MSE News: Solar panel earnings to be halved from February - are they still worth it?

Pincher

Solar panels in a northerly and cloudy country is just silly. It's a poser vegetarian holding up a piece of celery, telling you you can live on it. I find the whole concept of retro-fitting roofs and forcing power back onto the grid whenever the sun breaks cloud cover very ad hoc, and unprofessional. It's the kind of irksome spike engineers hate when people all switch on the kettle during TV adverts.

We just got a new hydrogen filling point in the local Sainsburys.
It all looks very Back To the Future Sci-Fi chic.
Why can't they set up solar farms in Cornwall, make hydrogen using sea water instead?

Cardew

Pincher wrote: »

I find the whole concept of retro-fitting roofs and forcing power back onto the grid whenever the sun breaks cloud cover very ad hoc, and unprofessional. It's the kind of irksome spike engineers hate when people all switch on the kettle during TV adverts.

For those with a technical background the difficulties of 'grid balancing' with solar PV are discussed at length in some power engineering websites.


However it doesn't take much imagination for anyone to appreciate the problem of sudden huge increase or decrease of solar power fed to the grid; unfortunately power stations cannot be suddenly shut down or started up.

JerryStokes

The way to maximise the return from a PV system is to self-consume as much as possible to avoid buying retail domestic electricity inclusive of VAT from your energy supplier. This might mean scheduling your washing machine or dishwasher to come on at the middle of the day when your pv system is generating the most power.

tim_n

Solar isn't the full answer, we're getting to the point now that domestic storage systems are getting the point that they're feasible.

MarkBargain

Hopefully developments such as the Tesla battery will help solar have a real future as the energy can then be spread over the whole day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Powerwall

We already use batteries to store the solar for charging mobile devices, plus we plug laptops, shavers, electric toothbrushes, radios etc. into charge during the day for use in the evening.

As for saying solar should be zero subsidy, nuclear has been around 60 years and still receives subsidy.

Cardew

MarkBargain wrote: »

Hopefully developments such as the Tesla battery will help solar have a real future as the energy can then be spread over the whole day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Powerwall

We already use batteries to store the solar for charging mobile devices, plus we plug laptops, shavers, electric toothbrushes, radios etc. into charge during the day for use in the evening.

As for saying solar should be zero subsidy, nuclear has been around 60 years and still receives subsidy.

Batteries are still far too expensive to be viable to store electricity. A 10kWh battery still costs £thousands to store electricity worth £1.20. Especially as in winter most PV systems will struggle to generate a few excess kWh.


Nuclear might still require subsidy for building/disposal of power stations. However it can be guaranteed to generate 24/7 365 days a year. The only guarantee about solar is that it won't generate at night when our peak load occurs, and generation is totally unreliable during the day.

MarkBargain

Cardew wrote: »

Batteries are still far too expensive to be viable to store electricity. A 10kWh battery still costs £thousands to store electricity worth £1.20. Especially as in winter most PV systems will struggle to generate a few excess kWh.

I read that Tesla are looking to charge £200 per kWh by 2020 for their battery. 1 kWh is worth about 11p a night, so £40 a year, so £400 over the ten year guarantee period...therefore it may be viable, especially as prices fall.

As David Attenborough said recently, this is the challenge of our times. Finding a way to economically store the power of the sun to address our energy needs.

Cardew

MarkBargain wrote: »

I read that Tesla are looking to charge £200 per kWh by 2020 for their battery. 1 kWh is worth about 11p a night, so £40 a year, so £400 over the ten year guarantee period...therefore it may be viable, especially as prices fall.

As David Attenborough said recently, this is the challenge of our times. Finding a way to economically store the power of the sun to address our energy needs.

There is no doubt that anyone who 'cracks' the battery storage issue will make Bill Gates look like a pauper.


There is a thread with thousands of posts in the Green and Ethical section where people report their daily solar generation. For weeks at a time in winter their generation is minimal and even if the Tesla battery was suitable for domestic use - and it ain't yet - there would be no excess generation to feed to the battery.

Pincher

Cardew wrote: »

However it doesn't take much imagination for anyone to appreciate the problem of sudden huge increase or decrease of solar power fed to the grid; unfortunately power stations cannot be suddenly shut down or started up.

Cardew wrote: »

There is no doubt that anyone who 'cracks' the battery storage issue will make Bill Gates look like a pauper.

This is the genius of Back To The Future.


The FLUX capacitor does store AC electricity from power stations. And Emmett Lathrop "Doc" Brown, Ph.D. does live like a pauper.



I think I know how it works. You have a CERN Super Collider loop, with a regular standing wave going round the circuit. The power station needs to sync with the wave. When you are charging it, with flux, the amplitude goes up. Another inductive loop retrieves the energy, I expect.


Just have to work out the phase shift due to reactance, and a Nobel Prize please. :A

gzoom

Battery storage is key. Our house uses 20kWh of energy per day (if we went electric for heating/cooking), add electric cars into the mix assuming 80 miles a day at 4 miles per kWh, that's another 20 kWh. If we could generate and store 10 kWh average whole year around - that's a saving of £511 per year assuming 14p per kWh.

So if the cost of a battery + solar panel system falla to £5k, your 'break even' in 10 years, and after that it's all savings.

Clearly if you have a solar/battery system that can improve on 10kWh average, the pay back is quicker - No need for any feed in traiff.

Top 'must have' things for our next house (likely to be family home for 20 years+) is a large south facing roof area. Hopefully in a few years time install prices will continue to fall, I would love a 8KW PV system + a 15-20kWh battery storage on the next house.