You can say that again my setup just peaked at 3kW at the time of writing. So I turned on two computers, HD projector, tumbler dryer, washing machine and meter reading still reads 00000. Powers the entire house, helps that I have LED bulbs.
My electricity meter is still reading 00000 due to Solar panels!!
- Thread starter Pottsey
- Start date
not sure exactly but after a quick google found this guardian page.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/07/fossil-fuel-subsidies-green-energy
That's the problem, there doesn't seem to be any information actually explaining what these so called subsidies are. Most of the time it's actually discussing a reduction in the supplimentary tax on gas and oil extraction, which is as high as 90% of the profit for some fields.
Edit: There we go
So the fact we pay 5% VAT on heating and powering our homes and reduced supplimentary taxes (taxes exclusive to oil and gas extraction).
Last edited:
A lot of people I know (esp people older than me, 40+) do not like "green" power one bit. They don't like solar arrays. They don't like wind turbines. They don't like the look of them, they don't believe they have a significant role to play, and they don't want them on the landscape.
These people firmly believe that coal, oil, gas can continue to serve us well for the foreseeable future. And they mostly disagree that humans are having any affect on climate. Most of my family is in this camp.
With sufficient numbers of people with this attitude, the govt probably doesn't feel compelled to offer green power subsidies.
The government are offering huge green subsidies
. In fact many of the people in this thread are benefitting from these subsidies in the form of FIT...Unfortunately the current government appear to be trying to reduce overall green subsidy, that doesn't mean there isn't any subsidy currently. In fact all the onshore and offshore wind has been subsidised significantly over the last few years.
Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
What region of the country are you in?
It irks me massively to see solar panel installations part-funded by my taxes even here in the north east, let alone when I go up to glorious Scotland
Yes they're a great way to save money on an individual level, but the huge subsidies piled into these have to come from someone's taxes somewhere.
That's what taxes are for, funding useful projects. If solar panels cost 50k, then no one would ever get them, if no one got them production, research into solar panels wouldn't increase and costs couldn't come down and we'd have no sensible alternative power sources while we pretty much damage the planet with coal/oil power and nuclear is so ludicrously dangerous that it's insane.
500mil on a IT project that gets canned because it was mismanaged from the start, 5billion an ID scheme absolutely no one wanted at all ever, got canned and provided no long term jobs is a waste.
Subsidising an industry that provides a sensible alternative power source, that helps to establish an industry as viable, which itself has already generated thousands of jobs in the solar industry in this country.
At some stage panels will cost £2k, won't need subsidising, we'll have cheaper power and less dependence on worse power sources and the costs involved and there will be maybe 50k jobs long term for the next 100 years of people installing solar panels even if we don't produce any here. If we did that is more jobs.
Sometimes you have to help fund the start of an industry, solar panel subsidies are one of the best things the government has spent taxes on in a long time.
Soldato
- Joined
- 10 Oct 2006
- Posts
- 3,571
Something is wrong somewhere you have turned on around 5kw of appliances, 3kw of solar power will not power it all.
The IMF estimate they're about $1.9 trillion/year. You'll have to dig around for their methodology.
This discussion reminds me of an interesting blog post from January:
High-stakes climate poker
The fossil fuel industry is betting that we'll keep pumping it money instead of paying less to switch to renewable energy
The bottom line is: we give the oil and gas industry $1.9 trillion every year in subsidies, when it would only actually cost $850 billion per year to switch to a renewable energy economy. And that doesn't even take into account the health costs of fossil fuels due to air pollution ($300-900 billion per year just in the USA!).
The status quo is totally sub-optimal
I never understood the point of solar panels. They cost $$$ to put in and yes you save a bit per month in electricity bills, but surely you end up paying more overall as solar panels do not last forever but need replacing at some point...
And people who bang on about it saving the world seem to think that batteries and solar equipment come from thin air and not dug up out of the ground in the form of rare eather metals, etc. There wouldn't be enough material in the world to fit solar panels to all houses let alone the environmental cost of doing such a thing!
And people who bang on about it saving the world seem to think that batteries and solar equipment come from thin air and not dug up out of the ground in the form of rare eather metals, etc. There wouldn't be enough material in the world to fit solar panels to all houses let alone the environmental cost of doing such a thing!
Soldato
Someone I know who got the original deal with the grid will be something like 33k in profit in 10 years.
I don’t believe anything is wrong the meter went up to 00001 once I turned everything on at once. It looks like some people are underestimating just how much solar panels can produce with the newest panels. I have been told something's wrong multiple times on this forum but I have had the power company check everything out, had different meters installed with no change in results.
What are the chances 3 meters are wrong and the power company are wrong along with the solar panel company? It seems far more likely the energy requirements of those devices have been overestimated. All those devices seems to be a little over 3kw. I was concerned how low my meter readings was and rang up the power company. What else can I do?
EDIT: Guess I could wait for a power cut and do a real test.
Last edited:
Good quality panels will last, bad luck aside, around 30 years before any significant drop off in power output and you'd still get a decade or more use out of them beyond that before it dropped to levels you'd consider replacing them.
For me solar power has more been about convenience and a bit of curiosity than environmentally friendly or saving money - I spent about £160 or so on a small setup for charging phones, tablets, etc. (3x 7 watt panels and 2x 12000mah batteries) which will probably be more than the combined electricity bill would ever be for charging phones, etc. I find it kind of interesting though in regards to stuff you can do - lighting, fans, etc. can be run off that low power setup quite usefully.
I don't really see solar panel production being a problem environment wise as its potentially massively offset if your making good use of the panels as an alternative to far less environment friendly sources of power.
Battery production I'm far less convinced about though - its a lot more environmentally unfriendly that people generally think. Energy storage is probably the biggest hurdle in making solar power generally useful as a reliable environmentally friendly source of electricity generation as during peak summer months with good conditions you can easily generate significant amounts of power.
Last edited:
Surely all the other methods have the same problems.
There's always a materials cost and an energy cost in establishing the means of energy production. Whether that's building solar arrays, building oil rigs, mining and enriching uranium, etc.
How is solar worse in this regard?
The IMF estimate they're about $1.9 trillion/year. You'll have to dig around for their methodology.
This discussion reminds me of an interesting blog post from January:
High-stakes climate poker
The fossil fuel industry is betting that we'll keep pumping it money instead of paying less to switch to renewable energy
The bottom line is: we give the oil and gas industry $1.9 trillion every year in subsidies, when it would only actually cost $850 billion per year to switch to a renewable energy economy. And that doesn't even take into account the health costs of fossil fuels due to air pollution ($300-900 billion per year just in the USA!).
The status quo is totally sub-optimal
But that's not the UK is it... Much of that so called subsidy is also not a subsidy, (being reductions in tax that only the oil and gas companies pay - if that counts then governments pay a 100% subsidy on fresh fruit...). The vast majority of the subsidy is not going to the oil and gas industry directly, it's reducing the price of fuel for citizens and farmers in developing nations, a prime example being Venezuela. If they don't subsidise it people cannot afford to work or pay for the inevitable significant increase in food and transport costs (and you end up with rioting and protests).
There in lies the problem. We can reduce the "subsidy" in the UK by getting rid of the 5% VAT rate on domestic gas and electricity, replacing it with the standard 20%. That'll go down well. All you are actually doing is increasing the green tax for consumers. Obviously you also have to remove the tax paid by oil and gas producers from that sum as well, which in the UK varies between about 30% and 90% of the profits from the sale of hydrocarbons (on top of standard corporation tax).
Internationally it may work out a bit better due to countries actually putting their hands in their pockets and physically subsidising fuel. Unfortunately its not that simple either. Aside from the inevitable riots and starvation between the cutting of the subsidies and the renewable fuels taking over you have the issue that most of the subsidies are paid for by the tax collected from the oil companies in those countrkes in the first place.
Basically the idea of just taking $1.5t and spending it on renewables rather than "giving" it to oil and gas companies doesn't work because the countries don't have the money in the first place.
I agree however that we need to be spending more money on carbon reduction, whether that be renewables, sequestration or just reducing our consumption in the first place. Unfortunately the oil and gas subsidy argument doesn't really hold water with me.
Edit: what we really need to sort out is the carbon tax. We had the chance to make it so much better by setting up a system that was flexible and persuaded companies to reduce their carbon emissions or force them to increase the price of their goods. Unfortunately the European Parliament blew it and now we still have a system that prices carbon way too low, to the point companies aren't bothered with the extra cost. I guess the positive is we still have a carbon tax system, unlike the Australians who just lost theirs.
Last edited:
Soldato
We recently moved part of our business into a brand-new 3 story building at work which is fitted with PV. On days like today it runs completely off the sun 
(including PCs, aircon etc)!
We have PV on one of our factories and apparently it can run a ~250mm HDPE extrusion line extrusion line from the sun too.
Pretty amazing.
(including PCs, aircon etc)!We have PV on one of our factories and apparently it can run a ~250mm HDPE extrusion line extrusion line from the sun too.
Pretty amazing.
A company called A Shade Greener fitted our panels about 3 months ago. They fitted 13 panels with absolutely nothing to pay and the way it works is I get the free electricity and A Shade Greener get the feed in tariff money. There really wasn't a catch, I never paid a penny.
I'm with British Gas and I'm on a monthly direct debit. 3 months ago I was paying £45 a month for my electricity. This month my bill for electricity used was just over £11.
I'm with British Gas and I'm on a monthly direct debit. 3 months ago I was paying £45 a month for my electricity. This month my bill for electricity used was just over £11.
That's fair enough - you've essentially agreed to lease out your roof space.
Soldato
A local housing association has been recently installing panels on it's random houses it owns. Don't know if they are picking up the money from the feed in tariff or if the tenant is. I wouldn't think all tenants would be bothered contacting their electricity supplier, especially the short term ones.