UKC

Our farmer friends up the valley have no mains electricity and always relied on a generator to charge batteries for the house. Then they got a bank of solar panels on the roof of a barn, these produce all their summer power and in the winter they have to fire up the generator to boost the batteries every 2 days. They have 4 young children and a farm to run, so electric is fairly important.

Thing is, because of the subsidy system they are still paid for any surplus energy they produce - about £90 a quarter - despite the fact none of it goes into the grid as they are not connected to the grid. So that is energy they are paid for that all goes to waste, they do see the funny side to this and think it potty, potty enough to be considering a small hydro scheme now and best of luck to them!
I appreciate these are unusual circumstances, but it is a bit bonkers isn't it?

In reply to Moley:

I wouldn't say so. The way it's 'subsidised' is in two parts - a feed-in tariff for the act of generating, paid on every unit you produce, and an export tariff that depends on how much you export to the grid. Presumably your friends are receiving the first but not the second.

They could have run their gennie all year round. Consider it as a thank-you from the rest of society for undertaking a (high initial capital) method of reducing the amount of atmospheric pollution they produce in generating their electricity, which they have to do because society hasn't seen fit to provide their property with a mains connection, and suddenly I think that seems quite reasonable. It's not quite what the FiT was supposed to do but still...

A small scale hydro addition could make sense, too - it'll peak in winter, exactly when the PV is declining, so would give more or less year round coverage and that might mean they never fire up the generator. OK if they build something the size of Three Gorges, without a grid tie, and burn off 90% of the power, that's taking the p155 a bit. But IIRC there's very little funding left for small hydro; schemes that already have the green light can go ahead but new ones have missed the boat? Might be wrong.

<little rant>I do think it's wrong to think of these as subsidies at all. As an example, my PV system generates around 6000kWh a year. I export around 5000kWh of that (I'm a pretty frugal user of electricity). As things stand I get 11.7p/kWh on the 6000kWh for generating it, and 4.8p/kWh for exporting the 5000kWh. It has always struck me that it would have been simpler to just pay the market rate of about 15p for actual export - the total payback to the PV owner would be more or less the same, and when you put it like that it's clearly not a subsidy at all, just fair payment for the excess power you've put into the grid. </little rant>

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:

I sort of agree, but isn't it an assumed 50% because they can't actually be be bothered to measure what you export? Saves on faff.

In reply to steveriley:

I think it

I think it is. I think they'd need some extra bit of kit, or at least some different bit of kit to measure how much you export.

Although they already need an extra meter between the panels and your fuse box to measure how much you export so I'm not sure why that can't go between the fuse box and the supply but then I'm not an electrician so there is probably a really good reason!

In reply to Moley:

Not really, no. No different to subsidising the installation of panels say on a grid connected house or buisiness with a big day time electricity consumption that routinely exports little. The subsidy is to encourage the decarbonisation of our electricity supply*, when their panels are generating they're not inefficiently burning imported refined hydrocarbons in what is no doubt a simple IC generator belching out particulates and running well under 20% fuel-electricity efficiency.

If they were generating power they didn't need and claiming the subsidy then yes, that would be abusive but you say yourself, it's a farm that needs electricity. It either comes from the sun or fossil oil. We've decided rightly in my opinion that oil is not our future and that we need to fund the transition away from it.

*more like to encourage the formation of companies and the development of skills to facilitate that which is why wild fluctuations in subsidy levels with successive governments leading to boom/bust cycles for those companies who invest, shed skills, reinvest, shed skills... is particularly unhelpful.

Good for them and their Hydro plans!
jk

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:

You have a far better knowledge of the payment system than I do, they lived for years with a large, noisy and smelly generator in a shed outside the house and think the panels are great.
They think it amusing that they are being paid for something that nobody else can use, some may disagree that they deserve a "thank you" from the rest of society for changing to solar - it will be quite a big "thank you" over the years for nothing in return.
Fair payment for excess power that they put back into the grid would be.......nothing.

On another tack, we have a large proposed (commercial) hydro scheme in the valley, you should hear the controversy and fallings -out surrounding that!!

In reply to Moley:


It's not for nothing in return. It's for not running their "large, noisy and smelly generator" at a detriment to our health and environment. Air pollution kills millions annually. Soaring CO2 release rates driving climate change risk making our future uncertain.
jk

In reply to jkarran:

There is no engineering reason to install more solar panels than you need for your own use when you don't have a grid connection. It is straightforwardly exploiting the subsidy system and it is not environmentally friendly in any way because there's a considerable amount of energy being wasted in producing those solar panels, if I remember correctly it takes a couple of years of producing electricity for a solar panel to break even in energy terms. Also that subsidy money could have been spent on a scheme that actually put electricity on the grid or left with taxpayers/consumers to spend on something useful.

The whole green subsidy system is designed to hand money to land and property owners which is why the Tories go along with it even though they are supposed to be against state subsidies.

In reply to Moley:

If he's sensible, he'll be dumping any excess power into a hot water cylinder.

In reply to Lusk:


They are have just built a large extension with big modern kitchen and a large top range oil fired Aga - I don't think they will be short of hot water!

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

Nobody is suggesting it wouldn't be blatantly abusive to 'install' more capacity than could be possibly used but that isn't what the OP is suggesting has happened and there absolutely are sound engineering reasons for installing more capacity than is needed at peak if it means you can still run the farm with out the genny on an overcast day or through the spring and autumn or into each end of the day. If it means you can run longer from the battery bank on winters days.

I'm sure you do remember your untrue propaganda around embedded energy correctly.


Not if the grid connected farm used it all anyway! If the grid connection sources or sinks nothing there's no point in it being there but to satisfy the demands of the ignorant.


You may need your own property to install your own generation scheme but you could easily invest through a community energy project if you didn't hold property or have one that is suitable. The scheme is designed to decarbonise our supply by encouraging capital investment in plant and the installation companies required to achieve the goal. We do this to meet our international obligations. I'm not going to cry about it being a nice little money spinner for farmers and big estate owners if the eventual payback is cleaner air and a safer world.
jk

In reply to steveriley:

>...but isn't it an assumed 50% because they can't actually be be bothered to measure what you export?

In almost all cases, yes. However, when you get your new smart meter in the next year or two, that will have the ability to measure power going both ways, and that means it has the capability to function as an export meter. My understanding is that, if you have the capability to measure export, you'll have to swap to metered export. No complaint on my part as it increases my payment somewhat.

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:

A man came round to put a Smart Meter in for me last month, sucked air through his teeth and left saying 'can't do it mate, regulations won't let me near that lead pipe'. So no Smart Meter for me. Not sure what happens when they become compulsory

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

Except that PV doesn't always produce its peak output. The panels aren't the major cost - the inverter and the scaffolding are far more significant, so banging up some extra panels to increase your generation capacity October - March (and thus reducing work done by the diesel generator) at the expense of wasted over production April - September is actually a completely reasonable thing to do.

Having said that I would, if I had built this system, still have wired a diverter to dump excess PV into the hot water tank; it'd save running the Aga for half the year! I don't have one here because it's a better use to export to the rest of the village (and reduce their most coal-fired usage) instead.


Read my first post. It's not really a subsidy- just a slightly convoluted way of paying more or less the market value for energy that is staggeringly greener than most of our energy mix. Think about it - if there were no FiT but the export payment was guaranteed to be at market rate, would you consider that a 'subsidy'? No, it's just setting up a fair playing field for small and medium scale generators.

Edit: this is why Amber Rudd's cut of the FiT is so utterly unfair. The government-determined rate you get paid per kWh exported is now significantly below the market rate. It's utterly unreaosnable to say to someone installng a small PV system that sure, they can use what they generate, but any they export will be paid at half the market value.

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:

The market rate for green electricity should reflect the fact that it is not reliable and therefore less useful to a power company that needs to create a reliable supply for consumers as well as the additional cost of the grid infrastructure to support many geographically dispersed generators. An economically sensible system would pay less for green electricity from a solar panel or wind turbine on a farm than reliable electricity from a centralised power station. The fair playing field would most likely mean that nuclear and large installations won.

The subsidies for putting solar panels on roofs are just a bribe to voters. Solar panels shouldn't be economically viable until the electricity they produce is lower cost than electricity bought from the grid.

In reply to jkarran:


http://info.cat.org.uk/questions/pv/what-energy-and-carbon-payback-time-pv-...

Says 2.5 years for energy payback in the UK, I said 'a couple of years'.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:


My Apologies, I must have skimmed the rest after reading "It is straightforwardly exploiting the subsidy system and it is not environmentally friendly in any way because there's a considerable amount of energy being wasted in producing those solar panels..." which clearly gave me a false impression of the stance you were taking.
jk

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:



I disagree wholeheartedly. The market rate for fossil fuel electricity should be lower, to reflect the fact that it causes vastly more carbon to be released and poisons people.

Reliability is an issue but it's one we are going to have to deal with eventually regardless, unless you plan to go almost wholly nuclear. Hydro plus PV plus wind actually works extremely well - they each peak at different times of the year, and the great advantage of PV is that its peak comes during the summer when the other renewables are at low ebbs.

Grid infrastructure? It's already there! Nothing had to be added outside my house to install my 5.7kWp system, just a quick check that the cable back to the last substation could handle it. Bigger systems might need more robust cabling but they'll save on economies of scale what they lose in this.

If you really think we shouldn't encourage any form of energy generation until it's already cheaper than the vastly damaging coal-fired solution, then we'll have nothing but coal until the day it runs out.

The embedded carbon in panel manufacture argument is a red herring. They pay back, according to your link, in 2.5 years. They'll last for ten times that, as a conservative estimate - mine are guaranteed for 20 years and I expect them to outlive me, albeit at slightly reduced output.

Yes, years ago there was a genuine subsidy - some early adopters are being paid 40p/kWh. But this was a calculated investment to encourage a whole new industry. Without it the only PV in the country would be committed off-gridders, houseboat owners, and the odd tinkerer. What is being paid now (well, what was being paid until the tories destroyed the industry) is simply fair market price.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

you may be right, but can you tell me why you need more grid infrastructure to produce electricity closer to the point of demand?

In reply to Lusk:


We've got a gizmo that measures when excess is being exported and does just that into a 400l thermal store.

So we're paid to generate all of it, and paid to export half, but actually export none.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

The market rate for green energy is the same as the market for energy at a given point in time. When there's lots of wind and/or it's sunny the market rate is low, so it tends to be lower for green. There're also a markets for providing reliability. Solar and wind can't provide this so they don't get it.

Do you mean subsidies for small scale green energy are too high compared to other green energy including nuclear?

In reply to Moley:

Yeah, it's a bit silly. Either it's an oversite, no one though about off grid customers when they designed fits, or there's so few it's not worth the admin of sorting out.

In reply to stevieb:


So, you have the transmission system and regional distribution networks. Question is: does connecting to the distribution network stead of the transmission network reduce costs?

In terms of transmission infrastructure (ie the national grid) connecting to the distribution network makes little difference to infrastructure costs. If you put more generation in the north of Scotland it increases transmission costs regardless of whether it's distribution or transmission connected.

In the theory, it should reduce distribution costs until generation exceeds demand in an area. In practice this isn't always the case because the distribution networks were designed 'one way'. For example, there probably going to have to spend a lot on the distribution networks n the south west to accommodate small scale generation.

In reply to Donald82:

I'm guessing a bit of both, an oversight that it's not worth changing some legislation for.

Although this thread has gone into a debate, my post was just about how ironic it is that someone can be paid for producing something and then dumping some of it. Probably happens with all sorts of commodities all over the world?
But I'll leave that up to you lot, it's Friday and it's pub time.........goodnight

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:


Are you sure about this? What's the rate paid versus the market rate? (Genuinely interested)

In reply to Donald82:

My system, commissioned December 2015, gets 11.3p/kWh generated plus 4.85p/kWh exported. But commission one now and you get 4.32p/kWh for generation and 4.9p/kWh for export.

Because it's paid in this odd way - one payment for everything you generate, and another just for what you export - it's hard to say exactly what is 'fair', and it depends hugely on the balance of self-consumption and export. This is why I'd personally prefer a system where you are simply paid the market rate for what you export. Plug my figures in (6000kWh generated, 5000kWh exported) and, under the new system, I'd get a total payment of £504 for exporting my 5000kWh, or about 10p/kWh. A smaller system with a greater percentage of self consumption would get a far greater payment for unit exported, which seems perverse.

What's the market rate - the typical cost of a kWh? A quick google tells me that, taking standing charges into account and assuming a fairly normal usage, it's about 13-14p. For me, because my usage is quite low, the standing charge is more significant so it's towards 15p. So, if I installed my system today, I would be forced to sell my energy at a rate that's around 25% below the market rate.

In reply to Moley:

Hilarious. Tell all this to Mr n Missus Bo'ness. Think they give a f+ck?

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:


Can anyone actually confirm that these very small domestic generators actually do 'export excess' to the grid.

I have long suspected that the cost of installing expensive equipment to sync the tiny trickles produced into the grid would not be cost effective.

My guess is that they just them a meter that runs backwards and give you a few bob( and a good feeling) when it does, but bugger all actually gets exported to the grid.

Am I totally wrong on this, and just a sceptical old bugger?

In reply to Moley:

Pub was great, a few hours of life not wasted (IMO), off fishing In the morning for a few days and suggest you all chill out and go climbing or walking or "whatever you do".

Life is all rosy after a couple of beers and a serious beasting from several million Welsh midges. Goodnight again

In reply to Moley:



I wonder if the midge who feed on your alcohol enriched blood, have a merry night too( and for free)
Are there perhaps groups of alcoholic midge that hang around outside pubs waiting for their next high.

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:

Ah, that's the retail market rate. You want the wholesale market rate. Which is much less. 5p ish. Also relevant is what larger green gen get after subsidy, which is about 8p for solar and onshore wind.

The system makes sense in that the gen payment is a subsidy for it being green, regardless of who uses it, and the export payment is what they pay you for the energy. It seems to be about the average wholesale market rate for elec.

In reply to Moley:

This is more of a reply to various comments I've read on this thread rather than to the original poster.

FIT changes: The new rates still allow a payback in around 8 years which is pretty good. The only real issue was the speed of the changes - but no one really expects the Tories to consider that sort of thing.

Reliability and pro nuclear: Nuclear is just the other end of the spectrum - it will produce day and night and not adapt to peak and low demand. A well distributed and varied set of renewable generators could provide a reliable baseload coverage especially if we continue to expand EU connectivity. + Nuclear is hideously expensive and come with a hist of major other issues.

Selfish: Any use of solar panels is offsetting GHG and air pollution which will pay for itself easily.

Tom in edin - green energy rates: Quick response generators already do get paid stupid money. Not all generators get paid the same, go to National Grid website and there'll be something explaining the process.

The Green subsidy is for landed rich people: In a way yes. It's a pity but the government seemed to think it was the best way of kickstarting the industry - and it worked - so while I'm not too pleased about how it benefited richer people I'm pleased that the industry has been growing.

Embedded energy: Panels that were installed 20 years ago are still operating at around 80% of original peak. The expectation is that they will be worth leaving up for around 40 years.

In reply to ad111:

Generally agree with everything you've said. Not at all sure that your payback estimate is right, though; on the back of a fag packet, it'd take my system more of 14 years to pay back under the new rates. Given that the point was to encourage an industry (and up till now it's been very successful) that's a bit too long. Anything over ten years and people are going to think there are other things they can do with their money.

Donald - from the point of view of someone looking to invest in microgeneration, the power companies make their profit by seeking to us at ~13p. Again, from the point of view of a small investor, that's the fair rate to trade at.

In reply to ad111:

I also agree largely with what you've said. On nuclear and renewables, if the renewables need storage or smart grid load shifting to deal with to-variable output, then you should also consider nuclear + storage to deal with its to-constant output. Still not cheap.


Yes. I've always seen the solar PV subsidy as a regressive tax for the benefit of the more wealthy. There's no denying that this and international equivalents have hammered down the production cost of solar PV now almost to the point of grid parity.

I suppose basing a system on greed makes it more likely to succeed...

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:


Suppliers buy electricity from generators in the wholesale market (for about 5p/kWh) and sell it to people in the retail market (for about 13p/kWh). The difference covers other costs plus their profits. You're arguing that you should be paid the retail market price because that's what you pay the supplier when you buy from it. That may seem fair to small investors, but it's a bit like a farmer arguing that because he buys groceries from Tesco at retail prices, Tesco should pay him retail prices for his crops.

(Suppliers and Tesco probably charge too much and pay to little, respectively, but they shouldn't be paying retail prices)

In reply to ad111:
Is nuclear's steady, unchanging nature not a positive, so long as you don't have too much?

Agree with everything else.