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‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

euronews.com

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Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#51

Post by pjc50 »

throw0101c wrote: post #48
pjc50 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you've bought the panel, unlike oil, that's it. The panel doesn't remember its national origin.

> Once you've bought the panel, unlike oil, that's it. The panel doesn't remember its national origin. Until there's a geopolitical event occurs and your supply chain gets cut off so any expansion, warranty, or replacement units cannot arrive, so you're stuck at the your current level of deployment (which may or may not be sufficient for your needs).

That's certainly an issue, but much, much less critical than gas.

Are people really suggesting the opposite: that the renewables transition should not occur, and the EU should continue to burn gas from more and more desperate sources, until it can be onshored?

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#52

Post by mytailorisrich »

stuaxo wrote: post #39
tialaramex wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can see spot prices at the top of grid.iamkate.com for example. It would be nice to have some belated insight into how the bids look. Like maybe a few random hours released from a week ago? Oh, and it's half hours. You can't buy or sell five minutes of electricity, just half hours, which is why your smart meter also thinks in half hours. 48 periods per day.

Wow, £100 per MWh and 12% is fossil fuels in the mix at 10:48am ... a bit more Solar adoption and maybe that 12% could go away, it's morning after all.

It's windy (41% wind). Solar is not great all day long and all year long in the UK (8% solar at the moment, it is a cloudy day).

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#53

Post by pjc50 »

glimshe wrote: post #47
pjc50 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you've bought the panel, unlike oil, that's it. The panel doesn't remember its national origin.

And panels last forever, ensuring that Europe won't have to deal with panel manufacturers ever again.

Warranty lives tend to be in the 20+ year range and potential lifespan even higher, so .. kinda?

By coincidence I had my solar panels installed round about the time construction started on Hinkley Point C. They've already paid back their installation cost. I don't expect to replace them any time soon.

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#54

Post by pjc50 »

RealityVoid wrote: post #50
friendzis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Yes there are times when solar doesn't produce energy, but there are also times where it OVERproduces. When solar OVERproduces you have to literally pay someone to consume that energy, most probably wind farms, which could be producing energy instead. So you pay actually twice. When the solar underproduces, you need to bring in alternative sources, but those now have to c…

> When solar OVERproduces you have to literally pay someone to consume that energy, most probably wind farms, which could be producing energy instead. You don't have to do this with solar, you can just disconnect the panel and have it go a bit hotter. For producers that have a long-ish bringup time, yes, you might need to do this at time.

The situation is slightly complicated by dispatch order, and domestic solar isn't usually dispatchable at all. Grid-scale farms are.

Wind farms don't consume energy, but there is a real issue with how often they have to be "curtailed" (paid to turn off). That is to a great extent due to issues with grid connectivity between Scotland and the rest of the UK, which are (slowly) being worked on.

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#55

Post by ZeroGravitas »

pjc50 wrote: post #8

Fairly boilerplate article, but the bit that is news is the UK balcony solar permitting. Better longread: https://solarenergyconcepts.co.uk/post/plug-in-solar-uk/ Government press release with a long list of pull quotes: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-make-plug-i... (I note that in the alternate universe where Ed Miliband became PM because he didn't eat a bacon sandwich, we could have had this a dec…

He also removed the effective ban on onshore wind construction that was introduced a month after he lost the election, restarting after a decade of lost opportunity.

This Trump-level idiocy that is just never mentioned, even as people blame the gas burned in england on windy days as a cost of wind curtailment, when the curtailment is more a like a third of the cost. Burning gas to power people who chose not to build turbines is the other 2/3rds.

In the alternate world that is tens of billions of gas costs avoided to date and tens of billions more in future.

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#56

Post by zowie_howie »

metalman wrote: post #5

to answer the first question in the article "Many consumers want to know how long it will take them to make back the upfront costs of solar" my answer is that the payback is imediate, right from the first moment watching as energy is generated out of thin air, and the sudden relief from getting off the energy angst missery-go-round, and the sheer borring inertness of solar pv as it does the thing with zero detectable…

Is it immediate? Sure, there is satisfaction that you are using 'free' electricity. But it does have an upfront cost. I calculated that it would take over 11 years to recoup the investment based on our current usage. Given we already get cheap night-time rates to charge the car and run appliances, it is hard to justify.

Like many UK houses, we have gas central heating too. I guess if we had a battery too (more investment) then we could switch to using electric oil-filled radiators, though they would not heat the whole house. And we could install a hot water tank.

I guess for new builds there is a real opportunity, but for an existing household I'm struggling to see how it works - and I want it to!

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#57

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #10
dust42 wrote: post #6

I once read an article that in Berlin the sewage system is flushed with fresh water because too many people have installed water saving toilet flushers. So plenty of people bought these water savers and now the price of water has gone up because the water that is directly flushed needs to be paid too. The 'balcony power stations' are the same thing. They get subsidised, and you even get a fixed kWh price when pushing…

I have the curse of having an mom who was a smart CPA. All this stuff root top solar, plug in solar costs at least twice what utility solar. And only makes sense when you have messed up rate setting schemes that enable arbitrage. But it's not what you want if you want to get the most GW connected as fast as possible. Like the requirements that new houses have roof top solar. You could get twice as much if you just in…

US costs for rooftop solar (at build time or retrofit) are misleadingly high.

In the EU build time solar roofs overlaps with utility costs but up to 1.5x , and retrofit is say 2x.

To give context. In the EU adding solar to new homes is cost competitive with running existing(!) nuclear plants. In the US only utility scale is competitive with that.

Retrofit rooftop solar is about the same as new nuclear in the US, retrofit is 25% cheaper than new nuclear in the EU.

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#58

Post by mytailorisrich »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #55
pjc50 wrote: post #8

Fairly boilerplate article, but the bit that is news is the UK balcony solar permitting. Better longread: https://solarenergyconcepts.co.uk/post/plug-in-solar-uk/ Government press release with a long list of pull quotes: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-make-plug-i... (I note that in the alternate universe where Ed Miliband became PM because he didn't eat a bacon sandwich, we could have had this a dec…

He also removed the effective ban on onshore wind construction that was introduced a month after he lost the election, restarting after a decade of lost opportunity. This Trump-level idiocy that is just never mentioned, even as people blame the gas burned in england on windy days as a cost of wind curtailment, when the curtailment is more a like a third of the cost. Burning gas to power people who chose not to build…

At the same time they are banning wind turbines leaders (Chinese companies) from opening factories in the UK... [1][2]

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c995xjxk97mo

[2] https://www.energyvoice.com/insights/energy-opinion/594763/m...

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#59

Post by pjc50 »

zowie_howie wrote: post #56
metalman wrote: post #5

to answer the first question in the article "Many consumers want to know how long it will take them to make back the upfront costs of solar" my answer is that the payback is imediate, right from the first moment watching as energy is generated out of thin air, and the sudden relief from getting off the energy angst missery-go-round, and the sheer borring inertness of solar pv as it does the thing with zero detectable…

Is it immediate? Sure, there is satisfaction that you are using 'free' electricity. But it does have an upfront cost. I calculated that it would take over 11 years to recoup the investment based on our current usage. Given we already get cheap night-time rates to charge the car and run appliances, it is hard to justify. Like many UK houses, we have gas central heating too. I guess if we had a battery too (more invest…

I don't think it ever makes sense to switch to electric radiators. It might make sense to switch to a heatpump, but you need to avoid being hugely overcharged by the installers and there are flow issues if you have 8mm piping.

This ROI calculator looks reasonable: https://ukcalculator.com/solar-panel-roi-calculator.html - note that it subtracts the install cost for you, so any case where the final figure is positive is profitable. But of course that depends on whether grid prices go up or down in the next decade ...

Re: ‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms

#60

Post by mytailorisrich »

watwut wrote: post #9
dust42 wrote: post #6

I once read an article that in Berlin the sewage system is flushed with fresh water because too many people have installed water saving toilet flushers. So plenty of people bought these water savers and now the price of water has gone up because the water that is directly flushed needs to be paid too. The 'balcony power stations' are the same thing. They get subsidised, and you even get a fixed kWh price when pushing…

> I once read an article that in Berlin the sewage system is flushed with fresh water because too many people have installed water saving toilet flushers. So plenty of people bought these water savers and now the price of water has gone up because the water that is directly flushed needs to be paid too. What is this supposed to mean? You flush less water, therefore water price is more expensive, because flushed water…

Perhaps that sewers need a certain volume of water flowing in order to function correctly. If that water does not come from toilet flushes, etc then they pump water into them to compensate.
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