. is on a winter evening normally between 5pm and 5:30 pm when as you rightly say Solar PV contributes nothing.


In summer the maximum demand is some 20GW less.


The figures can be obtained from the NG website, however this Daily Telegraph article makes interesting reading:


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/11358062/Electricity-demand-hits-highest-this-winter-as-wind-power-slumps-to-its-lowest.html


The point I have been making is that for all the FIT paid for wind and solar, it does nothing to reduce our dependency on conventional/nuclear power generation.


Specifically on solar, this statement sums up the situation perfectly:

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.

No matter how much posters in this section want to divert attention to India/Australia/Nuclear/coal, the above statement holds true.

Martyn1981

Cardew wrote: »

Specifically on solar, this statement sums up the situation perfectly:

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.

No matter how much posters in this section want to divert attention to India/Australia/Nuclear/coal, the above statement holds true.

Yep. Great isn't it, and exactly what I've been saying for years since:

Martyn1981 wrote: »

PV is the only technology that can supply sizeable demand side generation.

Other technologies, such as wind and hydro, have limited demand side potential, and benefit from considerable economies of scale, making them more suitable to supply side generation.

Perhaps your confusion is a continuation of the posts you used to make 4 years ago when you were complaining that the FiT rates for large ground mount were reduced just as many companies were planning to build farm scale PV under the FiT scheme.

At that time, after you'd repeated this complaint many, many times, I pointed out that FiTs was primarily aimed at demand side generation, and that PV farms were supposed to use the ROC scheme (which you didn't seem to be aware of). Hence why the govt had acted fast to block them.

I'm not sure why your confusion persists!

Mart.

zeupater

Cardew wrote: »

.... 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.

...

Hi

I was intrigued by the above so had a couple of thoughts and looked at the Ofgem data to support it ... :think: ...it seems that either the article author or Jim Watson was wrong, or you simply misunderstand the meaning of the above-referenced quote .... here's a breakdown of the current installed capacity for all applicable technologies under the FiT scheme through to 31/03/15 ...

Installation type - Total installed capacity (kW)
Domestic - 2,000,986
Community - 43,353
Non Domestic (Commercial) - 1,125,652
Non Domestic (Industrial) - 137,693

... now, considering that the above relates to all technologies we should really have a look at the proportion of that installed capacity which is attributable to solar pv ....

Technology - Total installed capacity (kW)
Hydro - 71,693
Anaerobic digestion - 124,464
Wind - 373,530
MicroCHP - 498
Photovoltaic - 2,737,499

... so, by capacity (not installations), the vast majority of FiT associated generation is Photovoltaic and the major proportion is related to domestic systems which are almost certainly smaller than the commercial, industrial & community installation and therefore attract a higher FiT tariff which would suggest a proportionally greater percentage of the available funding ....

Strange, the official figures (Source Ofgem) ..
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/environmental-programmes/feed-tariff-fit-scheme/feed-tariff-reports-and-statistics/feed-tariff-fit-quarterly-statistics?utm_source=Office%20of%20Gas%20and%20Electric%20Markets%20%28OFGEM%29&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=5734697_Feed-in%20Quarterly%20Report%20%28Issue%2020%29&utm_content=Latest_quarterly_figures_button_link&dm_i=1QCB%2C3EWX5%2CIUDD1K%2CC7RMJ%2C1
.. tend to convey a different picture to what was being quoted - looking objectively, the text would have made more sense if it had said that pv represents a 'relatively small' proportion of RO (designed to encourage renewables at all generation scales) but accounts for the 'vast majority of' generation under the FiT scheme (designed to support micro-generation), in which case, due to misinterpretation, it's not worth quoting in the context of this discussion ...

HTH
Z

Martyn1981

zeupater wrote: »

... so, by capacity (not installations), the vast majority of FiT associated generation is Photovoltaic and the major proportion is related to domestic systems which are almost certainly smaller than the commercial, industrial & community installation and therefore attract a higher FiT tariff which would suggest a proportionally greater percentage of the available funding ....

Hiya Zeup. I'm not completely following the issue here. I read the statement "the industry benefits from the vast majority of FiTs", to mean the solar industry (as a whole) compared to say the hydro or wind industries.

Do you read it as industrial solar v's domestic solar?

Confused Mart.

zeupater

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Hiya Zeup. I'm not completely following the issue here. I read the statement "the industry benefits from the vast majority of FiTs", to mean the solar industry (as a whole) compared to say the hydro or wind industries.

Do you read it as industrial solar v's domestic solar?

Confused Mart.

Hi

Within the context of the discussion and how/where the statement was used (on multiple occasions), the only logical interpretation for it's inclusion is to convey that solar doesn't contribute much towards the total renewables total (RO) but receives the 'vast majority' of the available funding - additionally, the formatting of the text also suggests that 'the industry' should be interpreted to convey large scale commercial and industrial pv systems, as opposed to domestic, is the major beneficiary of the FiT scheme ...

... somewhere along the line there's been misunderstanding, misinterpretation or blatant spin, all that I know is that the official data nowhere-near supports the intended meaning of using the quotation within the context of this discussion ....

HTH
Z

Martyn1981

Ah! Now I'm with you. I read it differently again, that PV gets most of the FiT money, but not much of the RO money:-

Recent research by the Policy Exchange thinktank found the contribution of FiTs and the renewable obligation (RO) amounted to £10 and £38 respectively.

Mart.

zeupater

Martyn1981 wrote: »

... PV gets most of the FiT money, but not much of the RO money ...

Hi

That's effectively what the article should have conveyed then there wouldn't be the possibility of any misinterpretation or spin ...

HTH
Z