Its claw back time - they are reneging on the deal!

michaels

gazapc wrote: »

I'd agree it is currently in the doldrums but there is a lot of activity going on in the background. Both taking advantage of the remaining FIT but also truly subsidy free projects. These are long term power purchase agreements with individual home owners or with social housing owners. The home occupiers get electricity significantly cheaper than retail prices, the installers get much better than wholesale prices for their generation. See the news from Solarplicity in September as a good public example of this.

I bet those social housing tenants and anyone who did the rent a roof deals who don't even get the fit will be pretty impressed at having the 'excessive' benefit of those who do recieve fit being clawed back via their extra standing charge....

Martyn1981

michaels wrote: »

I bet those social housing tenants and anyone who did the rent a roof deals who don't even get the fit will be pretty impressed at having the 'excessive' benefit of those who do recieve fit being clawed back via their extra standing charge....

Hopefully it'll be a storm in a tea cup. I'd bet that the benefits to the local grid from demand side generation outweigh any reduced payments.

Plus if the standing charge has been set fairly, then PV'ers are already paying for the service as much as everyone else, despite using the service less.

Personally I'd prefer a petrol forecourt price, with all costs on the unit price. This would reward low users, punish high users, and leave average users untouched. By increasing the unit cost you encourage energy saving, energy efficiency purchases, and own generation.

The government (country) has to cut CO2 emissions massively, that's a cost to the country, so encouraging reduced use and demand side generation are cost savings to the country.

Unlike most commodities where more money means you can buy more, energy actually needs to be 'rationed' (or more correctly high carbon energy), so using more should result in costing more, if only for a fairer distribution under a carrot and stick solution.

In the medium to long term, PV + storage will actually reduce DNO costs by impacting peak demand periods, and has started to be pushed by the government as a (part) solution to UK needs. If that was taken into account, again I suspect there would be no cost to other users, but an actual benefit instead. So don't penalise low carbon generators, rather work with them via a storage solution, perhaps.

Martyn1981

gazapc wrote: »

I'd agree it is currently in the doldrums but there is a lot of activity going on in the background. Both taking advantage of the remaining FIT but also truly subsidy free projects. These are long term power purchase agreements with individual home owners or with social housing owners. The home occupiers get electricity significantly cheaper than retail prices, the installers get much better than wholesale prices for their generation. See the news from Solarplicity in September as a good public example of this.

Totally agree. There are a lot of positives out there especially the still falling cost of PV panels, and hopefully the end of the EU MIP (minimum import price) in 18 months or so, which could cut PV costs by 25-30%.

If the industry (especially commercial installs) can get back up to scale, then the damaged import and wholesale PV industries in the UK will bounce back and prices will come back down.

No reason why a 4kWp system can't cost £4k now. New build, more like £3k.

Also the fitting of a 2 panel window/door canopy system should be possible on almost any property in the UK. Let's say £1k installed for 600Wp, with annual bill savings of £50-£80. that would help everyone.

[Actually, this could be funded 'free' for £24bn. Half the subsidy for HPC, and would generate half the leccy too. Nice.]

Lots of promise going forward, but the government has to end it's anti PV + on-shore wind policies.

Cardew

michaels wrote: »

I bet those social housing tenants and anyone who did the rent a roof deals who don't even get the fit will be pretty impressed at having the 'excessive' benefit of those who do recieve fit being clawed back via their extra standing charge....

Perhaps any levy should be paid by the Rent a Roof(RAR) companies.

An even bigger scandal than the stupidly high FIT rates on introduction of the scheme, was to allow these RAR companies to claim the same FIT rates as private individuals.

It would be interesting to know just how many RAR systems have been installed. One of the first companies to get in on the act(A Shade Greener) state on their website they have installed 67,000 systems.

michaels

Cardew wrote: »

Perhaps any levy should be paid by the Rent a Roof(RAR) companies.

An even bigger scandal than the stupidly high FIT rates on introduction of the scheme, was to allow these RAR companies to claim the same FIT rates as private individuals.

It would be interesting to know just how many RAR systems have been installed. One of the first companies to get in on the act(A Shade Greener) state on their website they have installed 67,000 systems.

But the whole point of the 'plan' seems to be that there is no claim (legal?) that the fit deal is being reneged on. Instead those who generate on site will pay an extra standing charge to reflect the fact that their own generation usage means they use less grid energy and thus somehow no longer pay their 'share' of disribution costs. Of course this is as blunt as you can get, it will hit those on the latest very low fits as hard as those on the 50p rate and especially penalise those who rent a roof.

However the govt will not care. For them the headline will be those already rich people (far cats?) who get the 50p fit are having some of the benefit clawed back 'to lower bills for everyone', end of story and the press have no interest in the complexities as it is complicated and takes too long to understamd.

Martyn1981

michaels wrote: »

But the whole point of the 'plan' seems to be that there is no claim (legal?) that the fit deal is being reneged on. Instead those who generate on site will pay an extra standing charge to reflect the fact that their own generation usage means they use less grid energy and thus somehow no longer pay their 'share' of disribution costs. Of course this is as blunt as you can get, it will hit those on the latest very low fits as hard as those on the 50p rate and especially penalise those who rent a roof.

However the govt will not care. For them the headline will be those already rich people (far cats?) who get the 50p fit are having some of the benefit clawed back 'to lower bills for everyone', end of story and the press have no interest in the complexities as it is complicated and takes too long to understamd.

Very true. And the leccy suppliers can hardly moan about standing charges as they all seem to charge different amounts, and even different amounts across various tariffs, rather than it truly reflecting fixed costs.

Yet another benefit of demand side generation is that it doesn't suffer the grid losses (about 8%). So not only do PV'ers displace gas generation, but they displace approximately 108% equivalence.

Carbon costs are a national cost, so all costs and benefits need to be considered to ensure a balanced and contextual debate.


In the future we will see subsidy free PV and storage being deployed on the demand side, benefiting the nation and grid*, so it will be quite ironic if that results in increased charges to the prosumers (produer/consumers).

*Storage will reduce the use of expensive peak supply generators and their higher cost impacts on the wholesale average price, which impacts all billpayers.

Cardew

michaels wrote: »

But the whole point of the 'plan' seems to be that there is no claim (legal?) that the fit deal is being reneged on. Instead those who generate on site will pay an extra standing charge to reflect the fact that their own generation usage means they use less grid energy and thus somehow no longer pay their 'share' of disribution costs. Of course this is as blunt as you can get, it will hit those on the latest very low fits as hard as those on the 50p rate and especially penalise those who rent a roof.

However the govt will not care. For them the headline will be those already rich people (far cats?) who get the 50p fit are having some of the benefit clawed back 'to lower bills for everyone', end of story and the press have no interest in the complexities as it is complicated and takes too long to understamd.

I take your point, but there is a(weakish) argument that those 'generating' are in fact the RAR companies and the roofs of client's houses are 'rented'.

If a farmer rents his large field to a company who install thousands of panels, the firm, and not the farmer, are considered as responsible for generating.

Effectively RAR companies rent the roofs of thousands of houses; the 'rent' being some free electricity.

Take social housing tenants who might be paying more than they gain from panels, or large systems on the roof of a block of flats. I can't see any government allowing tenants to be penalised.

michaels

Cardew wrote: »

I take your point, but there is a(weakish) argument that those 'generating' are in fact the RAR companies and the roofs of client's houses are 'rented'.

If a farmer rents his large field to a company who install thousands of panels, the firm, and not the farmer, are considered as responsible for generating.

Effectively RAR companies rent the roofs of thousands of houses; the 'rent' being some free electricity.

Take social housing tenants who might be paying more than they gain from panels, or large systems on the roof of a block of flats. I can't see any government allowing tenants to be penalised.

I agree with you but...the companies are more likely to take the govt to court for reneging on the deal fit than the homeowners/renters....

Cardew

michaels wrote: »

I agree with you but...the companies are more likely to take the govt to court for reneging on the deal fit than the homeowners/renters....

The argument would surely be they haven't touched FIT;) merely imposed a new tax on solar generation - like The Window Tax of 1696!

zeupater

Hi

Perhaps there's an argument for the supply & distribution costs to be taken away from the suppliers and paid directly to National Grid, after all they do all of the heavy lifting and have ultimate control on the supply-side & (unlike separate DNOs) provide a service to the whole country ...

I'm all for modernising the energy sector and have no problem with flattening the structure to remove the ability to add theoretical cost through complexity, not value, in order to hide true profitability ... maybe we could go even further and place orders directly with a large regulated independent (like NG) for supply and have them source from the generation sector on a bid by bid competitive basis .... bet the structure of a number of companies would change very quickly to adapt ....

Anyway, as almost everybody pays a standing charge which is supposed to pay the fixed connectivity costs it really doesn't matter whether there's a single electron passing down the copper wire, let alone which direction it's going .. so it's (yet again!) a case of the uninformed idiocracy and the numpty-headed self interested suits with little intent other than maintaining pole-position in the revolving doors between the likes of Ofgem & lucrative positions elsewhere being willingly herded by the big-business interests to which they aspire ...

I do trust that everyone will be taking part in the consultation ... now let's think ..... 1million with pv, average about 2(?) of voting age in each household ... 100 words in each submission ... that's about 20 times the size of the UK tax code ... one look at that and everyone would shrug their shoulders and turn their backs ... just as they do when tax code simplification is mentioned .... :D

HTH
Z