New houses and solar panels

[spikey]

Around here, the pressure is on to build lots of new houses, despite the infrastructure being scarce able to cope with what we already have.  And as I understand it, everybody's going to be driving an electric car before long, despite nobody quite knowing where the electricity needed to charge the batteries in all those cars is going to come from.

 

Why then are none of these new homes being built with solar panels on the roofs?  Would it not have been prudent to make them mandatory? 

[Trainshed Terry]

I agree with you on that solor panels should be mandatory in new builds, along with high qutput charging points for all these electric cars that will require charging.

 

But most companys will not do it as they say it comes down to cost. the cheaper they can build houses for the bigger there bottom line will be. 

 

Profitys are more importaint for the share holders.

 

Terry.

[Butler Henderson]

In addition national planning legislation is weighted heavily against the Council determining the application doing anything which might achieve such. In  a nutshell if the Council does not have five years worth of housing land approved its in deep quicksand trying to say no to anything . If the council does have the requisite housing land then it has a better chance of turning something down or negotiating improvements but even then would need to have a planning policy that required such and any local plan is ultimately approved by the Secretary of State of a Government who many believe are in the pocket of the housebuilders, so any such policy is likely to have wiggle round built into it allowing the poor hard up national housebuilders to get out of such or alternatively agree to provide such if the purchaser wants it , listing it as an option costing ££££ on a house than already costs £££££££

[JJGraphics]

15 minutes ago, spikey said:

Around here, the pressure is on to build lots of new houses, despite the infrastructure being scarce able to cope with what we already have.  And as I understand it, everybody's going to be driving an electric car before long, despite nobody quite knowing where the electricity needed to charge the batteries in all those cars is going to come from.

 

Why then are none of these new homes being built with solar panels on the roofs?  Would it not have been prudent to make them mandatory? 

 

When is anything handled by Local or Central Government, especially to do with Planning going to incorporate joined-up thinking?

 

John

[Anglian]

1 hour ago, spikey said:

as I understand it, everybody's going to be driving an electric car before long

That's a very long way off. Currently they are saying that no new petrol/diesel engined cars can be sold after 2035. That might change. Right now electric cars are too expensive for the mass market. I actually think by the time we get to 2035 it's possible that new petrol or diesel cars will still be sold but only if they are very low-emissions types so this 'all electric' will actually be phased in over a decade or more.

In the next 15 years we may discover that the electric car actually isn't all that green after all. Rare metals needed for batteries and what about their life expectancy and disposal etc etc? I currently drive a 27 year old petrol engined car and whilst I know cars of that age aren't exactly common, if only electric cars can be sold in the UK after 2035 it'll take perhaps 10 years for them to become the most common type on the road, say by 2045. Then of course there might be companies springing up to import nearly new petrol engined cars from abroad, to exploit a loop hole in the legislation, all of course depending on demand.

We might end up like Cuba and be running around in classic petrol engined cars, no VED or MOT required ; )

 

Modern cars built now might last say, ten years, due to the complex electronics that tends to kill them off by being uneconomical to repair but really if we were actually going green the whole design philosophy need to change. New cars should really be built to last say 30 years. I don't have any figures to hand but I should think the process of building a new car is anything but green, relative to keeping an existing vehicle on the road and even if it does kick out a fair bit of CO2.

 

Another challenge for the government will then be deciding how to replace all the tax that is currently generated by petrol and diesel sales. Do they put a new purchase tax on all electric vehicles making them even more expensive? The situation might even turn out to be just like the diesel debacle where the government incentivise buying so called 'greener vehicles' only to then turn around as say 'we got it wrong and actually we are now against such engine types.'

Then of course there are the constant advances in petrol engine technology giving better and better fuel economy which might slow the uptake of mainstream electric vehicles and which currently the manufacturers are still continuing with.

 

I don't think the electric car is going to be quite as rapidly revolutionary as perhaps currently thought. At the moment for example, the technology has been jumped on by luxury brands looking for extreme performance at any cost rather than to build daily runabouts down to a price. As the OP points out the infrastructure hasn't been thought out at all. How are 100 people living in a road of terraced houses or a block of flats supposed to all charge their cars at night and who unpicks the charging lead spaghetti in the morning? The local councils will all have 'elf and safety apoplexy over the trip hazards caused by all electric cables, etc etc.
 

Edited February 8, 2020 by Anglian

[Nearholmer]

If I were a law/policy maker (relax, you're safe - well, safe from my megalomania, not that of .........; I'm not), I would be very wary of obliging solar on all new houses, because the long-term durability of such kit and its fixings is not yet proven, and obliging it might saddle home-owners with a liability that they then take a case against the government to recover the cost of.  20 000 houses in need of significant roofing repairs at government expense might be costly and embarrassing.

 

Added to which it might (I don't know) be better from an energy perspective to oblige yet-better insulation. Or, to pass a law against buying stuff you don't really need, or making journeys that aren't necessary, or turning your thermostat up past 18 degrees, or any number of other things that everyone used to manage very well without as recently as twenty five years ago.

 

Oh, and ban cars greater than a certain size/weight per seat, and ban driving with less than two seats in the car occupied (Guy Fawkes would get loads of outings!).

 

Ban houses bigger than N metres square per person.

 

There are oodles of effective, but faintly repressive, measures that could be applied, but won't be, until its really, really, really too late.

 

 

[spikey]

17 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

 .... Oh, and ban cars greater than a certain size/weight per seat ...

 

Funnily enough, as I cycled up the lane only yesterday I spotted an enormous white 4 x 4 parked ahead and was really struck by how wide the thing was.  "Why on earth does that need to be so wide?" thinks I.  Then as I drew almost level with it, out the adjacent house came the driver and her passenger.  Tempting though it was to stop and see just how much the car sat down on its springs when they got in, I passed on the opportunity - but at least now I understand why if they did a remake of the original Mini or better still the Austin A35, it would have very limited appeal.

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Ban people greater than a certain size/weight?

 

Possibly a bit too repressive, but petite people must consume less energy in multiple ways, surely?

 

 

 

 

Edited February 8, 2020 by Nearholmer

[duncan]

Not as daft as you think, many small cars can be overloaded by 4 obese persons

[Andy Hayter]

3 hours ago, spikey said:

 

 

Why then are none of these new homes being built with solar panels on the roofs?  Would it not have been prudent to make them mandatory? 

 

One of our local heating and electrics companies has taken solar panels off its advertised range of products here in the South of France and so potentially more effective than in the UK.

 

The reason is that the senior engineer calculated that at the current levels of power subsidy, interest rates and installation costs, if you took out a loan to install them (think part of your mortgage cost), they become cost effective after 20 years.  The cell life has an average life of 15 years.

 

We still have some way to go, but things are moving forward and what you propose might well make sense in a few years - just not now.  

[philip-griffiths]

The UK is required to comply with the 2010 Energy Performance of Buildings Directive before the end of the year. One requirement of the EPBD is a mechanism on each dwelling to charge an electric car. This is causing a headache - how do flats/houses without off street parking comply? how is this complied with, building regs or planning permission?   The HMG consultation which closed yesterday dropped big hints towards photovoltaic panels being essential to meet the new standards, but again raised the issue of apartments and the reduced roof area per dwelling compared to a house. Of course PV / solar thermal panels would require us to orientate houses with 15 deg of south and that would require a big rethink over development layouts - it was proved in research undertaken in Milton Keynes during the 1980s that it is possible, but it would require developers to maximise solar access instead of maximum dwellings. 

 

 

[Kingzance]

In writing a local Neighbourhood Plan for our previous community, we were told that the inclusion of any requirement to think about roof alignment to maximise solar gain on new builds would cause the plan to be rejected by the Local Planning Authority.

As for the shift to electric, the UK currently imports around 9% of its electricity through sub-sea inter connectors and further it imports much of its gas through sub-sea pipelines. We simply consume far more energy than we have and switching to electric vehicles, like electric trains, banning wood fires or gas boilers is only going to exacerbate an already dangerous dependency. There are too many people on these islands demanding too much!

[Enterprisingwestern]

16 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Ban houses bigger than N metres square per person.

 

Ok until a single bloke meets a woman and has kids, at least two moves into specifically tailored accommodation required!

 

Mike.

[jonny777]

18 hours ago, Trainshed Terry said:

I agree with you on that solor panels should be mandatory in new builds, along with high qutput charging points for all these electric cars that will require charging.

 

 

 

Not just mandatory solar panels on all new houses; but a small vertical axis wind generator on the roof, and hollow nesting bat/bird bricks incorporated in the walls. 

[dvdlcs]

18 hours ago, spikey said:

 

Funnily enough, as I cycled up the lane only yesterday I spotted an enormous white 4 x 4 parked ahead and was really struck by how wide the thing was.  "Why on earth does that need to be so wide?" thinks I.

 

That is something that I have noticed, when on occasion I have seen different generations of the same vehicle (e.g. Toyota Hilux) side-by-side on the road. The big difference is the width of the newer vehicle. Somebody at work said it was to do with all the safety gubbins that has been added to each new iteration of the vehicle.

 

Something I noticed too when I changed cars last year - from a 2005 Nissan Pulsar (Almera in the UK) to a 2018 Hyundai i30. Those parking bays just aren't as wide as they used to be...

[dvdlcs]

A few years ago I had a house built in Western Australia, somewhere you think might be ideal for a solar installation, and when I asked the builder about incorporating a system into the house design they said no, not within their remit. I was of course free to have an external contractor retrofit a system afterwards, out of my own pocket (rather than adding the cost to the mortgage).

 

So not just in the UK. And yes, I believe that solar installations should be standard - unless there is a good reason for them not to be - with the recognition that panels etc. may not last as long as the structure on which they are resting on. But then the gas boiler, hot water tank etc. that are provided with the house are not expected to last as long as the bricks and mortar...

[Nearholmer]

2 hours ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

Ok until a single bloke meets a woman and has kids, at least two moves into specifically tailored accommodation required!

That’s the sort of thing, and down-size again or take lodgers when children move out.

 

My point is that there are stack of ways of achieving energy economy that we don’t use.

 

Our approach to life is heavily driven by desires rather than needs, and it is costing us dearly.

 

And before anyone says it, I’m just as bad for it as everyone else.

 

 

[Andy Hayter]

26 minutes ago, dvdlcs said:

 And yes, I believe that solar installations should be standard - unless there is a good reason for them not to be - with the recognition that panels etc. may not last as long as the structure on which they are resting on. But then the gas boiler, hot water tank etc. that are provided with the house are not expected to last as long as the bricks and mortar...

 

My post earlier was not about the panels not lasting the lifetime of the property or even the roof of the structure, but rather not lasting the lifetime of the debt incurred in buying and installing them.  In other words you will still be paying for them after they cease to work.

[spikey]

14 hours ago, philip-griffiths said:

...  it would require developers to maximise solar access instead of maximum dwellings.

 

Hmmm.  I wonder which they'll do first - that or build genuinely affordable housing.

 

44 minutes ago, dvdlcs said:

 

... Somebody at work said it was to do with all the safety gubbins that has been added to each new iteration of the vehicle.

 

No doubt that's the marketing spin, but my money's on the truth being more to do with the size of the buyers' backsides.

Edited February 9, 2020 by spikey
additional quote

[Kingzance]

1 minute ago, Andy Hayter said:

 

My post earlier was not about the panels not lasting the lifetime of the property or even the roof of the structure, but rather not lasting the lifetime of the debt incurred in buying and installing them.  In other words you will still be paying for them after they cease to work.

Unless the UK’s energy market is reformed, all risk and cost is loaded on the domestic user with the generators being shielded from loss. I give you the guaranteed strike price for the Hinckley Point C station and the farce that is Smart Meters as two very good examples. Elsewhere, there was / is a strand on distribution losses. 
Solar PV reduces the exposure of the domestic user to however governments chose to support the profits of the generators and distributors. It is of course far better if you buy your system rather than make your roof available to a solar installer who pays you a penance for it whilst creaming off the subsidy. A jump forward would be to include compact but long lasting energy storage.

Solar thermal is probably more effective at reducing your domestic energy costs!

[spikey]

In the context of electricity supply and demand, I commend readers to https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/homepage?&_k=oo3fzj

which right now, with gales all over the kingdom, shows windfarms producing 29% of the nation's output compared to the 28% produced by the burning of Vladimir's gas ...

[Reorte]

44 minutes ago, spikey said:

No doubt that's the marketing spin, but my money's on the truth being more to do with the size of the buyers' backsides.

Side impact protection does add quite a bit to the necessary thickness of a car.

Quote

Hmmm.  I wonder which they'll do first - that or build genuinely affordable housing.

To make any housing "affordable" it has to be built to really scraping the barrel standards - do we really want to be building really bad houses rather than tackle the underlying causes of insanely high prices? But doing the latter is politically difficuly since it requires acknowledging the everlasting population growth is mad and destructive, and that low interest rates just drive up prices.

[PatB]

3 hours ago, dvdlcs said:

A few years ago I had a house built in Western Australia, somewhere you think might be ideal for a solar installation, and when I asked the builder about incorporating a system into the house design they said no, not within their remit. I was of course free to have an external contractor retrofit a system afterwards, out of my own pocket (rather than adding the cost to the mortgage).

 

So not just in the UK. And yes, I believe that solar installations should be standard - unless there is a good reason for them not to be - with the recognition that panels etc. may not last as long as the structure on which they are resting on. But then the gas boiler, hot water tank etc. that are provided with the house are not expected to last as long as the bricks and mortar...

Yeah, but WA only realised roof insulation might be a good idea ~10 years ago, and still hasn't really caught on to the concept of double glazing, so it's not really a place known for innovation in energy efficiency. 

[eastglosmog]

22 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

................................. Or, to pass a law against buying stuff you don't really need,

.........................................

 

 

No more model railways, then?

[jonny777]

3 hours ago, spikey said:

In the context of electricity supply and demand, I commend readers to https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/homepage?&_k=oo3fzj

which right now, with gales all over the kingdom, shows windfarms producing 29% of the nation's output compared to the 28% produced by the burning of Vladimir's gas ...

 

And, you have to remember that many of the turbines will not be operating at full capacity due to the danger of damage caused by too rapid rotation. You may find that as the wind speeds decrease a little, the electricity generated will increase again.