New houses and solar panels

[spikey]

3 hours ago, Reorte said:

... it requires acknowledging the everlasting population growth is mad and destructive ... that low interest rates just drive up prices.

And that "help to buy" was actually "help to build/sell".

[phil_sutters]

One investment opportunity would be the development of solar panels that didn't look so hideous. It would probably need to be a whole roof solution and as has been said above the issue of life span would be a crucial but probably difficult factor. I am sure more people would consider solar if it was less of an eyesore. Doubtless it would initially be more costly but if it widened the market maybe it could make economic sense. Perhaps I am totally bonkers as my nearest and dearest often say.

[30801]

34 minutes ago, phil_sutters said:

One investment opportunity would be the development of solar panels that didn't look so hideous. It would probably need to be a whole roof solution and as has been said above the issue of life span would be a crucial but probably difficult factor. I am sure more people would consider solar if it was less of an eyesore. Doubtless it would initially be more costly but if it widened the market maybe it could make economic sense. Perhaps I am totally bonkers as my nearest and dearest often say.

 

Tesla are doing pretty much exactly what you describe.

https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/solarglass

[Reorte]

These as well:

http://www.gb-sol.co.uk/products/pvslates/default.htm

 

And I'm sure I saw some somewhere that looked very much like rougher slate too.

 

I see this as a pretty promising avenue because living in what I regard as an attractive old house I'd regard putting ordinary solar panels on the roof as the equivalent of drawing a moustache and glasses on a painting.

 

[Joseph_Pestell]

I remember travelling from Wolverhampton to Stafford a few years ago. The railway line runs between an estate of newish houses which all have roofs facing due south. A huge opportunity for solar completely missed.

 

I do accept that panels do not look good on old houses. But old houses mostly have big gardens where there would be space for ground-mounted panels. So how daft that you can put panels on your roof without planning consent but need it for panels in your garden.

[Din]

1 hour ago, phil_sutters said:

One investment opportunity would be the development of solar panels that didn't look so hideous. It would probably need to be a whole roof solution and as has been said above the issue of life span would be a crucial but probably difficult factor. I am sure more people would consider solar if it was less of an eyesore. Doubtless it would initially be more costly but if it widened the market maybe it could make economic sense. Perhaps I am totally bonkers as my nearest and dearest often say.

 

Closest thing we have to a real life Bond Villain Elon Musk and his Tesla company have been doing just that, with the solarglass product which is available now. He's also investing billions into the Gigafactories of his to ensure the industrial capacity will be there (eventually) to make it more cost effective.

 

It certainly looks far, far nicer than the slabs that are on some of my neighbour's rooves!

[Reorte]

35 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

I do accept that panels do not look good on old houses. But old houses mostly have big gardens where there would be space for ground-mounted panels. So how daft that you can put panels on your roof without planning consent but need it for panels in your garden.

If you don't mind turning your garden into an industrial installation.

 

Plenty of old houses without much in the way of a garden at all too.

[Andy Hayter]

1 hour ago, phil_sutters said:

One investment opportunity would be the development of solar panels that didn't look so hideous. It would probably need to be a whole roof solution and as has been said above the issue of life span would be a crucial but probably difficult factor. I am sure more people would consider solar if it was less of an eyesore. Doubtless it would initially be more costly but if it widened the market maybe it could make economic sense. Perhaps I am totally bonkers as my nearest and dearest often say.

 

I am sure you are right, but we start from a wrong starting point (except perhaps Tesla).  Panels are not something you put on the roof covering, they should be the roof covering.  That diminishes the cost of installation on new builds.

[Kingzance]

2 hours ago, jonny777 said:

 

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. 

See:
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
where current wind production is almost 35% at the time of posting. More worrying is that we still need more than 10% from the three Channel inter-connectors and total demand is only 36Gw - without Vlad's Gas being considered. If you assume all CCGT uses Vlad's Gas (quite likely, we are importing as much power as we are generating by wind - 35%. So much for energy security.

[Kingzance]

14 minutes ago, Andy Hayter said:

 

I am sure you are right, but we start from a wrong starting point (except perhaps Tesla).  Panels are not something you put on the roof covering, they should be the roof covering.  That diminishes the cost of installation on new builds.

In 2014 I visited NZ. There were adverts for a company that made solar panels that looked like zinc cladding (something quite common on their roofs). I enquired about getting it in the UK but the manufacturing company wasn't interested.

[jonny777]

14 minutes ago, Kingzance said:

See:
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
where current wind production is almost 35% at the time of posting. More worrying is that we still need more than 10% from the three Channel inter-connectors and total demand is only 36Gw - without Vlad's Gas being considered. If you assume all CCGT uses Vlad's Gas (quite likely, we are importing as much power as we are generating by wind - 35%. So much for energy security.

 

I see you have not read the notes properly. Around one third of wind generation is unmetered, and this shows up only as a drop in demand. 

 

Therefore those figures are not to be taken literally as they are shown there. 

 

Also, had you been monitoring that site for a number of years - you would know that a couple of nuclear power stations are currently shut down for an essential upgrade which will extend their working life a little longer. This is the reason for nuclear generation being 2GW lower than normal. 

[Kingzance]

5 minutes ago, jonny777 said:

 

I see you have not read the notes properly. Around one third of wind generation is unmetered, and this shows up only as a drop in demand. 

 

Therefore those figures are not to be taken literally as they are shown there. 

 

Also, had you been monitoring that site for a number of years - you would know that a couple of nuclear power stations are currently shut down for an essential upgrade which will extend their working life a little longer. This is the reason for nuclear generation being 2GW lower than normal. 

Please, the fact remains that we cannot and for a considerable time have not been able to satisfy our own demands. Small scale and unmetered wind generation that supplies local demand isn't monitored but neither is the demand it is supplying. Even with the more normal 2GW of power from restored nuclear, we would still be reliant upon almost a third of our electricity directly imported or coming from imported gas - this before we all have to use electric cars and electric trains remember. Whilst I would like to see all houses generating heat and power from their own domains, it is not going to solve the basic problem - too much demand due to too many people.

[jonny777]

You seem to be of the opinion that all the gas used in the UK is imported, when almost half of it is UK produced. I believe another 20-25% comes from Norway and the rest from Russia, so that nowhere near one third of our electricity is coming from imported anything. 

 

However, importing electricity from France and The Netherlands must be cheaper than using gas, otherwise some of the spare 20GW generating capacity by that fuel would have been used today. 

 

I'm sure the NG know what they are doing, and rarely pander to the scaremongering nonsense printed in the likes of the Daily Mail and Express at regular intervals. 

 

 

[admiles]

19 hours ago, Din said:

 

Closest thing we have to a real life Bond Villain Elon Musk and his Tesla company have been doing just that, with the solarglass product which is available now. He's also investing billions into the Gigafactories of his to ensure the industrial capacity will be there (eventually) to make it more cost effective.

 

It certainly looks far, far nicer than the slabs that are on some of my neighbour's rooves!

 

The problem with pretty much anything "Tesla" is that's it's totally out of the reach, financially, of the average person.

[Anglian]

22 hours ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

how daft that you can put panels on your roof without planning consent

 

If you live in a listed building you can't.

[petethemole]

We can't put solar panels on oue south-facing front roof due to covenants intended to preserve the appearance of the estate.  If the back roof faced south I'd have considered it.  In the early days of solar energy a friend built his own roof panels which included water heating as well as power. 

[royaloak]

On 08/02/2020 at 17:19, Nearholmer said:

and ban driving with less than two seats in the car occupied (Guy Fawkes would get loads of outings!).

So who wants to be my passenger when I am off to work at 04:00 or on my way home at 02:00?

 

Just had a thought, what about when the other half takes child 2 to school, she would be okay taking him but would be on her own on the way back home in a morning and back out in the afternoon?

Actually that one is fine, I can stay home on my day off and enjoy the piece and quiet! 

Edited February 10, 2020 by royaloak

[PatB]

9 hours ago, admiles said:

 

The problem with pretty much anything "Tesla" is that's it's totally out of the reach, financially, of the average person.

True, but what Tesla are proving very good at doing is to both prove that certain things are technically feasible in production form, and to project the impression that such things are sexy enough to be desirable to own and use. Think what the general image of electric cars was like before Tesla, for example. Having done so, it becomes far less risky for other manufacturers to develop less costly alternatives for the mass market. 

[admiles]

12 hours ago, PatB said:

True, but what Tesla are proving very good at doing is to both prove that certain things are technically feasible in production form, and to project the impression that such things are sexy enough to be desirable to own and use. Think what the general image of electric cars was like before Tesla, for example. Having done so, it becomes far less risky for other manufacturers to develop less costly alternatives for the mass market. 

 

Are Teslas "sexy"? Not in my opinion. I've looked at and test driven a couple of Teslas and they're awful. Appalling build quality and very tacky and bland looking.  If anything it's driven me further way from owning an EV.

Edited February 11, 2020 by admiles

[Reorte]

8 minutes ago, admiles said:

 

Are Teslas "sexy"? Not in my opinion. I've looked at and test driven a couple of Teslas and they're awful. Appalling build quality and very tacky and bland looking.  If anything it's driven me further way from owning an EV.

 

The closest I've been to that is having a look in one, and it put me off because I find "as high tech as possible" very offputting, but I think it would be hard to argue that their general public perception is rather more positive. Nothing appeals to everyone.

[monkeysarefun]

On 11/02/2020 at 00:18, admiles said:

 

The problem with pretty much anything "Tesla" is that's it's totally out of the reach, financially, of the average person.

 

 In Sth Australia at least, you can access a government subsidy of up to $6000 to install a Tesla powerwall. 

 

Additionally, following a major power outage following a storm in SA a couple of years ago   that the rightwing government falsely blamed on Sth Australias slightly-above-average dependance on renewables (despite the proven fact that it was due primarily  to infrasctructre - poles and wires  - being damaged by the storm), Tesla offered to build a major battery storage facility there in under 100 days or it would be free.

  

Tesla subsequently built the huge battery  - the largest lithium-ion battery in the world - in a remote area of South Australia in 2017. The battery system has the capacity of 100 megawatts and can store 129 megawatt-hours of energy from wind turbines nearby – enough to supply 30,000 homes for eight hours. It has recently been announced that it will be upgraded to 150MW in the near future 

 

[PatB]

54 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 In Sth Australia at least, you can access a government subsidy of up to $6000 to install a Tesla powerwall. 

 

Additionally, following a major power outage following a storm in SA a couple of years ago   that the rightwing government falsely blamed on Sth Australias slightly-above-average dependance on renewables (despite the proven fact that it was due primarily  to infrasctructre - poles and wires  - being damaged by the storm), Tesla offered to build a major battery storage facility there in under 100 days or it would be free.

  

Tesla subsequently built the huge battery  - the largest lithium-ion battery in the world - in a remote area of South Australia in 2017. The battery system has the capacity of 100 megawatts and can store 129 megawatt-hours of energy from wind turbines nearby – enough to supply 30,000 homes for eight hours. It has recently been announced that it will be upgraded to 150MW in the near future 

 

ISTR hearing that it is also performing well above expectations for grid stabilisation purposes, its output being effectively Instantly available, rather than being subject to a start up period like conventional generation. 

[admiles]

12 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 In Sth Australia at least, you can access a government subsidy of up to $6000 to install a Tesla powerwall. 

 

Additionally, following a major power outage following a storm in SA a couple of years ago   that the rightwing government falsely blamed on Sth Australias slightly-above-average dependance on renewables (despite the proven fact that it was due primarily  to infrasctructre - poles and wires  - being damaged by the storm), Tesla offered to build a major battery storage facility there in under 100 days or it would be free.

  

Tesla subsequently built the huge battery  - the largest lithium-ion battery in the world - in a remote area of South Australia in 2017. The battery system has the capacity of 100 megawatts and can store 129 megawatt-hours of energy from wind turbines nearby – enough to supply 30,000 homes for eight hours. It has recently been announced that it will be upgraded to 150MW in the near future 

 

 

Interesting but my point still stands I feel.

[letterspider]

On 09/02/2020 at 20:09, Kingzance said:

Please, the fact remains that we cannot and for a considerable time have not been able to satisfy our own demands. Small scale and unmetered wind generation that supplies local demand isn't monitored but neither is the demand it is supplying. Even with the more normal 2GW of power from restored nuclear, we would still be reliant upon almost a third of our electricity directly imported or coming from imported gas - this before we all have to use electric cars and electric trains remember. Whilst I would like to see all houses generating heat and power from their own domains, it is not going to solve the basic problem - too much demand due to too many people.

 

Smart meters are intended to do several things

 

1/ Measure the amount of household generation and (under)pay you for it based on demand pricing before selling it on at a mark up

2/ Measure the amount of household use and (over)charge you by on demand pricing

3/ By a combination of the above reduce electricity consumption by severely punishing the consumer.

 

The greatest consumer by far is industry and cooling appears to be a massive problem which may be solved by this clever technological fix explained in this TED Talk here - enjoy! 

[letterspider]

On 09/02/2020 at 18:28, Joseph_Pestell said:

I remember travelling from Wolverhampton to Stafford a few years ago. The railway line runs between an estate of newish houses which all have roofs facing due south. A huge opportunity for solar completely missed.

 

I do accept that panels do not look good on old houses. But old houses mostly have big gardens where there would be space for ground-mounted panels. So how daft that you can put panels on your roof without planning consent but need it for panels in your garden.

 

It is interesting you mention lost opportunities but there may also be 'more sinister' reasons.

 

When solar tariffs were more generous, many local councils in London saw the opportunity to use the massive asset of space on the homes that they owned and began to install solar panels which can often be seen installed in identical rows along entire streets in some areas.

This seems to be a win - win situation for the councils and people, particularly when installing upon the roofs of schools - saving money and indeed often earning money.

 

The problem (as I had it explained to me by an installer), is that central government (at that time Tory) retrospectively applied a new regulation which had a negative impact upon the (mainly Labour) councils, which was that as the councils were now generating a very healthy surplus of electricity (and FIT) they were now obliged to be registered as Electricity Generating Companies.

 

Whether this was (deliberately?) intended to be either unworkable, unprofitable or both it would certainly go some way to explaining why you suddenly see solar panel installations stopping abruptly half way along the street on many  council properties around here.