Having a FiT!

[Dave2002]

..it would be better to install solar water heating...

It is possible to do both. In an ideal world, solar water heating should be prioritised over PV electricity generation in the order of installation/upgrade, though this might not always be possible.

Unfortunately, the inability of most plumbers and heating "engineers" to do anything other than sell you yet another boiler, or yet another water tank (because the last one doesn't have the right inlets, outlets, coils etc.) means that unless you can time renovation and replacement with carefully planned installation of solar heating, then things can become tricky and/or expensive.

Having installed a Megaflo tank a few years ago in an attempt to solve a pressure problem (it didn't!) I'm not intending to have it thrown out and replaced by yet another tank so as to get solar heating.
It may not be necessary - there are solutions using efficient heat exchangers I believe - but I doubt whether most installers would know, or want to know about this. I also wonder if they get a bonus for all the extra kit they sell to replace the kit they take out.

[Frances_iom]

It is possible to do both. .

congrats on getting thread back on topic - I cannot see PV in northern Britain ever being cost effective at level of individual domestic dwellings, especially for the typical energy inefficient UK estate house - the amount of available energy, the cost of control etc and the availability (daylight + midsummer) when power demand is lower cannot justify the crazy FIT that was given - remember that this 'green' energy is paid for by all other domestic consumers whose bill is loaded accordingly. We need a much larger base load nuclear - there is no other 'green' scheme available as eg geothermal is not a feature of the UK and most hydo schemes are already built. A tidal barrage is also a possibility but all the twitchers would it seem prefer to freeze (or more likely see many more older people freeze) in the winter - one nasty feature of climate change is that the sunspot activity has significantly decreased - in past these have correlated with severe winters (the mini ice-ages when the Thames froze etc). One other advantage of tidal barrage schemes is as possible energy storage schemes allowing the highly variable wind schemes to be more useful (tho these really need a much larger capacity + geographic spread interconnect scheme (pan-European) to smooth out much of the variability

[Dave2002]

congrats on getting thread back on topic - I cannot see PV in northern Britain ever being cost effective at level of individual domestic dwellings, especially for the typical energy inefficient UK estate house - the amount of available energy, the cost of control etc and the availability (daylight + midsummer) when power demand is lower cannot justify the crazy FIT that was given - remember that this 'green' energy is paid for by all other domestic consumers whose bill is loaded accordingly. We need a much larger base load nuclear - there is no other 'green' scheme available as eg geothermal is not a feature of the UK and most hydo schemes are already built. A tidal barrage is also a possibility but all the twitchers would it seem prefer to freeze (or more likely see many more older people freeze) in the winter - one nasty feature of climate change is that the sunspot activity has significantly decreased - in past these have correlated with severe winters (the mini ice-ages when the Thames froze etc). One other advantage of tidal barrage schemes is as possible energy storage schemes allowing the highly variable wind schemes to be more useful (tho these really need a much larger capacity + geographic spread interconnect scheme (pan-European) to smooth out much of the variability

I suspect that in the northern parts of the UK that PV may indeed be a hopeless cause. It is slightly more viable in the south, and my understanding is that the PV panels are getting cheaper, and also more efficient. One issue which the UK seems reluctant to tackle is whether we need micro-generators, or large scale power plants, or both. Large scale plants would include nuclear and wind farms, and possibly also PV farms. Large scale plants will always introduce some distribution losses in the grid system, and there we have another problem, as my understanding is that the grid itself needs updating/replacing in some way. I don't know the details of that. Micro-generation might minimise losses, and shift some of the capital expenditure onto home owners - and - as you are also suggesting, to other consumers, but does it really make sense?

I'm not sure if a good analogy would be if everyone had their own water butts, and used these for drinking water and other purposes. I looked in mine a week or so back, and found a dead mouse in it! I don't think that individual water supplies are really viable, except in extreme circumstances.

Having lots of micro-units presents rather different management problems from a few very large scale plants. I can, however, see the attractiveness of roof mounted units if they are cheap enough, but as I think I already pointed out, turning off a few appliances will have as much overall effect as putting lots of panels on roofs. Even replacing inefficient equipment with new and more efficient equipment, which may not seem a green thing to do if you consider it means disposing of what seems like perfectly good stuff, can be more effective than putting PV arrays on roofs.

The worry I do have in the UK is that there is little real evidence of thinking and planning. If we are to have new power stations, when and where? If we are all to cut back on consumption, how is that to be managed? Some new devices are getting less power hungry - e.g some new TVs are now only about 25 Watts (for example small 19 inch LCDs) versus older larger LCD and Plasma models which can use 150 Watts and more. However, we can't rely on equipment becoming significantly more efficient, because consumers will simply go out an buy more stuff. Instead of 1 TV, they'll have TVs in every bedroom, and maybe the loo too!

Unfortunately it's not only governments and generating companies etc. that are not behaving appropriately. It seems to me that the majority of the great British public have little interest in doing things well - they will turn on the heating if it gets cold (don't blame them for that) but they won't voluntarily put insulation in lofts - and then they'll simply whinge about the rising costs of fuel. It's always someone else's problem, never theirs. I get particularly upset by the price that people are prepared to pay for large vehicles or high powered vehicles - clearly the cost of fuel is pretty insignificant to the many people I see on the roads these days, but similar issues also appy to housing and buildings.

[Gordon]

Interesting thread Dave, thanks. I don't have any quarrel with the idea that the FiT rates are perhaps too high at the start of this project but they do drop [as I understand it] at about 8.5%pa depending on which year a certified system joins the scheme so the benefit is high at the start [good incentive for early take up and the clock is already ticking away and we are now in its Year 2, Year 3 FiT drops to 39.6p] but the FiT is 18.8p per kWH in year 11, the end of it as published by DECC.

The sudden disruptive drop to about a half in Years 1 and 2 so soon will damp any enthusiasm for the green shift required by Kyoto obligations - which I think lie behind the scheme as a whole.

Surely a better scheme would be to apply an abatement rule at say 10% pa to the existing rates year on year rather than leave them at the year 1 and 2 rate [the current figure is 43.3p] all through the period of the scheme? This retains the early incentive but reduces the benefit over time which does not happen now. The average rate over many years will then be a lot les than 43.3p. It's not clear to me from the DECC web site exactly what happens in the scheme over a period of say 25 years. It seems that it stops at year 11 with no further payments after that?

[Dave2002]

Gordon

I think your idea about a gradual reduction is not unreasonable, but I gather that what is being proposed as a result of a government review initiated by Chris Huhne is brick wall cut to about 50% which kicks in the first or second week of December this year. This could well damp down interest considerably, and would certainly raise questions about "guarantees" of 25 years - if governments can change the rules with a stroke of the pen they can do so at any time. Indeed I know one early adopter who was very badly affected by a previous rate change when it was announced a year ago, as the feed in rates for pioneers who had been brave enough to try these systems out went down to below 10p. As he said, at that price he might just as well not have bothered, and saved the £14-15k he'd paid to have the system installed.

I do wonder if it's a usual government cock-up, or if someone has been doing homework and is actually noticing some interesting economic effects. One possible scenario is that if the feed in rates are cut, then the price of panels, many of which are made in Asia, and in particular China, could drop in a relatively short while, so that the overall costs would not in fact be too dissimilar to what they are now. This would presumably also have the effect of reducing our indebtedness to China slightly. I gather that what happened due to the German uptake of PVs a few years ago was that the price of PV panels stayed higher than expected, due to the increased demand. On the other hand, if China can sell the panels elsewhere, then what the UK does may be irrelevant.

It has long been held that the price of panels has to drop to or below $1 per Watt generated for them to be economic. Currently they are still above that, and the difference is made up by the UK government and consumers. You may say, why do it at all, but the theory is that it is necessary to create a demand and a market in order to drive the prices down. There are some reports that this is happening, and a notional break even point will occur around 2013 - http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...nel-price-drop There is still a danger that if the initiatives are damped down too much the expected reduction in price will not happen by 2013, and also that's only the point at which it may just - all things considered etc - break even. If there are failures in units, or there are other problems as yet not known about, the break even point may be further off.

If the review does suggest the fairly drastic change in feed-in rates, then prospective domestic installers of PV system have three possibilities to consider. 1. Beat the rate change and go for immediate installation: difficult, but not completely impossible. 2. Just accept the rate change and do it anyway. That'll depend on a particular owners view on return on investment. 3. Put off installing PV systems until the break even point, plus a bit has been reached (2013 or later, if everyone puts things off) as the PV systems might then be considered a worthwhile investment anyway.