On 30/04/2019 13:30, Martin Brown wrote:
On 30/04/2019 14:01, Tim Streater wrote:
In article , Clive Page
wrote:

Well it's only worth-while because of the very generous subsidy for
those of
us who got in early ...

Meaning that it was never really worthwhile. Subsidies are always a bad
idea as they hide the true cost of something.

It might or might not be worthwhile. You need to get some early adopters
on board if the mass production cycle is ever to get off the ground.

Then they should have used the stick approach and not the carrot.
Instead of bribing people and slapping the cost of the bribe onto other
peoples electric bills they should have assessed every property for
suitability (location, age of property, orientation etc) and put all
all those properties UP by one council tax band. Those that fitted
solar PV (no grants, no FITS) or other effiociency measures would then
have their house rebanded one or two council tax bands lower.

I don't think the economics for solar PV stack up particularly well in
the UK - we don't get enough sunshine and when we do in summer there is
less not more demand for electricity. Solar thermal is better but also a
bit borderline and isn't subsided in the UK so hardly anyone does it.

OTOH when thin film perovskite PV comes of age it might even be viable
here if it drops the price per 1kW peak by an order of magnitude.

https://physicsworld.com/a/caffeine-...e-solar-cells/

They have reached about 20% efficiency and are thermally stable now
(although it is still a bit borderline).