Cold called re free solar panels.

zeupater · 11 February 2013 at 7:22PM

Cardew wrote: »

Hi Z,

You know full well that the criticism of the FIT scheme by GM and others is that ‘the poor’ contribute to the high FIT subsidy.

No amount of semantic juggling over the statements by GM(or anyone else) could be construed as meaning ‘only the poor’ contribute.

Even if you wish to believe that nonsensical argument, you cannot deny that the thrust of his(and others) criticism of the FIT scheme is very clearly that the poor subsidise the well off, and PV is an inefficient technology in UK because etc etc.

Hi

What I know is that whatever the economic standing of energy billpayers is, they all contribute to the funding through the levy. What I also know is that over the past 40+ years, although the amount of energy being used per household has increased, the amount of energy consumed relative to household disposable income has decreased, and is still decreasing according to the latest data available (ye2011) .... https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/65954/2323-domestic-energy-consumption-factsheet.pdf

What I also know, and have stated, is that the article which George Monbiot wrote in 2010 is completely out of date and that when it was written, it was factually flawed ... either due to a genuine mistake in gleaning data for an article, or to convey misinformation packaged as fact.

Now, for what I believe .....

I believe that there are some who have taken the article in question to be well researched and based on hard facts. I also believe that, despite evidence to support the article being flawed, there is a definate reluctance amongst some to recognise that this may be the case due to a longstanding debating position which is based on the article .... I therefore further believe that there is a concerted effort to both obfuscate and filibuster in the hope that retractions of statments made which relate to the flawed article become unnecessary - an attempted, but extremely thinly veiled, 'face-saving' exercise ...

Above all, it is my belief that neither the views of the pro, or anti, FiTs side of the debate are well served by continual reference to a three year-old, completely outdated and so obviously flawed (whether intentional or not) newspaper article written by what many describe as a political activist ....

HTH
Z

KeenToMakeSavings · 11 February 2013 at 7:31PM

EricMears wrote: »

I think you could be making a mistake in disregarding 20 year old data just because the climate change brigade are telling you their opinion of the future.

They seem to be telling us that this winter has been quite bad and was caused by increasing global warming - but we (N Derbys) had more snow in late 2010 than early 2013 and of course 1962/3 & early 1947 were far worse all over the country than any recent years.

Last year was indeed the wettest for well over a hundred years for most of us - but the last three years were not the wettest ever three year period.

Pick any individual year out of the last hundred and there will be something unusual about it but examine the other 99 and you'll probably find another year was more extreme.

I'd have a lot more faith in climate change models if those offering them were able to predict a week ahead with some degree of accuracy.

Nowhere have I ever said said I'm disregarding any data. You correctly make the point that weather patterns change quite markedly from year to year. All I said was that because I cannot afford to fund a loss even in the first year, I have to be pretty certain that the predictions of the output from a solar PV system will be sufficiently high to guard against this and that I must therefore down-grade the predictions by a reasonable margin precisely to cover the very situation you describe and that I feel justified in doing this because the indications are that there is likely to be higher rainfall and therefore more cloud cover at least in the immediate future if not as a general trend.

And I'm certainly not blindly following the climate change brigade as you claim - instead I observe and read and draw my own conclusions and form my own opinions, one of which is that if sea temperatures rise (and extensive measurements of their temperatures over a periods of time show this is what they are doing) then even basic science tell us that water evaporates faster the warmer it is. Therefore warming of the sea means more evaporation which means more rainfall or snowfall which is precisely what the Reading University research report has shown is happening, with the UK being placed immediately down wind from the warming Atlantic.

Note that I'm only quoting fact and not entering into any argument based on opinion as to whether the warming is caused by natural variations or is the result of man's activities. - this is where the controversy starts and I'm not prepared to enter into that debate on this forum.

Ian

EricMears · 12 February 2013 at 12:33AM

KeenToMakeSavings wrote: »

Nowhere have I ever said said I'm disregarding any data.

And I'm certainly not blindly following the climate change brigade as you claim -

Note that I'm only quoting fact and not entering into any argument based on opinion as to whether the warming is caused by natural variations or is the result of man's activities. - this is where the controversy starts and I'm not prepared to enter into that debate on this forum.

Ian

I certainly didn't say "blindly".

And it's a bit difficult to distinguish between "putting more weight on recent data" and "disregarding older data".

You can of course 'prove' anything you like with an appropriate Google search but somebody posted a link on the MSE forum pages a few weeks ago from (I think) the Daily Telegraph showing that the actual rate of 'global warming' seems to have slowed down quite a lot over the last few years.

I still think your safest 'bet' is to take as long a view of climate as you can and build in a generous margin for the frequent occurrence of 'unusual' years.

spgsc531 · 12 February 2013 at 12:52AM

Just for clarity, and especially for us new(er) to the forum.

Could the very vocal anti-FiT list their reasons why they have this view?

Is all the whining purely about the poor paying for FiTs? (I'll leave the pedantic petty arguing over the exact wording of that to others).

Or could you list your other reasons?

cardew? grahamc2003? Any others?

There is so much 'noise' it's impossible to read through many many 'rants' through the majority of threads. Some clarity might help put a lot of this to bed.

EricMears · 12 February 2013 at 12:15PM

Hopefully, the new thread for the Monbiot fan club will mean that the other pages get less 'cluttered'

spgsc531 · 12 February 2013 at 9:22PM

EricMears wrote: »

Hopefully, the new thread for the Monbiot fan club will mean that the other pages get less 'cluttered'

Isn't it strange that they can't answer the simple question

For what specific reasons are you so anti-FiT?

ohreally · 30 March 2013 at 1:40PM

Folks, I apologise for not returning to this - others things have taken my attention.

There is a lot of information included in here for me to take in, so thanks all and I will likely be back with more questions.

Thanks.

rogerblack · 30 March 2013 at 4:48PM

spgsc531 wrote: »

Is all the whining purely about the poor paying for FiTs? (I'll leave the pedantic petty arguing over the exact wording of that to others).

Or could you list your other reasons?

My reasons:
It's inefficient, and poorly targeted.
It is bureaucratic.
It is 'a tax on the poor' to a degree.
It is not the way to get the most bang per buck.
It encourages people to swap gas usage for solar.
It eliminates the possibility of nonapproved simple panels that connect easily.

I do not especially object to the fact that 'the well off' are paid for installing solar panels - if it was an efficient use of taxpayers money. (Ok, levypayers).
In order for it to be efficient, it would need to do several things, which the implementation is questionable on.
Cause carbon reduction for the lowest price possible.
This is short-circuited by people using devices to utilise all of their generated electricity, and for example swapping gas for electricity. They are being paid to generate carbon-saving electricity. This makes the internally used units _very_ highly subsidised for their carbon use.
It is inefficient to install panels on peoples roofs, in 4kW lumps, and this should not be encouraged over people installing 40kW on a factory roof or 400kW on a shopping centre.
It prevents simple solutions - for example - a solar shed.

You buy this from B+Q, place it in an appropriate unshaded spot, connect it to the mains as you would normally, and you save on your bills.

I would argue that FIT is the wrong implementation, and the right one is to simply let meters run backwards, with some constraints.

Martyn1981 · 31 March 2013 at 5:35PM

rogerblack wrote: »

I would argue that FIT is the wrong implementation, and the right one is to simply let meters run backwards, with some constraints.

Hiya Roger, I thought I’d have a try at some backwards meter calculations, because I’ve always been a fan of this type of subsidy. I compared the income streams of B/Meter v’s FITs at different levy rates and tariffs. I used 4,000kWh’s of generation and 40% consumption, 60% export, although the level of generation is irrelevant as proportions will still be relative. [eg calculation is B/M 4,000*lecy tariff, and FIT calc is 4,000*FIT + 40%*leccy tariff + 60%*5p export rate]

At a FIT of 15p, the two schemes cross at a tariff of 30p. Looking at EBICO for an all in one tariff, I settled on 17p which is the crossover point with a FIT of 7p. And looking at standing charge accounts, of approx. 13p the crossover point is with a FIT rate about 5p.

Obviously they are only comparable up to the 20 year point, after that the FIT will end. Not sure how a B/Meter scheme would work, and whether it’ll have an end date.

Obviously this gets even more confusing, since a B/M subsidy will effectively be indexed linked at fuel inflation levels, whereas FITs is at the lower (currently) general inflation levels.

So, whilst I like the B/M subsidy, I wonder if it’s now too late, since a FIT rate of 5p already works with a generation level of 1,000kWh’s/kWp pa against an install cost of £5k. I appreciate that is a low cost, and current prices are currently in the air with anti-dumping taxes and consolidation of Chinese manufacturers, but it’s probably a reasonable cost in the short term.

Another reason why 5p is an important FIT rate, is because that is probably the amount currently missing from our bills, due to nuclear subsidies and de-commissioning costs being hidden in general taxation, and carbon costs not currently being accounted for. So a 5p FIT might be as low as it’ll go, recognising that at that point it isn’t really a subsidy.

As to how long it will take us to get to 5p I don’t know, it’ll depend on prices and install rates (given the automatic digression rates) but given the fatness of FIT at the moment, I’d suspect we are looking at the short-term, hopefully well before the end of this decade. So if the 5p or 7p points are reached too quickly, the B/M subsidy will end up costing more.

Mart.

Martyn1981 · 31 March 2013 at 5:36PM

rogerblack wrote: »

It is inefficient to install panels on peoples roofs, in 4kW lumps, and this should not be encouraged over people installing 40kW on a factory roof or 400kW on a shopping centre.

Hiya Roger, regarding commercial rooftop installs, apologies for boring you to tears again with my thoughts, but I remain of fan of this level of PV, as I’m sure it’s the most viable. However I’m not clear as to why there isn't a lot more of it. The relative costs and subsides of commercial scale to domestic seem comparable at about 20% less each. And whilst a commercial site may pay a lower price for their leccy, their ability to use about 100% of generation should more than make up for that.

Leeds Solar did try to quantify some of this on the other thread recently. I can only assume the lower install levels are due to the disparate costs of capital. However, I would have thought that ‘Greenwash’ would make up for that. So I’m a little stumped.

Of course if commercial installs don’t pick up, and domestic does, then with the digression system we could soon see commercial installs in the up to 50kWp size receiving a higher Fit than domestic!

Mart.

Cold called re free solar panels.

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