UK householders face delays of up to 15 years for solar installations
No, truly – at a 20% price decline each year in 15 years this means solar will be cheap as chips.
No one will worry or ague about it. You’ll install it in the same way you have a tap on the bathtub – werl, it’s obvious, innit?
The chair of the committee, Philip Dunne, said the delays could stop the UK from reaching net zero emissions by 2050.
The first of a great many excuses.
India claim that nuclear are still cheaper than solar
https://twitter.com/arvv/status/1653063417911967745?s=46&t=3jNRhFSsJkSBz7CjCSAX0g
H/T Marginal Revolution
But a tap on the bath tub works all year round…
…and even at night!
Dave – Tim, but perhaps if the econutters had water coming out of their taps for the same amount of time and as intermittently as wind and solar delivers electricity for a few months, they’d shut the fuck up about wind and solar.
15 years?! That’s an appalling waste! Probably miss out on up to eighty days of perfect sunny weather!
solar will be cheap as chips
The installation won’t be.
I foresee that become more expensive. If only because of the low hanging fruit factor. The easy cheap installations get done first. Many of them already have. They’ll get progressively more difficult & costly. I’d actually expect the installation costs rising will mirror the panel price falling.
At the moment…
Wait until the WEF orders “sir” Keir to fuck that up too!
BiS,
Yes, rooftop solar on houses has expensive installation costs. Hence why we’re covering open fields with solar panels instead.
Even if correctly sited and maintained*, PV at temperate latitudes will struggle to repay the energy used during its manufacture. Given they’re (mostly) made in China using energy (mostly) derived from brining coal, they don’t even do anything to reduce global CO2 emissions (assuming that’s something you want to worry about). They are, however, extremely effective at harvesting subsidies and transferring cash from the poorer to the (relatively) wealthier.
* solar arrays face due south at the optimal inclination to maximise their efficiency and are cleaned regularly – rarely true of domestic installations
… the UK has the potential to fulfil the UK’s ambition of 70GW of generating capacity from solar.
Would that be 70GW during a glorious long summer day when we have minimal need for electricity and all the batteries are topped up due to the previous day being similar, or 70GW on a cold short dull winters day when electricity demand is at peak? It certainly wont be the long dark evening that follows when everyone wants heat and light and finds their batteries are flat as there was no excess of power to charge them during the day.
Solar water heating panels are economic in the UK (and were so even before the price of gas doubled) but the “Green” propagandists completely ignore them. Why? Is it stupidity or because they are subsidy junkies?
‘India claim that nuclear are still cheaper than solar’
Entertaining Gunker. Since we’ve stuffed up the pumped storage project in the Snowy Mountains, and South Australia had to buy diesels to make sure its windmills and solar panels delivered reliable power, perhaps we could buy nukes from the Injuns.
Since, as a developing country, they’re excused from the green rubbish, we could pay for this by sending them our coal!!
The only way the UK will generate 70GW of solar power is if we use about 200GW of nuclear to shine some lights on the bloody things. Doubleplusgood, think of the jobs this would create.
Solar as cheap as chips. Yes, because in 15 years time chips will be a hundred quid a kilo.
“Demand for our product is so high we need subsidies to meet it” — is that what they’re going for?
‘… this means solar will be cheap as chips.‘
Physics, physics, physics… cost has nothing to do with it. Why is this so difficult for some to understand?
Without a grid supply to provide stability, domestic solar will not/cannot power a modern home. Most homes now have 20kVA supply – only a very extensive solar array could match that. Many appliances draw more power when they are switched on than they draw whilst running – particularly motors. A power supply therefore has to be able to cope with a margin of load well over the continuous load, even if it is only momentary. That is why domestic solar installations require grid support.
Without fossil fuel (or nuke) there will be no stable grid supply.
When grid supply fails, feed-in installations like domestic solar are shut down too, for technical reasons.
I have self installed solar. 1kw panels set up facing SSW on our terrace. Get max 600W at the moment. (Shaded so only 1.6kwh per day) Done as an experiment. £1500 for the kit delivered. Installed on the roof would have been £3k or more if you could find someone to do it before 2024.
It’s not technically very complicated actually.
House base load is 250-400w depending on who is home. It’ll take decades to pay for itself. A bigger install is pointless as it would be exported at pennies. Batteries are thousands so it’s take a decade to recoup costs for those as well.
Inflation might be the only reason to do it!
Hence why we’re covering open fields with solar panels instead.
That’s good to know, Andrew M. They may be building rabbit hutch houses in the UK. But they all come with sprawling surrounding acres. Must be quite idyllic.
@ bis
Haven’t you read *any* of Tim’s rants about the planning chitties? The sprawling acres are those with no chitties to build houses and the rabbit hutches are where someone has managed to get a chitty.
The solar farms are on land where Jim and his fellows don’t think its worth the effort to grow crops when the land has an alternative use so it would have higher value as a housing estate if they could get one of those chitties.
I thought the thread was about domestic installations getting cheaper, John. It wasn’t?