My solar power system mirrors exactly what we face by trying to rely on renewables alone.
The other day I received through the door a package about a proposed 340 acre (138 hectare) solar farm a mile from my house. Apparently, it’ll produce “49.9MW” (sic) and meet the needs of 16,000 homes. What? Even on a cloudy day? It goes on to mention that the projected life of the solar farm is 40 years after which the land will allegedly be reinstated. Who’s going to enforce that? More to the point, where will the 49.9MW come from after it’s been dismantled?
As for the people running the company, in 40 years’ time they’ll either be dead or done a runner.
The company claims to be “contributing to the world’s move to 100% renewable energy”. 100%? That tells me they don’t even understand their own technology, despite also being apparently unaware of what’s going on in India and China.
Actually, I’m all for renewables. Since sunshine is free it’s insane not to take advantage of it. But one has to be realistic – and tell the truth.
In these pages before I’ve mentioned in passing that I have a solar panel system. I noticed that one of the readers of this site immediately accused me of taking advantage of taxpayer-funded subsidies. Not so. I paid for the whole lot and the batteries out of my own pocket. I did not receive so much as a brass farthing from the taxpayer.
But the point of this Net Zero-oriented piece is to explain how my system depicts perfectly the shortfalls of renewables unless one is prepared to accept a completely different type of energy usage and standard of living (which I wrote about the other day).
What I mean by this is that my domestic setup mirrors perfectly the problem this country faces by trying to eliminate the need for power generated by non-renewable sources.
The first downside is that the panels and batteries cost a considerable amount of money. We’ve forked out about £12,000 for a nominal 4 kW system (in practice it does not do better than 3.7 kWh) and four 2.4 kWh (usable capacity 2.2 kWh) batteries. We were lucky: a) we had the money saved which at the time was earning nothing, and b) we happen to have an outbuilding at the end of the garden which is invisible to the street and faces SWS, which is almost perfect.
Obviously, many people are not going to be in that position in either or both cases.
However, our solar panels have paid for themselves in just a few years because we use a fraction of the grid power we used to need, and we get paid for what we generate. Though, I might point out that we get paid only about one sixth of what the utility company sells the power we haven’t used ourselves to other people for.
Still, it’s better than a kick in the teeth. Unlike EVs and heat pumps, solar panels make electricity, not use it (apart from a nominal amount lost through heat in the inverters and resistance).
We had the panels fitted first. But they were like filling a bath using a tap with uncontrollable variable flow and no plug. It became patently apparent very quickly that batteries were going to be essential. We had them installed too, at first two and then upped the system to four.
Result? We probably generate and store about 80% of our needs over the year. But here’s the rub. We have an oil boiler. There are only two of us in our mid-60s. Our children have all grown up and gone. When they come to stay it’s almost impossible to match their needs, especially those with children of their own. They expect to have the kettle on every five minutes as well as cooking without cessation (we live in the countryside, so the hob and oven are electric), their small children have to be roasted alive all night because children of their generation apparently expire at anything below 20°C, the washing machine has to be on constantly, and they have countless appliances.
Our own needs don’t include a heat pump or charging an EV. If we had either, we’d be incapable of doing more than reducing our dependence on the grid by a small margin. In the eight years since we had the panels installed, the system has generated 36,000 kWh. In the same period of time a heat pump would have used up approximately 84,000 kWh (I had a supplier provide me with an estimate). So, I’d have saved 43% only of a heat pump’s needs and not had any solar electricity for all our other appliances. In fact, the position would have been worse since we’d mostly have needed to use the heat pump when the ability to charge is at its lowest.
My 36,000 kWh over eight years works out at an average of 375 kWh per month or 12.3 kWh per day, but of course in reality that’s extremely unevenly distributed. In the winter I’d be lucky to manage half that which is why there is no hope of covering a heat pump at that time of year.
One website estimates that a little under 12 kWh per day is required to charge an EV (or 353.3 kWh per month). But that’s only for just under 12 miles driving per day! That, incidentally, is 3.3 miles per kWh which means a return trip for me to London would use up 75 kWh of electricity. I’m not concerned about the cost here, which varies considerably, but the practicality of charging the car from a domestic renewable system.
If our sons ever get EVs and expect to charge them at our expense when they turn up, the situation will be even worse. There’s a Net Zero protocol no-one seems to have thought about. Suppose you have a dinner party? I can just imagine the guests all coming out with ‘you don’t mind if I plug in while we’re eating, do you? I don’t want to sit at a public charger for 45 minutes after midnight.’ No-one ever expected the host to produce a couple of five-gallon cans of petrol, largely because ‘proper cars’ have a decent range and you can actually buy fuel at petrol stations, but you can bet that from hereon there’ll be plenty of people who expect to plug in at their friends’ and relatives’ houses.
Back to the panels. The thing is that renewables are all about diminishing returns. To improve on my 80% self-sufficiency I’d have to double the whole system (and therefore the cost) and that still wouldn’t be enough for a heat pump in winter or to charge an EV. Given their requirements, I’d need to triple the system, assuming I even had a place for the additional panels and batteries.
Not only that, but I also wouldn’t – indeed, still couldn’t – get to 100%. The reason is simple. I could install 1,000 solar panels but they won’t make the sun shine in the middle of the night, any more than filling the North Sea with wind turbines will make a gale blow when it’s a flat calm without so much as a gentle breeze (also incidentally foxing any wave power generators).
If the sun isn’t shining, then it isn’t possible to charge my batteries either. On the day I’m writing this (October 13th 2023), it has rained all day almost without cessation and the sky has been battleship grey. The nicely charged batteries of the evening before were wiped out by lunchtime and that was without even putting the washing machine on. I might point out that the batteries don’t fully discharge – they cannot be allowed to. Around 30% of the charge cannot be used.
And we’re not even into winter yet. Where I live, I’m lucky to get six hours’ sunshine a day in December and January. Further north it’s even worse. The very time of year more power is needed.
Even on good days we’ve had to modify our behaviour. It’s not possible to run more than one or two major appliances even at the best of times without having to draw from the grid. That means the washing machine in the morning, the dishwasher in the afternoon and preferably only using the kettle in between. The batteries have improved this, but not entirely. Using any of them after dark is a no-no or else we won’t get through the night and into the morning until the sun is high enough to start recharging.
That’s why a domestic setup like mine mirrors exactly what will happen with the national Net Zero push for renewables. You can only get so far towards 100%, but you cannot get there, and it’s much harder to match demand with supply. With the technology currently available it simply is not possible to manufacture and install the storage capacity to provide the backup during the night or on bad weather days always to be able to match potential peak episodes of demand.
Therein lies one of the obvious great falsehoods about Net Zero and renewables. There will always be dependence on sources of energy that are not dependent on variables like the sun and the wind. The vast majority of the population will be wholly dependent on the grid, just as they always have been – but it will be a very different type of grid.
Almost everyone with their own renewable source of power will need to turn to the grid sometimes, just as I have to, and if the grid is wholly or nearly wholly dependent on renewables, then the grid will not be able to cope. If I am forced into buying an EV and a heat pump then despite my system I’ll be forced to draw far more from the grid than I am now.
Unless that is, we are being deliberately led into a world where being accustomed to your refrigerators and freezers switching off, not being able to cook or charge your car, or run your heat pump, at least some of the time is almost inevitable. With smart meters and smart appliances being rolled out, that’s an entirely feasible prospect.
That likelihood is also being exacerbated by driving us all into a world with only one type of power: electrical and only to be generated by renewables. That means no competition and no choice, and we all know where that leads.
Right now, many of the public support Net Zero, but more than a few believe Net Zero means absolute zero. I wonder how long that will last when their electric hobs cut out, when their cars stand idle on the drive and their food rots in the freezers. Or when on Christmas Day in the dead of winter there’s no question of the nation cooking its Xmas dinners as well as switching on the kettle and charging all your adult children’s cars at the same time.
As it happens, mains electricity only arrived in my village in the early 1960s. There are residents here still alive who remember those days, along with no running water or mains sewage. It is of course possible to live without the levels of power consumption we have become used to.
The question for the Government and those eco-activists bent on imposing major changes in our way of life is who will vote for giving up what they’re used to when the reality sinks in?
We are only playing at Net Zero with a deadline of 2050. It’s a dream which rides on the back of the fact that for the moment most of us have petrol or diesel cars and we still have nuclear power stations and others that use fossil fuels. The solutions may come in time, but there’s a huge distance to go before realistic and affordable levels of power storage become possible.
And I still have no idea what will happen to my solar panels when they pack in, and the batteries when they reach the end of their lives (estimated life is 10-plus years for each battery).
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“I paid for the whole lot and the batteries out of my own pocket. I did not receive so much as a brass farthing from the taxpayer.”
Ah, but Guy, you did receive money from the taxpayer, because the manufacturers of all that stuff received taxpayer money to help them make it all. You didn’t pay full price.
How can you be so naive?
If you did pay full price, because the manufacturers didn’t pass on their “savings” to you, then you’re not just naive, you’re also a mug.
Otherwise, an OK article. Thanks for helping to expose the ridiculous, unscientific, corrupted nature of the Net Zero boondoggle.
Another downticker has crawled out of bed… care to elaborate? Or maybe it’s Guy, about to present his suppliers’ accounts!
Anybody in the world can down/up tick- you don’t have to be registered to do so.
I know. £5 to state your position. Cheapskates. Obviously don’t care enough about their beliefs, or they know they can’t support them. Luxury beliefs.
Not guilty. Found this out when i was not registered, but I was paying at the time. I found that some times you could uptick, and it would increase the upticks by 2 or 3, but a downtick would decrease it back to 1 uptick, if that makes any sense. Perhaps the it team should fix it. Or even better remove it altogether if it is going to upset people. Untill then I could not loose any sleep over it, No doubt i will get a load of down-ticks. Well who cares? I think there are more important things to worry about! Having said that sometimes it is very perplexing.
Or maybe 1 or 2 other people had also upticked in the time between you downloading the page and making your uptick (the uptick count isn’t live, just a snapshot of when the page is loaded).
Ticks are handy. At least it lets you see that people have read what you typed, because lets face it there is no point in typing something if no one is going to read it, otherwise you are just talking to yourself.
I agree. And for an idea of what it is all about see here.
Downvotes are a measure of a successful comment.
Keep it up and keep sticking it to them.
“They don’t like it up ’em Cap’n Mainwaring.”
“That’s enough of that Corporal Jones.”
They are just scared and tight, which says unprincipled to me.
I am interested to know how the Far Eastern manufacturers received money from our tax system when the company I bought mine from imports them by the container load, and flogs off cosmetic seconds (full spec electrically) at half price.
“Since sunshine is free it’s insane not to take advantage of it.”
Doesn’t the rest of the article more or less explain why it’s insane to take advantage of it?
Anyway, it’s not really “free”. There are significant costs associated with harnessing solar energy throughout the cycle – financial and environmental. Then you have the costs of storage of surplus energy for us when the sun isn’t shining, so you need an “always on” generation capacity which costs money to build and maintain, unless you have enough storage to guarantee that you never run out, or you have so many solar and wind farms all over planet Earth that you will always have enough for everyone, because the wind will always be blowing somewhere. Sounds kind of insane to me…
The only basis on which solar and wind appeal to me is the ability to be independent of the grid and use as much as I want, because I do not trust the people that control the grid. But you’d still be beholden to the people that manufacture and maintain the equipment.
It is 10x (?) more expensive than coal or nuclear per Mw. And there is the eco – damage. Solar farms destroy meadows and nature, they derange that local ecosystem including fauna, and when they are replaced the panels are simply tossed into a grave and their chemicals leech into Gaia mommy (wiping tears as I type). The rare metals and minerals which feed into panels are gouged out of Gaia in their tonnes (more tears, hard to type).
This green bollocks is not green, not friendly, ruinously expensive and a complete waste of time. But it does feed corrupted interests. Follow that money.
My local sparrows love the solar panels on the roof of my house. There’s a gap under them which is a great place to hide from the local sparrow hawk and be near the seed feeders I hang out if they get a bit peckish.
The only way taking advantage of sunshine is free, is by going out in it and topping up your Vit D levels. Or farming/growing produce.
Every other way “advantage is taken of sunshine” costs an absolute fortune – and not just in money to buy the solar panels and batteries. It costs by using viable farmland for ugly solar panel installations; by destructive mining for minerals in Africa; by manufacturing and shipping solar panels across the oceans from China.
Indeed. I guess regarding the use of land issue you could argue that the roof of your house is already used up so there’s no additional land-use cost, so if you were talking solely about using panels on your house then the costs are just in the manufacture and maintenance of the equipment you need. Whether it makes sense even at that level is an interesting question – it might make sense given our current mad energy policies, but if we’d instead pursued policies favouring cheap and reliable energy, meaning prices were much lower, would it still make sense?
The main problem with panels on a house is they produce their best power outputs when the own of the house is generally at work so doesn’t get the benefit. Although to be fair with more working from home, there are a few more souls directly using the power generated.
A bit dull and overcast here today but part of this message will have been powered by solar.
Yes that makes sense
Errrr……why are you putting yourself through all of this?
‘….our current geologic period, the Quaternary, has seen the lowest average levels of carbon dioxide since the Precambrian. Though CO2 concentrations briefly peaked 320,000 years ago at 300 ppm, the average for the past 800,000 years was 230 ppm (Luthi 2008). The average CO2 concentration in the preceding 600 million years was more than 2,600 ppm, nearly seven times our current amount and 2.5 times the worst case predicted by the IPCC for 2100. Our current geologic period (Quaternary) has the lowest average CO2 concentration in more than 600 million years.’
https://co2coalition.org/facts/
Spot on. Politicians, bureaucrats, teachers businesses etc constantly state that we need to have heat pumps, smart meters, electric cars, 20mph speed limits etc “Because we need to reduce our carbon (sic) emissions”.
The belief that the primary driver of changes in the climate are caused by CO2 emissions through the use of fossil fuels, is taken as a given and accepted without argument. Until we change that mindset, it’s hard to fight against Net Zero zealotry.
Very well said.
.
Like Covid, Net Zero is a con, its a narrative being used by a few very wealthy and influential people to control and bend the population to their will. These are people who are used and expect to be at the top of the tree in terms of societal structure, they believe that God has specially chosen them to be in charge of society, think as per the structure of Royalty and the Aristocracy in Tudor times. Since the 60’s they have seen that power slipping away so inorder to retain and strengthen their hold they push us through consecutive wars, and crisis, Covid and Net Zero being the two latest scams. Anyway it comes down to the fact that those outside the circle are fodder, dispensible, nothings, its always us and our children who have to fight the wars, its we who will suffer under Net zero, it is we who suffered and still suffer under Covid. They, they fly around the world on their jets, to their meetings with their compadres, they have Party’s and affairs whilst we are locked up. There are billions of us, only thousands of them, time to say No, time to let these people know they are not God’s
Good luck with that——-Maybe you can draft a letter to the WEF telling them in no uncertain terms that they are not deities. ——Please post their reply here if you get one.
Firstly. Are you saying you paid the full price for solar panels and battery and no government subsidy was taken advantage of by you? If that is true you must be the only one ever to do such an uneconomic thing. Or is that you are not aware that sun and wind receive massive subsidy from the taxpayer? ————The rest of your comment is quite sensible. You are really pointing out to people that in the real world renewables (in your case solar) cannot power industrial society. Which is why Green Politics has to cover every base. First they have to get all the wind and sun up and running, while at the same time get smart meters into every property to ration the energy use and pretend it will save you money, when infact it will cost you more as peak times will have a higher price and the smart meter can detect at ehat time of day your are using energy.. Then they need to take away all the fossil fuels like our coal, which is well underway and our fantastic gas central heating. While all this is going on there has to be a mass propaganda campaign about a climate emergency which is not supported by any science at all (but people don’t know that)——-If people want to think that all that is required to save a planet that is in no need of saving, that all they have to do is get rid of fossil fuels and replace them with wind and sun and everything will tick along just fine then they are deluded.
PS —–The sun may be free but harnessing it is not. It is the same with wind. Just take a look at your electricity bill since we started to use wind to see whether it is free or not. The countries with the most turbines have the highest electricity costs. Germany Denmark and the UK. France who get 70% of their electricity from Nuclear has electricity prices half of ours.
Sunshine may be “free” in its raw state, but we will be charged through the nose if we want to use it to boil the kettle.
Oi, ‘ave you got a loicence for that?
Worth reading Bjorn Lomborg’s book False Alarm, which whilst he does think Global Warming is a problem that needs to be solved, (a sentiment that many disagree on this site, and I wish he would have supplied more evidence), he does make the point that we are going about it completely wrongly anyway. We are trying to chase impossible targets, because essentially we don’t have the technology – a point I and many on here seem to agree with. Essentially we are going to bankrupt ourselves if we are not careful- we should try and avoid that at all costs, as then we will not have any money to do the R&D for adaption and new technologies. In addition the populations are going to push back as they realise they are being deceived and lied to. If the new technologies are not cheap and effective, other countires like China and Russia will not adopt them- and all there will be is Carbon leakage, and Western countries going to net zero will have very little effect (0.05 degrees c or something according to Lomborg).
Evidence always seems to be a bit of a problem for nut zero….
In Bjorn Lomberg, I think his general conclusion is correct, that we should try to make the world better off and richer, and that there are better things we could spend our money than wasting trillions on the impossible. The details i disagree with like a carbon tax. And he seems to think Co2 will acidify the oceans ???
Ho hum…..
‘1. In the field of ocean acidification (OA), nearly half (45%) of all studies suitable for use in the meta-study (or “systematic review”) of OA/fish behavior science were authored or co-authored by Philip Munday, DL Dixson, or other members of Munday’s or Dixson’s respective lab groups. (Note that Munday was Dixson’s PhD advisor.)
2. The three early papers from Munday and Dixson found very high effect levels on fish behavior from increased CO2/lowered ocean water pH and established expectations for a decade of subsequent follow-up research.
3. The Munday/Dixson early results led to wildly exaggerated adverse effects from OA being reported endlessly in the international media, and are still being used in climate reporting today, despite having failed replication and currently being investigated on suspicion of scientific malfeasance: fabrication, falsification, or other misconduct.’
Kip Hansen
‘The concept of ocean acidification, and human-caused global warming more generally, could be described as containing a grain of truth embedded in a mountain of nonsense.’
‘The perception that calcification rates of corals at the Great Barrier Reef are in terminal decline due to ocean acidification is based on a study of 328 colonies of Porites corals from 69 reefs (De’ath et al. 2009). This study appears comprehensive and has been extensively reported in the mainstream media. However, after critical examination, the study has been shown to include basic flaws – including a systematic data bias in the last growth band of each core. As a consequence, the study erroneously concluded a recent drop in calcification rates (Ridd et al. 2013).’
Jennifer Marohasy
‘This problem with exaggeration of threats applies to many areas of science and has a name: The Decline Effect.
The Decline Effect goes like this: an early report, usually attracting huge media interest, predicts some sort of catastrophe. But when follow up work is done, usually with far better experimental procedure and far greater numbers of samples, the original report turns out to be wrong.’
Peter Ridd
WTF is “carbon leakage?”
Breathing.
Interesting article, thanks. Useful to hear an actual case of solar usage for once, as opposed to the usual fairy stories.
Regarding guests charging: I had a couple of guests over the summer who arrived on electric bikes which they charged overnight. Being a bit on the skint side, I keep a very close eye on my leccy usage, and was astounded at the amount of leccy used: it added £20 to my monthly bill. That’s just 2 bikes on a 12 hour charge.
As for taking advantage of solar – even hereabouts, on a hot day you can use a black ‘solar’ camping shower bag to heat up enough water for the washing up! Every little helps, as they say…
We are considering adding black pipes to the roof (here, in French Pyrenees).
Cheap, simple, almost maintenance-free, effective application of solar power for the costliest activity: that of heating water for washing. Mains pressure takes it up there, so no need for my own pump.
The hot water can also be diverted to central heating (for space heating) if needed.
Also wood burners with water jackets. We already have an older wood burner which is lovely when the evenings get a little cooler.
Other than that, the lower latitudes are helping a lot with reducing our energy costs in the much more basic sense – it’s a lot warmer here! And while BNFL was destroyed by hysteria, the French didn’t freak out over nuclear power…
Thanks for sharing. Black pipes: good idea. Used to keep a black dustbin full of water in the greenhouse to keep the temp up and prolong the growing season, never thought to use the water for washing too!
Scrambling about for energy is becoming acceptable now. This is what happens when affordable reliable energy is taken away and replaced with unaffordable unreliable energy. We are all forced to spend on solar panels, batteries, heat pumps, and stuffing every crevice in the house with foam, constantly checking a smart meter and switching everything off ——-Is this supposed to be progress?
When I lived in Portugal, up until 2020, I was totally off-grid apart from some gas usage. My only power source was 4 solar panels directing energy to 4 Rolls batteries. Don’t ask me for all the details of power, wattage etc because I don’t remember. Anyway, at night in winter, we used very few lights and kept our low energy fridge and that was all. We could charge laptops and phones etc but I constantly had to check the batteries on rainy cloudy days and had a gas generator set up to charge the batteries should they begin to empty. I would have to run the generator for about half an hour to an hour. We used gas for ring cooking and our large woodburner which also had an oven. My point is that it is very difficult to rely on solar even in Portugal. You need loads of battery storage and loads more panels. Our home wasn’t even very big and we didn’t use the electricity other than for the basics. In summer of course we could run power tools off the panels no problem. So, in this country, it will be extremely difficult to service the modern electrical demands off solar and people will experience frequent power outages. Maybe that’s the plan because people will be so miserable and cold, they’ll beg for something to put them out of their misery. It’s a massive con and, in my view, nothing short of demonic. It is not about making our lives better but worse.
The author is 100% correct. Having solar means people have to alter their expectation of limitless electricity on demand. The issue with ‘net zero’ (one of many!) is that people aren’t being encouraged to look at their consumption levels in order to reduce reliance on fossil fuels as a positive contributor to environmental issues (except being forced to reduce via extortionate bills). What is the net benefit of investing in solar, wind etc if there is not significant and concurrent behavioural change?
I live completely off grid using solar with no grid tie in (albeit in Spain so sun isn’t an issue). When friends come to stay they are completely befuddled by having to even slightly consider their electricity consumption (shorter showers due to water pumps that guzzle electricity), quicker use of hair dryer, not running multiple high electricity devices at once just as small examples. It always amazes me that they can’t even grasp the concept of having to think about it in any minor way. One advantage of having solar is you learn so much and it really makes you realise how much we all take electricity for granted.
“People getting used to not having limitless energy on demand”——-The head of the National Grid 10 years ago (Steve Holliday) warned of what was coming when he said “We are going to have to get used to having electricity as and when it is available”——–Progress is supposed to make things better, but every single thing classed as GREEN is worse than what came before it.
You can stick your solar panels we the sun don’t shine.
I invested in a couple of panels and a plug-in inverter which syncs with my mains. I stuck them on a convenient shed roof.
They are sufficient to power all of my constant-load devices like fridges and tech standby. The whole set-up cost under £500 nearly a decade ago. Self-installing is a straightforward job for any competent DIYer.
Surplus electricity is donated to the grid. Since the early days the feed-in tariffs have become a joke and are only given if the system is installed by approved
rip-off merchantsinstallers.The other aspect to the “renewable” dream/nightmare is that a nationwide solar power system will require a full-load backup run by gas or coal. That means we’ll have to pay to install and maintain two completely redundant power systems, one “renewable” and one reliable, to get the benefits of one. Dump “renewable,” choose reliable.
This is the problem with grid level renewables, it’s a boom or bust situation. Without storage (which is not currently feasible) it just doesn’t work.
The renewable operators will be aware of this of course, but they dont care, it’s not their problem. It’s the eco zealots in charge of the grid and handing out contracts that need to be sacked.
The writer mentions constantly boiling the kettle, but there’s no need. Fill up and boil once, then put the unused boiling water into a thermos for your hot drinks for the rest of the day.
Simple, effective, efficient solutions to problems are so passé! We’ve got a planet to save, you imbecile!
Why boil more than you need?
It is simpler and more environmentally friendly to fill the kettle with just the amount of water needed.
And instead of electricity use a whistling kettle on gas. It boils quickly and is more environmentally efficient than electricity.
Plus no wasted water and energy cleaning a thermos if you fill it with tea or coffee.
Keys in the bowl to see who gets use of the charger?
We can all save massive amounts of money by cutting down our energy needs without these exhorbitant and unnecessarily complex solutions.
Insulation works. During the Falklands conflict prefabricated homes were shipped out. They were so well insulated the occupants had to open the doors and windows in winter it was so warm inside.
And it is not necessary to go to those lengths. Secondary glazing in addition to my home’s existing double glazing, loft insulation, cavity wall insulation and thermalite block construction would make my gas consumption hit an all time low. It only jumps up for no more than three months in winter and has already been reduced by 50% annually since the energy price rises following the Ukraine war.
And there are far too many devices in our homes which use power even when we don’t actively use them.
Each of my security lamps consume power day and night when not illuminated. I need to get around to replacing them with more energy efficient LED ones.
My gas boiler uses power when not in use as does the power shower.
I have fitted remote sockets to make sure the washing machine and dishwasher are not consuming power on standby – same for the TV and supporting devices.
The background level of consumption even after all the power savings I cannot get below 140W = 3.6 kw every day or about £1.60 at current tariff.
That is £584 per annum or around one third of annual electricity cost.
I know I could get the figure much lower if my devices were more energy efficient but the cost of replacing the gas boiler and inconvenience is too great.
I have bought but not fitted the electronics to switch the boiler and power shower to a more efficient standby but that is only one part of the problem.
We can do a lot with far less than solar panels and batteries and the like.
Everyone I know has all the insulation you mention except my brother who lives in a grad listed house and those who live in houses pre-cavity walls where wll insulation can only be done on the ouside which ruins the aesthetic and is not allowed if there is grade listing or conservation area status. Also floor insulation is not psoopssible as a retrofit unless you are prepared to accept significantly less headroom.
Not everyone owns or lives in a listed building.
But for those who do the rules need to change. After all if they are going to stick us in prison for not fitting a crappy heat pump which does not work when you really need it then they should change the petty rules to make it easier for everyone including your bruv, bruv.
Yes, sunshine is free and wind is free and coal, oil and gas under the ground are free. It is putting it to use that costs money. And there is opportunity cost as well. In the cass of wind and sun the opportunity costs include loss of wildlife, fauna and flora and loss of public and private amenity from loss of pleasant surroundings and noise.
The question of reinstatement is a serious one. I understand wind farms (sic) and siolar farms (ditto) are typical;ly owned by Special Purpose Vehicles. So too are battery farms (ditto again). The only asset they have is the lease on the land and the installed plant. All operations are outsourced. If the market turns sour or when the plant becomes obsolete the SPV may be found to have no other assets with which to finance the reinstatement of the land and the disposal of the plant.
I am surprised to learn that inverters for domestic scale solar panels lose little power. The losses from battery farms when they discharge DC into the AC grid are significant and they are doing it on a bigger scale than a domestic instal;lation. One would expect more economy from scale. Look up the financial reporta and shareholder presentations available on the web from the three listed battery farm investment vehicles for more data.
The scenarios described explain exactly why smart (sic) meters are b eing forced upon us. I have been ignoring EON’s please for me to access their website because I know that as soon as I do they will be round to change my meters for the ones they and HMG can control remotely. As they dispose of reliable energy sources they will shut me down when the wind and sun are not doing what they want. Maybe they will shut me down because they do not appriove of posts like this in the web.
At the end of their lives your solar panels will end up in landfill or in a storage yard in the North East where a business is collecting them in the hope that a big enough stock will persuade investors to pay for the dismantling equipment he needs to start a business. Batteries – no idea: China? South China Sea?
I remember the 1950s and 1960s when the voltage on the grid dropped as my mother was trying to roast dinner on Sundays. Maybe it happened other times too. I have always thought that was because of strikes or demand from nuclear fuel plants and bomb making plants, whose appetite for electricity was voracious. Households will either get used to it or revolt.
Imagine running a restaurant and the power goes off part way through service. The waste of food and the tempers of customers will be sights to behold. Presumably supermarkets, civil service officers, GCHQ, police stations and so on will have priority but private businesses will be hammered.
I can never understand why it is still the norm (worldwide) to leave lights on in offices when they are not in use, and I have no doubt the billions of computers are also left on standby in these offices when they don’t need to be. It’s such a waste. As you say, complex solutions aren’t always needed.
Edit….sorry – my reply should have been to Iconoclast.
Yes! Lights blazing on everywhere and I’m reliably informed by a friend who owns a Tesla that it does all sorts of jazzy unnecessary things such as making fart noises, light shows, music, bouncing up and down on its axles… using up extra electricity while pretending to be eco friendly. Not to mention all new cars nowadays seem to run with their headlights on all day long with no option to turn them off?? And I could get onto all the other modern electricity-requiring stuff that most climate warriors seem to have – multiple “devices”, Siri/Alexa and the like. I just had to replace my 20 year old washing machine and it has a light up digital display, ditto my cordless vacuum last year I had to try very hard to find one without digital displays informing you what particle size you’ve just sucked up – who on earth cares!
Sorry about typos
Like Guy, I’m a 4Kw solar bloke. No batteries because the RoI didn’t add up and there was no power cut back up.
I funded the panels by cashing in a pension early, happy to justify tariff pay back as a return from the greedy state.
I also have a log burner and worked very hard to insulate and draught proof the house. At a pinch I can now cook during a power cut.
Resisting the smart meter, so far, so good.
Like Guy, I’m a history and archaeology buff so happy to learn from our forebears.
I’ve been running a pair of solar power devices for several years.
The first one was a thermal one, with a relatively small set of tubes made by Thermomax (made in N Ireland) and a large storage tank, which replaced an older hot water tank that had to be replaced on account of internal failures (related to hard water problems). My place never had a boiler at all. Inside the tank is a heat exchanger for mains pressure hot water. That was done in 2006. There has been regular maintenance every couple of years, plus a failed water pump and the control unit itself (made by Resol in Germany). Water heating is topped off by night rate electric.
The second one is solar PV, for which I shelled out £5K in 2014. Operates under the Feed in Tariff for 10 years with deemed 50% export plus a generation fee, which has been linked to RPI. The net effect has been that the day rate import has been chopped in half, roughly, and given the price rises over the years, the net return has been quite useful. Although the utility firm that handles my imports and also the FiT deal always advertises the use of “Smart” meters, they don’t actually want to know about using them on deals like mine, because they do not actually want real export measurements c.f. deemed export. They can’t read the generation meter (which is my property) and co-ordinate it with any measured export remotely. Essentially, the scheme predated the idea of using “smart” meters. Here’s a little graph of it’s records over recent years.
There is no battery, but note that the thermal tends to use solar PV to operate it’s equipment much of the time – although the load of a pump etc is not that high. It is possible to install gadgets that use any spare solar PV output to heat water as well, thus using hot water as a local store, which might suit some domestic users.
Just outside of Caernarfon there is an old Ferodo brake factory that closed in 2003. Not too sure who owns the land but the falling down buildings are contaminated with asbestos and no one wants to pay for the clean up. Good luck with having your solar farm removed after 40 years.
Informative article, unfortunately all based on the premise that there is actually a need to achieve ‘net zero’.
Interesting article, but you don’t fight against a lunatic policy by participating in it.
I don’t have a Smart Meter, EV, heat pump or solar panels. I don’t intend getting any of them ….. although I am quite aware that the Government is trying to force them on me. Since I’m a stubborn person, that usually just results in me digging in my heels for as long as possible.
My small house is well insulated and I DO carefully watch my energy consumption at home – I don’t want to enrich my energy supplier. Since I’m semi-retired and live in a town where most facilities are available locally, I only drive about 5000 miles a year. I care about the environment and bio-diversity and have created a very “wildlife/insect friendly” garden. My carbon usage is low – but that’s because of how I CHOOSE to live, not because I believe in the “Great CO2 Devil Gas” and the bollocks spouted by the Eco Nutters in the Establishment or their Bought-and-Paid-For $cientists.
The Net Zero Lunacy has nothing to do with the climate or the environment. That is just the excuse for Authoritarian surveillance; micro-managing our lives; transfer of wealth and CONTROL.
“More to the point, where will the 49.9MW come from after it’s been dismantled?”
Even more to the point where will all that s**t go when it’s dismantled and what’s the cost of dismantling? Complete utter and total madness.
While wave power might be a non starter, I still think there should be an attempt at tide power.
I’ve often wondered why the ‘at sea’ wind turbines don’t have sufficiently strong support towers to allow turbines at the base to harvest some of the tide power as well?