Buying a Solar Panel: Part 8

It's been 3 months since we had our solar panels fitted and we're about to get our first FIT payment. So I thought it might be a good time to fill you in on how we got here.

If you take a look a look at this blog's side-bar, you'll see the 'Topics' heading, and under that you'll find a 'Solar Panels' link. Click that to see parts 1 to 7 of this series. That will take you through the whole process from choosing your installer to getting them installed.

Here's what happens next:

1) In the days leading up to installation, you need to contact your power company to let them know what's going on. They should givesend you a form to be filled out to register and claim your export and FIT payments.

2) You won't be able to send in the form until the installation has happened, but make sure you look through it to see what's expected of you. The installers should be able to help you with many of the questions on it on the day. They should also give you your all important MCS certificate (Proof that you have panels fitted by approved installers).

3) Once you send in your completed form, you may have to wait a few weeks before the energy company confirm you are registered. Don't worry though, they will pay you from the day you started generating.

4) They will send you information on when and how to send in meter readings. For me, I have to send in readings every 3 months and they follow up by sending a payment to my bank within 28 days.

5) If your electric meter is going backwards as a result of your panels, tell your electric providers right away. It is potentially illegal if you don't. It's up to them what they do about it. Generally speaking they will replace your meter.

UK Government Finally Defeated Over Feed-In Tariff Cut

Finally! It's official: The UK govt. was acting unlawfully by cutting the feed-in tariff by half in early December 2011. The government can make no further appeals. It's run out of options.

All this means that any solar panel system installed before March 3rd 2012 gets the full FIT of 43.3 pence per kW for the next 25 years. Any installed after that get the 21 pence rate.

You can find a full news report here.

It was pretty clear from the first court ruling that the govt. didn't have a legal leg to stand on over this. But they just went on appealing anyway.

Macho, testosterone-fuelled politics; spite; or a deliberate ploy to stop people installing solar on their roofs for months, thus saving the govt. a bucket-load of money on higher rate FITs anyway? You decide.

10 Reasons To Give Up Fossil Fuels Now

1) Climate Change
Fact: The planet is warming up. The nine warmest years on record have been in the last 10 years.

The scientific community say it's down to us - Globally, Mankind emits over 33 billion tonnes of CO2 per year. Nature can recycle about half of that, but the rest of this greenhouse gas goes into the atmosphere, year-after-year, causing the rising temperatures.

At present, this is causing effects like 80% of the world's glaciers in retreat, some rapidly, and a rapid loss of ice in the Arctic. The future could bring expanding deserts, more droughts, more flooding, sea-level rises, more powerful hurricanes, mass extinctions, food shortages (due to the droughts and floods), wars, and increased health risks. What's not to hate?

2) Peak Oil
Defined as the point in time when global oil production reaches it's maximum, after which it goes into gradual decline.

It doesn't sound very interesting but it could seriously effect all of us. Basically, once peak oil is reached, oil prices become more volatile, leaping up any time an oil producing country has a crisis such as a war, internal unrest, or production problems. That obviously effects petrol prices but, added transport costs also push up prices of goods across the board. It's eventual effects could even make the current global crisis look like a stroll in the park. More about peak oil.

Two scientists have analysed oil production figures over the years and come to the conclusion peak oil is with us already (See here), because production figures seem to have hit a ceiling whilst oil prices have leaped up in response to the Iraq and Libyan wars. If they're right then these prices hikes can only get worse.

3) Energy Security
Every country should be entitled to cheap and plentiful energy to keep it's economy moving. Trouble is, when the source of their energy is in the hands of unstable countries, or ones inclined towards manipulating/withholding the supply, and the source is increasingly expensive, your country no longer has control over it's destiny.

At the moment, most of the world's oil and gas comes from the Middle East, Russia (The top producer of both fuels by far), South America, and Africa. Worrying, isn't it?

Renewables like solar, wind, biofuels, nuclear, and hydro have the potential to become cheap, plentiful, and, most importantly, controlled by the countries that need them.

4) Pollution
Burning coal leads to smog, acid rain (from sulphur dioxide), and airbourne toxins like mercury, lead, arsenic, and cadmium. The various pollutants can cause bronchitis, asthma, heart disease, and even premature death.

5) Modernisation
Oil, gas, and coal are basically dirty relics from the Nineteenth century. We are surrounded by chimneys and exhaust pipes belching pollutants into the air we breath. It's about time we turned our back on  them and converted to the clean, endlessly renewing fuels of the 21st century.

6) Jobs
If governments are looking for a way to rejuvenate the economy and create huge numbers of jobs, then supporting green technology is the way to go. Jobs from designing the equipment, building it, fitting it, and maintaining it. Jobs retro-fitting buildings to make them more energy efficient. Jobs inspecting homes to reduce their carbon footprint. Billions in export revenues from selling the technology and expertise abroad. On and on it goes.

7) Price Stabilisation
Peak oil or not, you've got to admit we're all being battered by rising oil and natural gas prices at the moment, and there seems no end in sight. Switching to renewables would stabilise energy prices. There will be some initial costs to establish the technology, but then the costs will start coming down as the tech is improved and becomes more efficient. Eventually we'll have cheap, clean, and plentiful energy for good.

8) Environmental damage
Exxon Valdez, Torrey Canyon, and  Deepwater Horizon, these, and many other oil spills will go down in infamy. In the Appalacian Mountains of the U.S., they're removing tops off mountains to to get at coal deposits. In Alberta, Canada they're ruining an area of prestine forest the size of Florida to get at the 'tar' sands.

In short, our insatiable appetite for fossil fuels is ruining the environment

9) Cheaper To Do It Sooner Rather Than Later
The aim of climate deniers is to delay dealing with climate change as long as possible. But the longer we put off sorting the problem out, the more it'll cost you and I to do so. The solution is well within our means at the moment and would cost far less than business-as-usual.

10) Oil Runs Western Foreign Policy
It's said that the biggest reason the West invaded Iraq was to secure the massive oil reserves there. When you look at it like that you begin to question why we supported the uprising in Libya and not the one in Syria. Could it be because Libya has lot more oil?

Our addiction to oil forces us to do this. Do we really want to go on like this?

Nuclear: Which Way For Environmentalists?

A few days ago, 4 former Friends of the Earth directors wrote a letter to PM David Cameron warning him that he was putting UK energy policy in the hands of the French by getting them to build and run our future nuclear power stations. More here.

Of course, behind the apparent nationalism, was that age-old hatred environmentalists have for all things nuclear. Sometimes I get the impression that they'd rather have the world sink into climate chaos than permit nuclear energy to have a role in stopping it.

I heard a fine example of this on our local radio station this morning: There is a nuclear power station on the south coast called Dungeness B. It is set to stop generating in 2015, with the loss of hundreds of jobs. Needless to say the locals want the government to consider Dungeness as part of it's program of building new nuclear stations. The government have said "no" on environmental grounds but the locals, including politicians are keeping up the pressure.

The local station interviewed someone from Friends of the Earth about this and I had to laugh at her comments. She was convinced we had no need for nuclear at all (sound familiar?), it could all be done with wind turbines and solar. What?! Oh yes, let's replace reliable, round-the-clock 'base-load' power with ones that stop at night (solar) or when the wind drops.

Much as I like the idea of clean energy, the technology has not reached the point where it can supply more than 20 to 25% of the UK's energy needs without causing serious problems. If we don't use nuclear then that commits us to using fossils fuels (Gas and coal mainly) because any other renewable energy capable of providing base-load (like biomass) is unlikely to provide the amount of energy required.

In other words, running the UK on nothing but solar and wind is wishful thinking.

This is why some environmentalists are beginning to advocate nuclear, much to the horror of their fellow greens. Nuclear may not be ideal but it may be the only option we have to replace all those coal and gas power stations on a quick enough timescale.

(UPDATE: Here's a later post that discusses a form of nuclear power that overcomes nearly all the problems of traditional forms).

Poland Vetos Further EU Carbon Cuts...For Now

Last year I explained how I thought the EU had lost it's backbone by not taking the opportunity to make deeper cuts in carbon emissions by 2020.

Well, it looks like they were listening ;) because last week they were attempting to change their target for cuts from 20% to 25% by 2020!

This was great news. Not only would it cut emissions faster but it would make later reductions more cost efficient to achieve (As this 'Road Map' shows).

On March 9th, EU ministers from all countries met to vote on the new targets but Poland decided to veto it. The Poles depend on coal for around 90% of their electricity production so you can understand something of their reasons, but their environment minister, Marcin Korolec, tried to hide behind this: "There is no point whatsoever in gambling with the European economy's future, introducing policies that might put our industries in jeopardy versus our competitors". Yeah, right. That's your only reason.

This link gives more background, unfortunately I've lost the one on the post-vote talk. In it, the EU say they are disappointed by the veto (Poland was the only one to vote against it in the end) but this won't be the end of this. It sounded a lot like they would go ahead without the Poles.

If they do, then I applaude them. The time for old thinking is over. We've got to stop thinking about national interests, and economic advantage and start working together to stop the runaway climate train. If we don't, then we leave future generations with a train-wreck of a planet and economic chaos.

Fossil Fuels: The Albatross Around Our Necks

In 1798, Coleridge wrote the now famous poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It told the story of a ship that was being followed by an albatross (considered to be a good omen) until the captain shot it, thus cursing the ship and everyone aboard. As punishment, the crew tied the dead bird around the captain's neck. In the end, they all end up dead.

Once upon a time, fossil fuels were a "good omen", they were the basis for the industrial revolution and much of what we take for granted today.

More than 200 years on (150 in the case of oil), we are still apparently stuck with these dirty, Victorian fuels, like the proverbial albatross around our necks. Cursed by it's greenhouse gases, pollution, and rising prices.

Last week, a study came out that said that some 6.4 million UK households were in fuel poverty (i.e. forced to spend over 10% of total income on keeping the home warm). That's around a quarter of the estimated 26 million homes in the UK! The same study says that there will be over 9 million 2016...... A third of all households? That's just obscene.

This is all because energy prices have been going up inexorably against a background of rising fossil fuel prices. Each time the power companies ratchet up the fuel costs, often by more than inflation, thousands more people go into fuel poverty.

Even those of us who are doing as the government advises and have insulated our houses and even switched to cheaper accounts, have been running just to stand still i.e. Our bills haven't been going down and will inevitably start rising again very soon.

Imagine then, what it's like for the less fortunate in society, like the low paid and pensioners? And, in these uncertain times, most of us are just a redundancy away from joining them.

It's a broken system. A rotting albatross around all our necks.

UK Government To Appeal Against FIT ruling AGAIN

Either through spite, bloody-mindedness, or machismo the government has decided to try for a last-ditch appeal against the court ruling that it couldn't cut feed-in tariffs for solar panels. See here for more.

The Supreme Justices will still have to decide if they're going to let the appeal go ahead. If they do, that could drag this whole thing out for months and push up the cost to the taxpayer even more than it already has.

But hell, they've achieved their end anyway, the number of new solar builds has fallen by 90%. So much for backing the solar industry.

How To Get The Best Out Of Your Solar Panels

Having recently got a set of solar panels fitted to our roof, I've been trying to work out how to get the most out of them.

This isn't quite as easy as you might imagine.

The Problem
For a start, even on a cloudless day, the energy I can get from the sun varies according to the angle of the sun relative to our roof. Then you have to throw in things like the effect of cloud cover, and the length of day. So the amount of energy we get from the panels at any given moment is changeable.

This is important because, if we move the washing machine run from the overnight, cheap rate to the daytime rate, we'd better have enough power, otherwise it could cost us more!

Since the day rate is just over twice the cheap rate, that means the solar panels need to be generating over half of what we're using to make the move cost effective.

The Numbers
To figure out whether it's worth switch an appliance during the day, I need to know 3 things:

• Our 'base load' electric usage (i.e. From all those items that are always on. Like fridges, freezers, and things on stand-by). This can be done with an energy monitor.

• How much energy our panels are creating at the time (Can be read off the solar panel inverter).

• The maximum amount of power the appliance uses (using the energy monitor again). Some appliances use electric unevenly (e.g. dishwasher) and others use high kW e.g. kettle at 3kW and showers 8-10 kW. Better behaved items are lighting, dvd players, tv, computers, toasters, tumble dryers,  and vacuum cleaners.

This sounds like an awful lot of mucking about (and it is) but if we end up being able to use our washing machine, dish-washer, and tumble dryer for free, then I think it's worth it.

Obviously it'll take some work to get these figures to begin with, but I think it'll get easier as I get used to it. 

The Solution

The day's electric is generated in a bell curve which gets bigger until it peaks in the Summer. So the recommended time period to use power hungry items (usually ones with a heat cycle) is from 10 am to 3 pm when the sun is at it's strongest. However, it's important to note the Summer peak electric may be up to 8 times that in the Winter.

As a result, dull days in Winter will probably only cover the base load, whilst you may not be able to 'use up' all the power generated in the Summer.


Keeping that in mind, and the individual quirks of my appliances, I should be timing their use accordingly.

That's easy enough if there's someone at home most of the time but, in our case, we're usually at work during the week. So we need to keep an eye on the weather forecast and use timers for the major appliances, aiming for that 10 am - 3 pm window. If possible we will save the biggies for the weekend when we have more control.

Two major pieces of advise I've discovered elsewhere are:

• Don't run them all at the same time, stagger them, i.e run them one after the other

• Don't be tempted to run part loads (Because you'll increase the amount of water, detergent, conditioner etc you use!).

Bottom line: It'll all be a bit of a juggling act balancing usage against generation, but it should be worth the effort.