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Mark Gobell
On Gardening Leave
Joined: 24 Jul 2006
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 Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 6:40 pm Post subject: Fix your electricity cost for the next 30 years |
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If you install photo voltaic solar cells on your roof you can, for the life of the panels - 30 years, fix you unit cost for electricity at about 14 pence per kwh.
If you install solar tubes you can also have free hot water !!!
There are about 25 million households in the UK
The cost for a combined system, after a couple of minutes googling both, seems to be about 20,000 pounds.
That's 500 billion quid and each household would have free hot water and free electricity.
At 7 tonnes of CO2 per household per year, that's 175 million tons of CO2 not being emitted in a year and over 5 billion tons of CO2 in 30 years !!!
Why hasn't UK Gov not funded solar panels and solar heat tubes for every household ?
They have bailed out Northern Rock to the tune of, what is it 50 billion quid in one go so what's the problem ?
How much have New Labour spent on invading Afghanistan and Iraq ?
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sam
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Joined: 29 Dec 2007
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| Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 7:33 pm Post subject: Re: Fix your electricity cost for the next 30 years |
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| Mark Gobell wrote: | If you install photo voltaic solar cells on your roof you can, for the life of the panels - 30 years, fix you unit cost for electricity at about 14 pence per kwh.
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I suppose that's the cost of the electricity produced by the cells, not your entire consumption. How much electricity would such an installation produce on the roof of a typical semi-detached? What proportion of your total electricity consumption does it represent?
Then there's the money you could have been earning in interest on the capital outlay for your solar power kit, which effectively increases your KWH unit price.
Then, of course, there's the question of storage of surplus power. Do you feed this back into the National Grid? What does it cost for the kit to do this? Will a typical semi produce enough surplus to make it worthwhile? Or do you use limited-life batteries to store the spare?
Methinks this might be more complicated than meets the eye. Call in the actuaries !
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James C
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Joined: 26 Jan 2006
Posts: 1046
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| Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 7:44 pm Post subject: Re: Fix your electricity cost for the next 30 years |
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| Mark Gobell wrote: | If you install photo voltaic solar cells on your roof you can, for the life of the panels - 30 years, fix you unit cost for electricity at about 14 pence per kwh.
If you install solar tubes you can also have free hot water !!!
There are about 25 million households in the UK
The cost for a combined system, after a couple of minutes googling both, seems to be about 20,000 pounds.
That's 500 billion quid and each household would have free hot water and free electricity.
At 7 tonnes of CO2 per household per year, that's 175 million tons of CO2 not being emitted in a year and over 5 billion tons of CO2 in 30 years !!!
Why hasn't UK Gov not funded solar panels and solar heat tubes for every household ?
They have bailed out Northern Rock to the tune of, what is it 50 billion quid in one go so what's the problem ?
How much have New Labour spent on invading Afghanistan and Iraq ? |
You do have to wonder why. I have a solar panel to heat my hot water. Today, a fairly cloudy day but with sunny spells, the system heated 300 litres to 40 degrees. OK, so not 60 degrees, but my boiler doesn't have to work so hard now and 40 degrees is still adequate, even for showering.
I don't have a PV panel and efficiencies are poor therefore you'll never pay the money back (you won't on most hot water systems either) but at least they help to reduce the demand on power stations. Forget costly and dangerous nuclear when we could all generate our own electricity. That said, we'd all need to reduce our consumption if we were to do without power stations altogether.
Actually, many of the boiler manufacturers are now trialing CHP boilers in the UK. CHP = Combined Heat and Power and each boiler produces electricity as well as heat.
Our energy policy is truly awful. The Germans have been promoting renewables for years and they are now the first country in the EU to reduce their demand for oil and gas. My solar system is German and I've been fitting their heating systems for years.
The only negative issue is that if we all fitted PV panels, there may not be enough silicon in the world to do so. |
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Mark Gobell
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Joined: 24 Jul 2006
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| Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2008 10:37 am Post subject: |
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From the Independent in September 2006:
| Quote: | | Beyond the blood price, there is a dollar and sterling cost. In July it was reported that the US Congress had approved $437bn (£254bn) for costs related to the "war on terror". This, a sum greater than those spent on the Korean and Vietnam wars, compares to the $375bn that Make Poverty History says is needed to clear the debts of the world's poorest nations. The British Government has spent £4.5bn on Iraq and Afghanistan. |
I would have thought that the issue of climate change, peak oil and all that may come because of it would be massively alleviated if there was earnest interest in doing so.
So one has to ask why ?
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The Medium is the Massage - Marshall McLuhan. |
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blackcat
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Joined: 07 May 2006
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| Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2008 11:10 am Post subject: |
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Isn't it the case that pv cells have consumed more power in their manufacure than any have yet produced in operation? There is an interesting article on them here:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaics
| Quote: | Energy Payback Time and Energy Returned on Energy Invested
The energy payback time is the time required to produce an amount of energy as great as what was consumed during production. The energy payback time is determined from a life cycle analysis of energy.
Another key indicator of environmental performance, tightly related to the energy payback time, is the ratio of electricity generated divided by the energy required to build and maintain the equipment. This ratio is called the energy returned on energy invested (EROEI). Of course, little is gained if it takes as much energy to produce the modules as they produce in their lifetimes. This should not be confused with the economic return on investment, which varies according to local energy prices, subsidies available and metering techniques.
Life-cycle analyses of the energy intensity of typical solar photovoltaic technologies in present use today find that the typical energy payback time at present is around 7 years. Mounting and installation of the system adds a further 1 to 4 years, depending upon whether it is on a roof or in an open field. This gives a total energy payback time for a PV system of 8 to 11 years. |
OK - its getting better with advances in technology.
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"The conflict between corporations and activists is that of narcolepsy versus remembrance. The corporations have money, power and influence. Our sole influence is public outrage. Extract from "Cloud Atlas (page 125) by David Mitchell. |
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truthseeker john
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Joined: 02 Oct 2006
Posts: 577
Location: Yorkshire
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| Posted: Thu Jun 26, 2008 4:38 am Post subject: Re: Fix your electricity cost for the next 30 years |
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| James C wrote: | | The only negative issue is that if we all fitted PV panels, there may not be enough silicon in the world to do so. |
Nah...
Silicon (pronounced /ˈsɪlɪkən/ or /ˈsɪlɪkɒn/, Latin: silicium) is the chemical element that has the symbol Si and atomic number 14. A tetravalent metalloid, silicon is less reactive than its chemical analog carbon. As the eighth most common element in the universe by mass, silicon occasionally occurs as the pure free element in nature, but is more widely distributed in dusts, planetoids and planets as various forms of silicon dioxide (silica) or silicates. On Earth, silicon is the second most abundant element (after oxygen) in the crust,[1] making up 25.7% of the crust by mass.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon
http://www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/PopularScience/2005/10/1/ind ex.html
Silicon is made from sand and there's plenty of sand...
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"Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish." - Euripides
"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." - Albert Einstein
"To find yourself, think for yourself" - Socrates |
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