Solar ... In the news

Does anyone remember Graham telling me to "put up or shut up" when he said Drax could generate in 12mins the equivalent of a whole years worth of UK PV, and I suggested he was out by a factor of 1,000 ...... well .......

Solar power sets new British record by beating coal for a day

National Grid data gathered by climate analysts Carbon Brief showed that 29 gigawatt hours (GWh) of power was generated on Saturday by solar, or 4% of national demand that day, versus 21GWh from coal-fired power stations.

Mart.

San Francisco adopts law requiring solar panels on all new buildings

San Francisco has this week passed landmark legislation requiring all new buildings under 10 storeys in height to be fitted with rooftop solar panels.

The city’s San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously passed the new rule on Tuesday, making the metropolis the largest in the US to mandate solar installations on new properties.

“This legislation will activate our roofs, which are an under-utilised urban resource, to make our city more sustainable and our air cleaner,” Wiener added.

San Francisco has a target to source 100% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020 and has emerged as one of the US’s leading clean tech hubs with a raft of Silicon Valley investors and entrepreneurs backing a host of green technology start-ups in the region.

Mart.

Lifes_Grand_Plan wrote: »

I'm new to this thread (and solar generally) but find it strange that anyone would be anti-FiT. Why are they?

Assuming your post isn't a wind-up!


Read this article:


http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/mar/01/solar-panel-feed-in-tariff


Early adopters who own their house now getting around 50p(fifty pence) for every kWh they generate and if they can find ways of using that electricity in their house they don't have to export a single kWh.


That subsidy isn't paid by the Government but by a levy on all other electricity consumers. So, say, pensioners living in an all-electric council flat are paying towards the subsidy for house owners who could be much better off.


The above is just addressing the subsidy, not the fact that solar is unreliable and contributes nothing to the UK's peak loading on the Grid.


The majority of regular contributors to this section of MSE are in receipt of FIT so feel the need to defend solar!


Plenty of reading on FIT in this section.

Lifes_Grand_Plan wrote: »

I'm new to this thread (and solar generally) but find it strange that anyone would be anti-FiT. Why are they?

It's probably just down to saving face these days.

Cardew has posted many thousands of anti-PV and anti-FiT comments on the Green & Ethical board during the 6 years of FiT.

Recently however (after I'd been asking him for many years) he finally admitted that he supported nuclear. In that context we can address his concerns.

He complains about the subsidy cost of PV, but PV is now cheaper than nuclear, despite nuclear having already received 60 years of support. So that one's dead.

He complains about all consumers paying for the subsidy, but surely the end users should be the ones that subsidise the greening of the industry.

He complains that not all households receive the FiT. But of course the subsidy goes to the owners of the 'green powerstations', which seems fair. And this of course also raises the issue of hypocrisy, since no households receive the nuclear subsidies, they all go to giant corporations ..... probably the reason why he tried to hide his love of nuclear.

He regularly raises the issue that households can use as much of the generation as they like. Despite being aware that export and offset have the same effect on the grid. This is just a red herring that he uses hoping to antagonise anyone who doesn't realise this.

He will always comment that PV doesn't generate at night (he's the only person that I know who finds this a surprise). But of course this is just the old anti-renewables cry against each individual technology .... wind turbines don't work without wind etc.

He ignores the development of storage that will benefit renewables, and the fact that any nuclear deployment beyond 10GW to 15GW would also need increased storage.

He ignores the fact that solar is supported by around 80% of Britons, whilst nuclear gets about 35% support.

He regularly tries the tired trick of pensioners in all electric flats, ignoring the fact that 100's of thousands of installs have been on the rooves of council/social housing, bringing leccy bill savings to the occupants, without any expenditure on their behalf at all.

He responds to almost any post by referencing a 6 year old article which was a complete joke when it was written. The first paragraph claims that the whole FiT budget would be paid by poor domestic customers, rather than the true distribution across all sectors and all consumers. Despite this he recently said the article was still true, but when I asked him to confirm just some of the statements

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Anyways, back to your claim that Monbiot is as true now, as then, so are you claiming the following are all true:-

he (as usual) ran away again, waiting for another opportunity (such as your post) to repeat the nonsense.


In essence, he seems to be against subsidies he doesn't get, and the faster the FiT rate for PV dropped (proving its success) the angrier he gets. Go figure!

Mart.

lstar337 wrote: »

Can we save this thread for News?

Plenty of space on the rest of of the board for discussing the various merits/demerits of FIT's.

I agree with that in principle but felt we ought to answer a query from a new member within the thread in which he/she posed it and as soon as possible.