On 02/11/2011 13:29, Clive George wrote:
On 02/11/2011 08:04, Roger Chapman wrote:

*Government's standard assessment procedure apparently but that is
little more than pie in the sky. Only with hindsight will it become
clear how big the margin is between optimistic prediction and cold hard
fact. By way of comparison the endowment I took out in the early 80s
with Government approved predictions was supposed to pay out just over
200% of the assured sum. In the event it paid out just under 100% on
maturity 20 years later.

I don't think the two are remotely comparable.

They both involve a Government issue crystal ball and since when did any
of us trust Government predictions to be anything other than an
optimistic wish list?

I will probably be dead within 25 years but if I am still around and
uk.d-i-y is still functioning I may return to this subject.

Probably still far too early but can someone remind me when it was we
had that discussion about whether or not GW had peaked in 1998.

--
Roger Chapman

On Nov 2, 11:16*am, Andrew May wrote:
On 02/11/2011 09:37, harry wrote:

Well I had more than £600 for the first quarter of use.
The only thing that worries me is the reliabilty of the technolgy.
It's guaranteed for five years but the firm may be bust by then,
especially after the recent announcemnt.

However fault finding looks to be easy enough I could probably fix it
myself.

What happens to the FIT entitlement if you have to replace panels? Would
one continue to get the higher FIT if it was necessary to replace them
all? How does that differ from a new installation which would be at the
lower FIT?

Well as long as I don't make it any bigger (ie over the 4Kwp band)
it's just a repair. I can't see the time arriving when all would have
to be repaired. I suppose there might be defective ones that packed
in in a in a few years.
I imagine by then they will be much cheaper.
The most expensive single item is the grid tie inverter, about £1200
at the moment. But I expect they will get cheaper too.

On Nov 2, 11:23*am, "dennis@home" wrote:
"harry" wrote in message

...

The PV panel could be fitted to at least 50% of all houses, there are
few sites for windmills and micro-hydro power. *There are FIT payment
for these too but few sites.

These schemes use zero fossil fuel and will be market viable to in the
near future.

that is rubbish.

they use lots of fossil fuel in the manufacture of the panels, and
associated fittings.
they use fossil fuel in their shipping.
they use fossil fuel in their fitting and maintenance.

There is little chance that they will actually return more energy than was
used over their life time.
This is especially true of windmills.

Anyone that thinks they don't use fossil fuels is living in a different
world to the rest of us.
The ones that claim so are just lying and are probably using carbon offsets
to back it up.
Carbon offsets are just a mythical product invented so they can lie about
being green.

The FIT scheme is about bringing the technology forward
and inculcating the public with it'svalue. In fifty years it will be
the major/only producer of domestic power.

So we are going dark then.



Stuff like heat pumps and co-generation still needs fossil fuel.

They can use solar!
But you are correct.
Even nuclear uses fossil fuels.

Everything uses fossil fuels, there is no substitute being used.
Until everything is electric and we are generating it all using nuclear we
will still be using fossil fuels.









My own thing (insulation) needs no further fuel once installed and I
have zero energy use/export power. *I export enough electric power for
two other houses (assuming them to use the same power as I do.)

BTW I have got time switches for my freezers so they won't come on at
night and only use free electricity by day. *I estimate this will cut
my electric bill by a further 5%.

Heh Heh. We are all going to have to use a lot less energy in our
brave new world. I am now a negative energy user. If everyone was a
negative energy user there would be power for commerce and industry.
My negative energy utility will be good for 25 years, the insulation
for over a hundred. I think it will pay back the energy invested in
it's manufacture in a hundred years.

Why is this? Because it is a passive energy saver, it has no moving
parts and needs no maintenence.

Roger Chapman wrote:

I will probably be dead within 25 years but if I am still around and
uk.d-i-y is still functioning I may return to this subject.

Probably still far too early but can someone remind me when it was we
had that discussion about whether or not GW had peaked in 1998.

and have we had peak oil yet, or not?

On Nov 2, 12:28*pm, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:
Adam Aglionby wrote:
On Nov 1, 9:25 am, harry wrote:
On Oct 31, 11:44 pm, Adam Aglionby wrote:

On Oct 31, 4:42 pm, Adrian C wrote:
On 31/10/2011 16:18, Dave Liquorice wrote:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15507750
Down to 21p/kWHr for installations completed after 12th Dec 2011.
It is to everyones interest that the panel prices come down to as cheap
as possible to everyone. As I see it the current subsidy is just
encoraging manufacturers to keep the panels priced high, and spread
unhealthy bonuses in the pockets of ex-double glazing salesmen.
I don't see a lot of difference material handling wise between solar
panels and flat panel TV sets. Perhaps a redundant factory or two of
Phillips can be converted?
--
Adrian C
Oversupply in the panel market already, strangely enough PV and double/
triple glazing seem to be same people...
Cheers
Adam- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
It's more too successful not over supply.

Nope , oversupply, bearing in mind *have to have the cash to invest up
front to reap the 10%

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/m...1/jun/28/pv-cr...

No point in blaming the Chinese, they are aware and relying on growing
their domestic market

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90...60/7302559.htm

No, they are banging in a nuclear power station every 9 months or so,
and coal even faster.

Ah more ********. 90% of PV panels are made in China.
They have vast PV arrays.

On Nov 2, 12:29*pm, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:
Tim Watts wrote:
The Other Mike wrote:

On Tue, 1 Nov 2011 02:35:51 -0700 (PDT), harry
wrote:

The electricity I have generated so far has paid back 8% of capital
already in two quarters. Obviously the next two quarters will be much
reduced.
As it is tax free that's worth even more.
They shoudl force parasitic c*nts like you to go off grid. *You'll be
able to keep warm by running on a treadmill linked to a generator.

I agree that the FIT scheme was superficially stupid and unfair[1]

But I don't agree with bashing harry for the sake of it. If EDF came round
and left a bar of gold on my doorstep with a note saying "it's yours", I'd
be all over it like a ferret on a rabbit that fell into a jug of Bisto.

I wouldn't. Not if I knew for a fact it was stolen from my neighbours.

Your OAP is stolen from your neighbours.

On Nov 2, 1:04*pm, "Dave Liquorice"
wrote:
On Wed, 02 Nov 2011 12:27:23 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Renewable energy does not ..it says 'we want to save carbon, have a cash
handout for ONLY this technology or that technology' In short it doesn't
even work for *the reasons its promoted. That is the true state of
affairs.

Quite agree, if HMG was serious about saving energy they would be
spending the cash on things that save far more energy over longer
times spans. Like making sure all properties had good insulation and
glazing, not just the ones that are easy and cheap to do, ie those
with cavity walls. Maybe even giving similar incentives and the
guaranteed returns to renewable heat systems. The RHPP doesn't really
encourage people to install solar ho****er, the RHI is still very
much up in the air and the payments significantly less than PV.

/soapbox

--
Cheers
Dave.

Yes. All true. My insulation was all retro fitted to an existing
house. So it is possible. I did all the work myself. I dunno how it
would work out if you had to pay someone.

The other thing they should do is make sure that all new houses are
zero energy. Easily possible for very little extra money
percentagewise.
Insulation standards need to be 4X what they are now.

On Nov 2, 1:22*pm, tony sayer wrote:
In article , Tim Watts
scribeth thus









cynic wrote:

Ask the people of Hull when the towrags stole the Substation earthing
copper.
(Of course Karl Turner got in on the act and convinced the REC to
stump up for replacement electrical equipment for the consumers who
couldn't be bothered to insure their possessions)

And so they bloody should.

It may not be the REC's direct fault that pikey's nick the copper, but it is
even less the fault of the customers who are contracted to be provided power
at 230 V +10% 0
The question here is whether the REC could have reasonably done more to
provide redundant earthing in other locations to mitigate such faults (and
if the pikeys did not steal the copper, what would happen if the bonding in
question went faulty of its own accord)?

I rather doubt it was an earthing situation as such, we just don't quite
know what they did there whilst they were nicking the copper they could
have done most anything..

Take copper theft further, can the railways do anything to stop them
nicking the return cables on the OHLE system?..

Or signalling cable going missing?..

Or BT cables coming out of their ducts?...
--
Tony Sayer

Whipping posts would cure the problem.

On 02/11/2011 14:56, Roger Chapman wrote:
On 02/11/2011 13:29, Clive George wrote:
On 02/11/2011 08:04, Roger Chapman wrote:

*Government's standard assessment procedure apparently but that is
little more than pie in the sky. Only with hindsight will it become
clear how big the margin is between optimistic prediction and cold hard
fact. By way of comparison the endowment I took out in the early 80s
with Government approved predictions was supposed to pay out just over
200% of the assured sum. In the event it paid out just under 100% on
maturity 20 years later.

I don't think the two are remotely comparable.

They both involve a Government issue crystal ball and since when did any
of us trust Government predictions to be anything other than an
optimistic wish list?

One of the crystal balls is about the behaviour of stock markets, and
does come with a "This is not guaranteed" caveat. The other one is about
the engineering performance of a bit of kit. I know which one is more
predictable.

On Nov 2, 1:29*pm, Clive George wrote:
On 02/11/2011 08:04, Roger Chapman wrote:

*Government's standard assessment procedure apparently but that is
little more than pie in the sky. Only with hindsight will it become
clear how big the margin is between optimistic prediction and cold hard
fact. By way of comparison the endowment I took out in the early 80s
with Government approved predictions was supposed to pay out just over
200% of the assured sum. In the event it paid out just under 100% on
maturity 20 years later.

I don't think the two are remotely comparable.

Clearly not. PV was a far better investment,

On Nov 2, 1:43*pm, "dennis@home" wrote:
"Martin Brown" wrote in message

...









On 02/11/2011 11:23, dennis@home wrote:

"harry" wrote in message
....

The PV panel could be fitted to at least 50% of all houses, there are
few sites for windmills and micro-hydro power. There are FIT payment
for these too but few sites.

These schemes use zero fossil fuel and will be market viable to in the
near future.

that is rubbish.

they use lots of fossil fuel in the manufacture of the panels, and
associated fittings.
they use fossil fuel in their shipping.
they use fossil fuel in their fitting and maintenance.

There is little chance that they will actually return more energy than
was used over their life time.

Wrong - even at our unfavourable latitude the lifetime energy return on a
PV array should be something like 4x that used in its manufacture. It
would be nearer 7x if installed at a more sensible latitude. See:

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/w.../page_41.shtml

This is especially true of windmills.

Even more untrue. Any decent large scale windfarm will reach energy
payback inside the first year of operation and with a trailing wind inside
the first six months.

Anyone that thinks they don't use fossil fuels is living in a different
world to the rest of us.

They use fossil fuels to make them but they deliver a leverage of 4-7x for
solar PV depending where they are installed and 20-50x for large scale
wind turbines. The latter is a respectable figure of merit.

I don't believe that and there are no definitive explanations of what energy
is used in order to make that comparison.
I especially don't believe a paper that claims "Wind turbines with a
lifetime of 20 years have an energy yield ratio of 80".

You actually have to prove him wrong.

On Nov 2, 2:45*pm, charles wrote:
In article
,
* *harry wrote:

[Snip]

Obviously output is much reduced. I think snow will slide off the
panels very easily especially as air can circulate beneath them.

If it is cold when the snow falls heavily, it will quickly seal the air
gaps at the top & sides of the panel; *and unless the top surface is
treated in some way, snow will settle on it without difficulty.

--
From KT24

Using a RISC OS computer running v5.16

It's treated. I have problems with masses of snow slidng off my roof
anyway. The PV panels are much smoother than the slates.

On Nov 2, 8:13*am, harry wrote:
On Nov 1, 5:06*pm, Roger Chapman wrote:

Also adds value to the house

not accodring to this:

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/opticon1826/cur...pticon1826.pdf

"The study concludes that demand for properties with solar panels in
Oxford does exist amongst prospective homebuyers but it is not, at
present, being translated into increased property values. Estate
agents were largely negative or uncertain about the added value and
saleability of properties with solar and, in the majority of cases,
did not mention panels in particulars or factor them into valuations."


Robert

On 02/11/2011 13:43, dennis@home wrote:


"Martin Brown" wrote in message
...
On 02/11/2011 11:23, dennis@home wrote:


"harry" wrote in message
...


The PV panel could be fitted to at least 50% of all houses, there are
few sites for windmills and micro-hydro power. There are FIT payment
for these too but few sites.

These schemes use zero fossil fuel and will be market viable to in the
near future.

that is rubbish.

they use lots of fossil fuel in the manufacture of the panels, and
associated fittings.
they use fossil fuel in their shipping.
they use fossil fuel in their fitting and maintenance.

There is little chance that they will actually return more energy than
was used over their life time.

Wrong - even at our unfavourable latitude the lifetime energy return
on a PV array should be something like 4x that used in its
manufacture. It would be nearer 7x if installed at a more sensible
latitude. See:

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/w.../page_41.shtml

This is especially true of windmills.

Even more untrue. Any decent large scale windfarm will reach energy
payback inside the first year of operation and with a trailing wind
inside the first six months.


Anyone that thinks they don't use fossil fuels is living in a different
world to the rest of us.

They use fossil fuels to make them but they deliver a leverage of 4-7x
for solar PV depending where they are installed and 20-50x for large
scale wind turbines. The latter is a respectable figure of merit.

I don't believe that and there are no definitive explanations of what
energy is used in order to make that comparison.
I especially don't believe a paper that claims "Wind turbines with a
lifetime of 20 years have an energy yield ratio of 80".

Fortunately, it doesn't matter what you believe. The numbers are out
there and available to check from various independent sources.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:12:19 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Liquorice"
wrote:

On Wed, 2 Nov 2011 01:36:30 -0700 (PDT), harry wrote:

Small PV arrays reduce the size needed on th grid as electricity is
produced locally.

So when the sun sets (or is clouded out) you sit in the dark? Don't
watch telly or use any other electrical appliance?

I think that power generators will take into account sunlight
intensity and national cloud patterns to predict needs.

Not with the total installed capacity of less than 1% of demand. ISTR
they work with a 20% margin of spinning reserve. So if a nuke station
and a big coal fired station fall off line at the same time (say
3,400,000 kW) the grid struggles but doesn't collapse.

The UK grid doesn't operate with 20% spinning reserve - that would
mean with the current daily 50GW peak, there would be another 10GW
spinning reserve (distributed across existing generation, and
available by pumped storage)

In reality the spinning reserve, and fast despatch generation combined
are approaching an order of maginitude less than 10GW.

On top of that are industrial customers on interruptable supplies.

Demand predictions made a few hours ahead are usually very accurate


--

On Nov 2, 7:10*pm, tony sayer wrote:
It is the future you daft old bugger. *Fossil fuels will be reserved
for agriculture, heavy transport, *aviation and similar.

While you have sat on your arse, procrastinating and stuck in the mud,
I at least have done something for the future. *And though you have
known all about and coould have particpated, the boat has passed you
by. (Well nearly) *A nieghbour of mine has had a recent PV quotation,
the prices are falling rapidly.

Umm .. so what are you going to do in the very overcast UK winter months
when the snow lies deep and even ?..

--
Tony Sayer

Obviously output is much reduced. I think snow will slide off the
panels very easily especially as air can circulate beneath them.

More Harry the low amount of available sunlight because of a lower
incidence of the light landing on your panels in the winter months, so
we'll still need the backup generation to supply you with *will we
not?..


We will. But it's about saving fuel, not the capital expense of the
fossil fuel burners. And in a few years there will be no alternative.
(Unless you want to risk nuclear or be increasingly poisoned by coal
and oil pollution.)

On Nov 2, 7:12*pm, tony sayer wrote:
Heh Heh. We are all going to have to use a lot less energy in our
brave new world. *I am now a negative energy user. If everyone was a
negative energy user there would be power for commerce and industry.
My negative energy utility will be good for 25 years, the insulation
for over a hundred. *I think it will pay back the energy invested in
it's manufacture in a hundred years.

Why is this? Because it is a passive energy saver, it has no moving
parts and needs no maintenence.

Do you think it could power industry and run the trains etc then;?..

especially at night..
--
Tony Sayer

Of course not at night. But it helps lop the daily electricity peak.
Are you being obtuse or just stupid?
Even the arabs are installing vast arrays.

harry wrote:

in a few years there will be no alternative.
Unless you want to risk nuclear

Atomkraft? Ja, bitte!

harry wrote:

Even the arabs are installing vast arrays.

Perhaps more to do with geography, than culture, huh?

harry wrote:

Unless you want to risk nuclear

Yes please. The hippies can go and live on Skye and get cold. I want my
electricity. I have no problems having a power station down the road.



--
Tim Watts

On 03/11/2011 08:13, harry wrote:

(Unless you want to risk nuclear or be increasingly poisoned by coal
and oil pollution.)

At last, nail, head...

Of course we will "risk nuclear" once it becomes clear to enough people
that the current attempts at renewable energy, if pursued to their
anticipated conclusion will leave the country and future generations
impoverished to worse than Greek levels.


--
Cheers,

John.

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\================================================= ================/

On 02/11/2011 11:16, Andrew May wrote:
On 02/11/2011 09:37, harry wrote:

Well I had more than £600 for the first quarter of use.
The only thing that worries me is the reliabilty of the technolgy.
It's guaranteed for five years but the firm may be bust by then,
especially after the recent announcemnt.

However fault finding looks to be easy enough I could probably fix it
myself.

What happens to the FIT entitlement if you have to replace panels? Would
one continue to get the higher FIT if it was necessary to replace them
all? How does that differ from a new installation which would be at the
lower FIT?

You could probably flog all the panels now, and replace them with
dummies while there is a market, and just plug your inverter into next
door's mains.


--
Cheers,

John.

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\================================================= ================/

On 02/11/2011 09:04, harry wrote:
On Nov 1, 7:28 pm, wrote:
"Roger wrote in message

...

Harry appears to have invested some £15,000 and if we assume his 8% so far
this year translates into 10% over the course of a full year he will be
lucky to get all his capital back in ten years as the FIT reduces year by
year.

Harry's fit doesn't reduce year by year, it goes up as its index linked.
It was intended that *new* installations would start at a lower rate of fit
each year.
Now they are halving it on *new* installations.

Exactly so. But I still think they will be viable, prices for
installation are falling.

When they cost less to install and maintain, than the cost of the
electricity they save, then they might be "viable".

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
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|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
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\================================================= ================/

Roger Chapman wrote:
On 31/10/2011 19:46, John Rumm wrote:
On 31/10/2011 19:24, harry wrote:

Mind you, £0.21/Kwh would still give a better return than money in the
bank these days.
I wonder what percentage of the national load it provides on a sunny
day?
I have done 2747Kwh to date.

It hardly matters, it will need a proper power station sat there in hot
reserve anyway, so its real contribution is of little value.

Nonsense.

Unlike windmills the major contribution of PV panels is reducing demand
on the grid and with a multitude of individual houses any variation in
demand/output will be statistically easy to determine and any
variability will be small in relation to the other factors that the grid
has to take into account.

You really haven't a clue have you

The major contribution of *any* power station is reducing demand on the
grid to exactly zero, overall.

PV panels are just a massively expensive and inefficient and
uncontrollable way to do it.




I don't know what the exact proportion is but even windmills don't need
100% of hot reserve. PV panels shouldn't need very much (or even any)
even if every house in the land was so equipped.


At night PV panels need 100% reserve. They produce nothing. On a grey
day in winter they produce so near nothing as to be irrelevant,

They have in fact a worse variability than windmills. which seldom got
to nothing everywhere. PV does it every might,.

harry wrote:


90,000 people can't be wrong.

Good lord. A man who has read no history at all.

Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Wed, 2 Nov 2011 10:25:06 +0000, tony sayer wrote:

Also if my PV packs in, it is not a national disaster as it would
be
if a major primary substation/power station had problems.
Umm .. when did that happen last with serious consequences?..

Sizewell B and Longannet going off line in quick succesion with the
loss of 1,510,000 kW generation gave the grid summat to think about
in May 2008. Load was shed, ie people had power cuts and most of the
country noticed the dip in voltage and then further voltage
reductions.

That's no worse than the wind dying over the whole country. We are
having to cope with that sort of loss on a weekly basis now.

That's why they are burning more gas and coal. To cope with all the
renewable energy.

harry wrote:
On Nov 2, 7:10 pm, tony sayer wrote:
It is the future you daft old bugger. Fossil fuels will be reserved
for agriculture, heavy transport, aviation and similar.
While you have sat on your arse, procrastinating and stuck in the mud,
I at least have done something for the future. And though you have
known all about and coould have particpated, the boat has passed you
by. (Well nearly) A nieghbour of mine has had a recent PV quotation,
the prices are falling rapidly.
Umm .. so what are you going to do in the very overcast UK winter months
when the snow lies deep and even ?..
--
Tony Sayer
Obviously output is much reduced. I think snow will slide off the
panels very easily especially as air can circulate beneath them.
More Harry the low amount of available sunlight because of a lower
incidence of the light landing on your panels in the winter months, so
we'll still need the backup generation to supply you with will we
not?..


We will. But it's about saving fuel,

No, its about not saving fuel.Becuase it doesn't.
Its about looking green harry.

On Thu, 03 Nov 2011 09:31:58 +0000, Tim Watts wrote:

Unless you want to risk nuclear

Yes please. The hippies can go and live on Skye and get cold. I want my
electricity. I have no problems having a power station down the road.

We are already only 45 miles down wind from Windscale (sorry
Sellafield). I don't see it as a threat worth worrying about. I
suspect there is far higher risk from the death wish motorcylists who
blast along the local roads taking right hand bends with their wheels
just their side of the line but their head about in line with the
windscreen A frame of a car going in the opposite direction...

--
Cheers
Dave.

Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
Tim Watts wrote:

harry wrote:

Unless you want to risk nuclear
Yes please. The hippies can go and live on Skye and get cold. I want
my electricity. I have no problems having a power station down the road.

And it's less radioactive than your coal fired power station, which is
pushing radon into the atmosphere. Remember that.

Its a lot less radioactive than an X ray or especially a CAT scan.

In article
s.com, harry scribeth thus
On Nov 2, 7:10*pm, tony sayer wrote:
It is the future you daft old bugger. *Fossil fuels will be reserved
for agriculture, heavy transport, *aviation and similar.

While you have sat on your arse, procrastinating and stuck in the mud,
I at least have done something for the future. *And though you have
known all about and coould have particpated, the boat has passed you
by. (Well nearly) *A nieghbour of mine has had a recent PV quotation,
the prices are falling rapidly.

Umm .. so what are you going to do in the very overcast UK winter months
when the snow lies deep and even ?..

--
Tony Sayer

Obviously output is much reduced. I think snow will slide off the
panels very easily especially as air can circulate beneath them.

More Harry the low amount of available sunlight because of a lower
incidence of the light landing on your panels in the winter months, so
we'll still need the backup generation to supply you with *will we
not?..


We will. But it's about saving fuel, not the capital expense of the
fossil fuel burners. And in a few years there will be no alternative.
(Unless you want to risk nuclear or be increasingly poisoned by coal
and oil pollution.)

Err .. No Harry, your still burning fuel with all that plant on
reserve..

As NP says there're worse than windmills and their an abortion ...

Nuclear is lesser risk than coal .

Remember a couple of months ago those poor barstards in that small mine
in Wales?....
--
Tony Sayer

In article , Tim Watts
scribeth thus
harry wrote:

Unless you want to risk nuclear

Yes please. The hippies can go and live on Skye and get cold. I want my
electricity. I have no problems having a power station down the road.



I have long thought that we ought to split the UK into the land of the
left, hippies, greenies, other nuisances, spongers, dole cheats and
protesters and the other bit to contain those who live in the real work
who work.....


Course the former it could be called La-La land or Greenwashire?...
--
Tony Sayer

On 03/11/2011 09:47, John Rumm wrote:
On 02/11/2011 09:04, harry wrote:
On Nov 1, 7:28 pm, wrote:
"Roger wrote in message

...

Harry appears to have invested some £15,000 and if we assume his 8%
so far
this year translates into 10% over the course of a full year he will be
lucky to get all his capital back in ten years as the FIT reduces
year by
year.

Harry's fit doesn't reduce year by year, it goes up as its index linked.
It was intended that *new* installations would start at a lower rate
of fit
each year.
Now they are halving it on *new* installations.

Exactly so. But I still think they will be viable, prices for
installation are falling.

When they cost less to install and maintain, than the cost of the
electricity they save, then they might be "viable".

That is likely to be never.

But look at it another way. Water Companies have been encouraging
customers to save water on the premise that avoiding building yet more
reservoirs saves both considerable capital investment and endless hassle
from the NIMBIES. If there are ever enough domestic PV panels to avoid
building yet another extra power station then the excessively high FITs
do make some sort of sense.

Up message I suggested that Harry would get his capital back in 10 years
but that is too simplistic a viewpoint for an investor expecting to make
say 10% pa on capital invested. The annual return (FIT + reduced usage +
export) needs to exceed the expected 10% before any of the capital is
recovered and in the initial year at least it is quite easy to construct
a scenario where the annual return is less than 10% so the hypothetical
capital invested goes up instead of down. It is only inflation that will
eventually allow that 10% return. Without the FIT going up in line with
RPI and electricity costs for consumers going up even faster the return
would be much less before the panels die of old age and with a FIT of
21p quite possibly nothing more than money back with no interest earned
at all.

Somewhere up thread is a comment (which I now can't find) that the
decline in efficiency of the panels is slight but it doesn't need to be
much (say 5% reduction in net efficiency pa) to completely torpedo the
investment potential. So does anyone have figures for the actual rate of
decay? All I can find atm is that the average panel starts life with an
efficiency in the region of 15% which doesn't really help.
--
Roger Chapman

In article
s.com, harry scribeth thus
On Nov 2, 7:12*pm, tony sayer wrote:
Heh Heh. We are all going to have to use a lot less energy in our
brave new world. *I am now a negative energy user. If everyone was a
negative energy user there would be power for commerce and industry.
My negative energy utility will be good for 25 years, the insulation
for over a hundred. *I think it will pay back the energy invested in
it's manufacture in a hundred years.

Why is this? Because it is a passive energy saver, it has no moving
parts and needs no maintenence.

Do you think it could power industry and run the trains etc then;?..

especially at night..
--
Tony Sayer

Of course not at night. But it helps lop the daily electricity peak.
Are you being obtuse or just stupid?

No realistic .. and thats based on good engineering overall not just a
silly scheme dreamt up by a misguided government to do something looking
Green;!...


Even the arabs are installing vast arrays.

Well how much land is there thats lit by large amounts of sun there?.
Now much electricity do they need anyway?. Ever been there?..
--
Tony Sayer

Dave Liquorice wrote:

On Thu, 03 Nov 2011 09:31:58 +0000, Tim Watts wrote:

Unless you want to risk nuclear

Yes please. The hippies can go and live on Skye and get cold. I want my
electricity. I have no problems having a power station down the road.

We are already only 45 miles down wind from Windscale (sorry
Sellafield). I don't see it as a threat worth worrying about. I
suspect there is far higher risk from the death wish motorcylists who
blast along the local roads taking right hand bends with their wheels
just their side of the line but their head about in line with the
windscreen A frame of a car going in the opposite direction...


Although it's not exactly local, if Dungeness blew up, I'd get a facefull
with the right (wrong) wind...

A nice nuke round here would be a boon to local employment...



--
Tim Watts

On Thu, 03 Nov 2011 11:00:38 +0000 Roger Chapman wrote :
If there are ever enough domestic PV panels to avoid building
yet another extra power station then the excessively high FITs
do make some sort of sense.

But AIUI that can never happen in the UK since peak demand is on
winter evenings.

If public money was to be spent encouraging the industry and in
providing an element of green power, it would have made more sense
to finance the installation of panels on buildings such as
libraries and hospitals where there is a local use for the power
being generated.

--
Tony Bryer, Greentram: 'Software to build on',
Melbourne, Australia www.greentram.com

Anyone here know if one of these exists?.

We have a job to do to control some lights, in essence similar to the
PIR operated light in your front garden except that this is Six separate
lights around 2 kW in total load.

The lights are in shall we say, very awkward locations and are a PITA to
get to. It seems to me that if we under run them a bit then their
lifetime before replacement might be extended. There is a fair old bit
of cable run in this too so its prolly going to loose a bit anyway..

What also seems like a good idea is to soft start them i.e. just fade up
the volts applied over a second or so to reduce the switch on surge when
cold.

We have a simple infra red light beam detector arrangement that will
give a contact closure when triggered which we could interpose another
relay to source volts to the larger relay. If that one could accept
either a simple contact close or volts applied say 12 to 24 then fine.

If it can also stay switched on for a time period perhaps a minute or
so then better still.

TIA.
--
Tony Sayer

On 03/11/2011 12:30, tony sayer wrote:

Anyone here know if one of these exists?.

Did you mean to post this to the FiT thread...?


We have a job to do to control some lights, in essence similar to the
PIR operated light in your front garden except that this is Six separate
lights around 2 kW in total load.

The lights are in shall we say, very awkward locations and are a PITA to
get to. It seems to me that if we under run them a bit then their
lifetime before replacement might be extended. There is a fair old bit
of cable run in this too so its prolly going to loose a bit anyway..

What also seems like a good idea is to soft start them i.e. just fade up
the volts applied over a second or so to reduce the switch on surge when
cold.

We have a simple infra red light beam detector arrangement that will
give a contact closure when triggered which we could interpose another
relay to source volts to the larger relay. If that one could accept
either a simple contact close or volts applied say 12 to 24 then fine.

If it can also stay switched on for a time period perhaps a minute or
so then better still.


What about step starting? Fire up the lights in series pairs, and then a
couple of secs later hit them with full volts? Just need a couple of
relays and a simple timer that way.

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 03/11/2011 10:23, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Sizewell B and Longannet going off line in quick succesion with the
loss of 1,510,000 kW generation gave the grid summat to think about
in May 2008. Load was shed, ie people had power cuts and most of the
country noticed the dip in voltage and then further voltage
reductions.

That's no worse than the wind dying over the whole country. We are
having to cope with that sort of loss on a weekly basis now.

That's why they are burning more gas and coal. To cope with all the
renewable energy.

You think that is bad? Just wait until Huhne gets his way and 50% of
energy comes from renewables, principally windmills as things stand at
present.

--
Roger Chapman

On 03/11/2011 10:17, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Roger Chapman wrote:
On 31/10/2011 19:46, John Rumm wrote:
On 31/10/2011 19:24, harry wrote:

Mind you, £0.21/Kwh would still give a better return than money in the
bank these days.
I wonder what percentage of the national load it provides on a sunny
day?
I have done 2747Kwh to date.

It hardly matters, it will need a proper power station sat there in hot
reserve anyway, so its real contribution is of little value.

Nonsense.

Unlike windmills the major contribution of PV panels is reducing
demand on the grid and with a multitude of individual houses any
variation in demand/output will be statistically easy to determine and
any variability will be small in relation to the other factors that
the grid has to take into account.

You really haven't a clue have you

Projecting your own failings on others again as usual.

The major contribution of *any* power station is reducing demand on the
grid to exactly zero, overall.

Its about time you took the trouble to formulate your sentences so they
mean what you think they mean. The only way to reduce the demand on the
grid to zero is to turn absolutely everything off.

PV panels are just a massively expensive and inefficient and
uncontrollable way to do it.

I don't know what the exact proportion is but even windmills don't
need 100% of hot reserve. PV panels shouldn't need very much (or even
any) even if every house in the land was so equipped.


At night PV panels need 100% reserve. They produce nothing. On a grey
day in winter they produce so near nothing as to be irrelevant,

They have in fact a worse variability than windmills. which seldom got
to nothing everywhere. PV does it every might,.

The output of a multitude of small PV arrays is predictable to a very
large degree and relatively consistent as well. It reduces domestic
demand at a time when total demand is high and requires no hot reserve.
That PV panels produce nothing during the hours of darkness is of little
consequence because of the consistency of the output. Windmills OTOH are
as likely as not to be generating at times of lowest demand and failing
to produce even as much as PV arrays when demand is at its strongest.

--
Roger Chapman

On 03/11/2011 12:05, Tony Bryer wrote:

If there are ever enough domestic PV panels to avoid building
yet another extra power station then the excessively high FITs
do make some sort of sense.

But AIUI that can never happen in the UK since peak demand is on
winter evenings.

I don't have an figures to hand but ISTR that total demand peaks during
the day when most workers are hard at work rather than generating
tea-break spikes when their favourite TV programs end.

If public money was to be spent encouraging the industry and in
providing an element of green power, it would have made more sense
to finance the installation of panels on buildings such as
libraries and hospitals where there is a local use for the power
being generated.

Unless most houses have a PV array those that do will have their output
consumed locally without ever bothering the high voltage grid.

--
Roger Chapman