The Breakthrough Institute, a Californian environment and energy research unit, has put out an eye-catching report about German solar subsidies. According to Breakthrough’s assessment, the feed-in tariffs paid since the start of the solar boom make PV four times as expensive as nuclear power, even using the inflated costs suggested by the construction of the reactor at Olkiluoto in Finland.

Breakthrough should have made the point – but didn’t – that the initially generous feed-in tariff rates in Germany have been repeatedly cut. The correct analysis would have not have compared today’s nuclear costs with PV of a decade ago but the current costs of both technologies. At 2013 prices, solar PV in mid-latitude countries is now cheaper than new nuclear. Put in the UK context, the proposed EdF power station at Hinkley is now more expensive per unit of electricity generated than solar farms in the south of England.  The implications of this need a great deal more consideration than they are getting. Read the rest of this entry »

(This article was published on the Guardian web site on 29th April 2013.)

This month a hydro project to generate electricity at a weir on the Thames in Oxford won the an investment of nearly £300,000 from 95 shareholders, three quarters of whom live in Oxford, within two weeks of opening its offer. Just a few weeks ago, the village of South Brent in Devon financed a large wind turbine almost entirely with local money. Read the rest of this entry »

What percentage of the UK’s electricity is generated by small power plants supported by Feed In Tariffs?  I think the answer is about 0.6%. At current rates of growth, this will rise to about 1% by this time next year. Read the rest of this entry »

The community micro hydro scheme at Osney, near the centre of Oxford, has reached its target of £250,000 investment from local shareholders within ten days of starting its fund-raising. Work commences on a 49 kW Archimedes screw at a weir on the River Thames in a few weeks’ time. The target return offered to investors is only 4%. This is more proof that community renewable energy projects can raise money locally at rates well below the cost of bank finance. Many congratulations to the team that have been working on this complex project for several years. And praise to the Environment Agency for making it possible – here and around the country – to develop well-designed river micro hydro. Read the rest of this entry »

Whatever George Monbiot says, it simply isn’t true that UK greenhouse gas emissions are still growing rapidly. Monbiot is right to insist that we move from focusing just on UK-based emissions and include the impact of our imports. But even if you include the embedded greenhouse gases in goods brought into the country, domestic and imported emissions have fallen sharply since 2004. Read the rest of this entry »

Several householders have asked whether the performance of their PV system indicates problems with their solar panels. The recent electrical output from their roof has been well below expectations.

If the output from my panels is any guide, the problem lies in the cloudiness of the last year, and not the system itself. I’ve recorded the output figures from my PV system each month for the last nine years and this annual period has been by far the worst on record. Read the rest of this entry »

The government says its policies are saving householders’ money on their energy bills. Although subsidies for lower carbon generation increase costs, DECC contends that its energy efficiency schemes have outweighed the impact. It says that gas bills have been held down by improvements in home insulation and better boilers. However the government ignored the evidence that homes are heated to lower temperatures than they were a decade ago. The apparent savings in gas bills are driven as much by lower thermostats as improved efficiency. Read the rest of this entry »

When temperatures in the British Isles drop to unexpectedly low levels, the pattern of traffic on this web site changes. One set of search terms dominates the inquiries. Readers are looking for information on why their air source heat pump is costing so much money to run. Sold to them as a way of saving cash, readers often seem to find that the price of heating their home has suddenly increased, sometimes quite dramatically. And, moreover, the pumps don’t heat the house properly.

Today (March 25th 2013) is unusually cold across Britain and the search term ‘problems with air source heat pump’ is the single most common inquiry. Colder countries that have been using heat pumps for decades seem to be able to install them in ways that mean that homes have inexpensive and reliable heating. In the UK, with its badly insulated houses, air source heat pumps seem to be a complete disaster for many unlucky purchasers.

Below, I copy a letter I’ve just received from a lady living in the Orkneys off the northern tip of Scotland giving her experiences. Readers may also be interested in the comments added at the end of a previous post on heat pumps, including the most recent one from Jane Smith, submitted today. Despite the increasing evidence of systematic problems with air source heat pumps, government bodies such as the Energy Savings Trust continue to say that they will save money for householders living off the gas grid. Heat pumps are also part of DECC’s ‘Renewable Heat Incentive’, a scheme that is intended to subsidise the installation of suitable and effective technologies for householders. The continuing official support for heat pumps in the face of repeated failure needs to be challenged. Read the rest of this entry »

(The comments underneath this article are particularly interesting. I recommend reading. Chris.)

Whatever renewable energy advocates say, the intermittent nature of solar, wind and marine energy production represents a difficult problem. Although we can adjust electricity demand to match supply to a far greater extent than we do today, the huge expected growth in UK offshore wind power is going to give the electricity grid major problems. When the gales blow, we’ll be dumping power but running short of electricity on cold, still days.

That’s why the recent contract win by ITM Power, the Sheffield hydrogen electrolysis company, is so interesting. ITM is supplying some of its units to a 360 kW hydrogen production plant in Germany that take surplus electricity, convert it into hydrogen and feed the gas into the national gas grid. (Please read the comments for discussion of some of the problems this might cause). In a second stage, hydrogen can be converted to methane, the main constituent of natural gas, and injected into the grid or into storage caverns. The Germans have been quicker to recognise than other countries that the gas network can store far more energy than any other media. Forget batteries, compressed air storage or pumped water: the national gas grid has a capacity several orders of magnitude greater. And the network and its storage sites already exist. No need to spend billions on new facilities. Complete reliability. Read the rest of this entry »