Caroline Lucas - The UK Solar Industry

[Aurora]

The Guardian - 27/01/12

The solar industry needs to know the UK government can be trusted.

If policy can be changed retrospectively, why should business believe that the UK is a safe place to invest?

Article continues ...

[RenewableCandy]

The solar industry needs to know the UK government can be trusted.

The Solar Industry, along with everybody else, needs to cotton on to the fact that the Government can't be trusted any further than you can throw it, and get on with doing what "industry" does best: providing useful stuff for them as wot needs it.

[cubes]

The solar 'industry' isn't an industry at all if needs a govt subsidy to survive.

Hell, since the panels aren't even made here it's not an industry, just an installation service.

[JohnB]

I watched my soon to be ex business partner tearing what was left of his hair out when the Clear Skies grants ended, and the Low Carbon Buildings Programme was up in the air. I was very relieved that I was getting out, and didn't have to worry about it. I wouldn't trust anything the government did after that, and would want a plan that would still work without government "support" if I ever got involved in the industry again.

[biffvernon]

The solar 'industry' isn't an industry at all if needs a govt subsidy to survive.

Like the nuclear 'industry' and the railway 'industry' and of course the motor 'industry' which is subsidised to the extent that its environmental impact is not charged on a polluter pays basis.

(In fact it's quite hard to find an industry that isn't subsidised. The bespoke oak window industry perhaps?)

[JohnB]

(In fact it's quite hard to find an industry that isn't subsidised. The bespoke oak window industry perhaps?)

Flood prevention, to stop your workshop getting wet?

[biffvernon]

Oh yes. How daft it is to set up a business below sea level. Good job the government pays for its protection.

[annadixie]

I think we are forgetting that the solar subsidy has been incredibly successful in that it has encouraged investment in the solar industry. So much so that prices have fallen dramatically. The cost of a solar system has come down by 70% in the last 2 years and the changes to the subsidy are reflective of that.

Sadly, the feed-in tariff fiasco is allowing us to ignore the far more relevant and bigger picture news that we have now reached GRID PARITY with solar power.

Grid parity is where the cost of solar electricity is equal to (or even slightly less) then conventional electricity supplied from the grid. It can be defined as “the lifetime generation cost of the electricity from PV being comparable with electricity prices for conventional sources on the grid.” Once a solar system is installed there is no cost on the electricity it produces and with relatively low maintenance charges, the cost of solar PV per unit is dominated entirely by the cost of the system.

To calculate the cost per unit of solar electricity, the cost of the systems installation is divided by the amount of electricity it produces over its lifetime which is 25 years.

To use an example, a 4 kW typical domestic solar installation costs £9,500. It produces 3700 units of electricity in the first 10 years and a 10% reduction in output after 10 years. This leads us to a total electricity output of 86,950 over the systems 25 year lifetime. Dividing the initial cost of the system by the lifetime electricity output we can calculate that solar electricity costs the equivalent of 11p per unit.

Without the subsidy I don’t think we ever would have reached this point. What is also interesting is that solar as prices continue to drop we will need no government support at all. Very low percentage financing would be a far better bet for encouraging continual investment in solar.

[RenewableCandy]

Hi annadixie and welcome.

It is certainly true that the cost of PV has come down, almost by 50% since the FiT started, I'd say. Using your method, our PV comes in at about 22p per unit, in fact.

What really annoys me is people/papers saying "so-and-so have abandonned the FiT because (it's inefficient, it didn't work, it was a rip-off, etc etc) when in fact reducing and then halting the FiT is what you do when it has successfully done its work, i.e. delivered a sustainable market in grid-parity-level PV electricity.

Our main problem with it is that we're not the USA or the Aussies, so we use less power in the summer (when our PVs are all happily generating) than in the winter (when they're mostly hibernating).

[biffvernon]

I don't think there is any connection between the cost of a pv panel and the behaviour of our government. Pv prices have dropped because a lot of Chinese manufacturing capacity has come into production. The British market is a tiny player.

[RenewableCandy]

True but the cost of installation has come down as well as the materials' cost.

[annadixie]

This is a very interesting study

http://qspace.library.queensu.ca/bitstr ... -print.pdf

Please tell me how you came to 22p per unit for solar? I really want to get this message right as I think it is an important one.

Many thanks

Anna Dixie
Edited - kenneal

[kenneal - lagger]

...(when our PVs are all happily generating) than in the winter (when they're mostly hibernating).

I was worried that there was something wrong with my installation because it has been showing about 10V for a couple of months now. Worries over because it is back up over 12V now, on load, and about 17V on open circuit. Quite a hibernation. I hadn't realised that the voltage would drop so much as well as the current.

[2 As and a B]

The solar 'industry' isn't an industry at all if needs a govt subsidy to survive.

Hell, since the panels aren't even made here it's not an industry, just an installation service.

+1

[biffvernon]

And which part of our energy supply activities is not subsidised?