Just look at the overhang!

[D Skelton]

[QUOTE however very early on in my career I ?

Your only 26.[/QUOTE]

27. And? Everyone has to start somewhere. I served an apprenticeship and had minor experience at actually fitting PV systems very early on in my apprenticeship. Is my statement untrue?

- - - Updated - - -

[QUOTE however very early on in my career I ?

Your only 26.[/QUOTE]

27. And? Everyone has to start somewhere. I served an apprenticeship and had minor experience at actually fitting PV systems very early on in my apprenticeship. Is my statement untrue?

 

[D Skelton]

Why is their efficiency or lack of it such a big concern for you when they're using sunlight which is free and would be serving no other useful purpose if it wasn't utilised by the PV panels.

Because of the huge amount of government money that is poured into it. The same as wind farms. I think that money could be better spent.

 

[Earthstore]

Hmmm, what a thread...
Will not go into all the ins and outs here, Gavin is doing a great job.
Some simple facts...
A system bought for £65,000 two years ago, calculated to produce 28,000 Kwh per year, returning the system owner £10,000 per annum, so, working on those figures it would take 61/2 years to return investment

Ok, now for the facts..
This system produced 56,000kwh's in July of this year some 4 months short of what was calculated.

So, Mr Skelton, could you please tell me how a PV system that has produced 56,000 Kwh in less than 2 years does not work?

 

[MDJ]

Out of interest what is the warrenty period on installed panels?

 

[SolarCity]

"What is it exactly that I know so little about then?"

Okay, we'll start with:

"A complete waste of money, time and effort to install a solar panel in the UK."

With subsidies, a PV system can pay for itself in just over 5 years. With rising energy prices, we are very quickly approaching a time where subsidies will no longer be required. Is it a waste of money? That is pretty subjective but a well informed person is unlikely to take that stance in my opinion.


"what you're left with is a rather expensive mess on your roof, an invitation to thieves and a danger in high winds."

Expensive mess? Again, this is subjective. And not at all relevant to the viability of solar. Invitation to thieves? It would appear not. Very few of them have been stolen (mainly due to the fact that removal is difficult, resale value is low and purchase price is low". Danger in high winds? Properly installed, it would seem not. We've had some pretty extreme weather lately and I haven't seen any stories of panels being a danger at all.


"All this for an astronomical sum of money that won't be recuperated for at least 25 years. I'd say anyone buying a solar PV system is either completely bonkers or has been missold the product!"

Systems don't take 25 years to pay for themselves. Even a badly installed, hugely overpriced system would pay for itself in less than that. I have a spreadsheet of all of our installs and less than 4% of them are looking like taking more than 10 years to pay for themselves. Most of them will pay for themselves in less than 7 years - all this at current electricity prices.

".......panels are only 30% efficient."

This isn't even remotely relevant. The sun is actually pretty powerful and this negates a lot of the inefficiency issues. Regardless, as the sun is free, the 30% (inaccurate) figure is entirely arbitrary.


"I will continue to think that people who blindly sing the praises of a power source that has been proven to be highly innefficient are slightly mad!"

Mad? Or simply informed?


"Fact from where? I have a friend with a 3kW system (all south east facing) and his produces roughly a third of that?! Explain that?"

I can't explain it. What I would say is that your friend needs to investigate exactly why this is happening. If someone buys a car from a garage and it breaks down, he doesn't just ignore it and consider the automobile industry to be a waste of time.


"I have no experience of reading the masses of complaints out there from people who are confused as to why their PV system isn't performing as they were told it would!"

There isn't a mass of complaints about the viability of solar panels. Some systems have been mis-sold. Even the majority of these are outperforming predictions. The ones that have been correctly installed and sold are hugely outperforming.

Windows have been mis-sold in the past too. Does that mean that people with windows have simply been misled by salespeople?


"Haha, brilliant, so they are even worse that I thought! You prove my own point!"

I think you actually missed the point. Repeatedly.


"Well that is subject to opinion. You have stated yours, I have stated mine, can't really say much else other than mine is just as valuable as yours"

Not all opinions are equal. The right to express them is equal, the validity of them is not. If I turned up a CERN tomorrow and complained that they were using the Hadron Collider wrong as I'd read a couple of Daily Mail stories hysterically claiming that they risked creating a supermassive black hole, would it be accurate to say that my opinion was just as valuable?


"I'd sooner spend the money on LED lighting, correct insulation and A rated windows and still have enough money left over to go for a beer, or a thousand, after fitting it al"

Led lighting, insulation, windows. All excellent ideas and definitely worth implementing. This doesn't really say anything about the viability of PV though.


"From what I have seen and heard, I find these figures hard to believe, especially when the average light energy intensity in the UK on a south-facing roof is around 250 Watts per square metre (I can cite many sources for this figure). How is it possible for a 4kW system to produce 3600kWh per year???"

Well in that case you have seen and heard the wrong things. Either that or you have simply misunderstood.


"So you say you have an annual energy consumption of 5000kWh and you fitted a PV system of 4kW which should produce 4000kWh in a year? Why then has your energy consumption only halved? Shouldn't it have dropped by 80%?"

If every kWh of energy produced in the property was used then this is probably the figures you would expect. However, this is unlikely. Figures of around 50% use are more likely, depending on the habits of the homeowner.


"Essentially, there are fellas out there (not all I must add) robbing the tax payer blind because they have fitted a 4kW system to a north facing and shaded roof."

Did you hear the one about the guy who ripped off British Rail? He bought a return ticket and never came back.

If someone has installed on a north facing roof, then his predicted yield figures should simply reflect that - figures which are actually better than you might expect. That way no one has been ripped off, not the installers, homeowner nor the tax payer.


"People should get paid for what they ACTUALLY produce, rather than what the installer says it will produce under standard test conditions"

Sounds like a great idea. If only they'd have thought of that when they introduced the Feed In Tariff scheme. Oh, wait a minute.... that's right. They did.


"the company still gets paid for 50% of the 1000kWh. This is how I understand it anyway. If I am wrong, tell me exactly how this is prevented?"

Prevent it for what reason?

 

[D Skelton]

So, Mr Skelton, could you please tell me how a PV system that has produced 56,000 Kwh in less than 2 years does not work?

I have no doubt that it has worked very well for that customer and the installer who fitted it, but I don't think it has worked very well in the taxpayers favour.

I cannot say that PV doesn't work in individual circumstances because I simply don't have the figures to hand of the hundreds of systems I have installed like you do, what I do have is figures freely available detailing exactly how much it costs to harvest energy from the sun compared to how much it costs to harvest energy from the earth. Nuclear is by far the best form of energy production we have and will probably ever have, unless dramatic improvements in technology drive up the efficiency of solar panels ten fold and drive down the cost at the same time.

I'm not speaking from an individual point of view, as I pointed out very early on in the thread. My argument concerns the wider scope of energy production, not whether Mr and Mrs smith can save a few bob in 10 or so years time by having a few solar panels fitted.

 

[Gavin A]

If anyone wants to see the real background to all this, it's outlined in a KPMG report commissioned by Greenpeace in 1999.

It's 14 years since I read it first, so might not remember it exactly right, but essentially concluded that cost reductions for solar PV production could only be obtained via economies of scale, with an increase in production of 25 x production capacity should result in a 4 x reduction in costs and bring solar PV to the point where it could be considered roughly competitive with conventional fossil fuel generation.

It talked of the chicken and egg situation whereby unless the market were stimulated initially then the volumes would never increase to the point where solar PV could ever become economic.

So this is the reason for the last decades worth of significant market stimulation across Europe, it's needed to break that chicken and egg situation, to increase the market volumes for solar PV to the point where production and installation costs can be reduced to the point where they're at least cost competitive with fossil fuels, and can then compete on their own without subsidies and actually start to act as a drag on energy prices.

That study was talking about the potential for developing 500MW plant, which back then seemed like cloud cuckoo land stuff. By 2014 there's like to be 50GWp of solar PV manufacturing capacity around the world - this is what the mainly European Feed-In Tariff subsidy schemes have achieved in less than a decade, and now the entire world is starting to benefit from the abundant relatively cheap electricity this level of manufacturing capacity can provide.

So that is what the £8 a year or so on your electricity bills has helped to achieve, £8 a year to stimulate the market to the point where it can provide a source of low cost, reliable renewable electricity generation for the entire world, and reduce long term UK energy costs in the process.

Seems like a bit of a bargain to me.

 

[SolarCity]

The vast majority of the UK population probably know a lot less than D Skelton on the subject in question

I would very much hope that you are wrong. It is worrying that Mr Skelton is so badly informed on the subject seeing as he is obviously a practical man. The facts aren't exactly hard to come by.

We in the industry really do need to be able to actually form a reasoned defence to such opinions or we will lose the support of the wider UK public and politicians that we need to be able to continue the project of increasing the industries growth and cost reduction to the point where we're able to work without the need for those subsidies at all.

I think this thread has done that pretty well. I'm not surprised that someone with a ---- avatar stridently arguing such poorly informed opinion has ruffled some feathers, particularly on a Friday night, but amongst those responses there are some pretty clear rebuttals.
[/QUOTE]

 

[SolarCity]

Because of the huge amount of government money that is poured into it. The same as wind farms. I think that money could be better spent.

The efficiency figure isn't important. What is important is how much energy can be produced by the unit.

 

[Gavin A]

unless dramatic improvements in technology drive up the efficiency of solar panels ten fold and drive down the cost at the same time.

Please have a proper think about my, and other such as Marvo's, points on efficiency, but yes the efficiency is going up, 16% is standard now, 12% was standard when I first bought panels in 98.

on costs..

 

[D Skelton]

"What is it exactly that I know so little about then?"

Okay, we'll start with:

"A complete waste of money, time and effort to install a solar panel in the UK."

With subsidies, a PV system can pay for itself in just over 5 years. With rising energy prices, we are very quickly approaching a time where subsidies will no longer be required. Is it a waste of money? That is pretty subjective but a well informed person is unlikely to take that stance in my opinion.


"what you're left with is a rather expensive mess on your roof, an invitation to thieves and a danger in high winds."

Expensive mess? Again, this is subjective. And not at all relevant to the viability of solar. Invitation to thieves? It would appear not. Very few of them have been stolen (mainly due to the fact that removal is difficult, resale value is low and purchase price is low". Danger in high winds? Properly installed, it would seem not. We've had some pretty extreme weather lately and I haven't seen any stories of panels being a danger at all.


"All this for an astronomical sum of money that won't be recuperated for at least 25 years. I'd say anyone buying a solar PV system is either completely bonkers or has been missold the product!"

Systems don't take 25 years to pay for themselves. Even a badly installed, hugely overpriced system would pay for itself in less than that. I have a spreadsheet of all of our installs and less than 4% of them are looking like taking more than 10 years to pay for themselves. Most of them will pay for themselves in less than 7 years - all this at current electricity prices.

".......panels are only 30% efficient."

This isn't even remotely relevant. The sun is actually pretty powerful and this negates a lot of the inefficiency issues. Regardless, as the sun is free, the 30% (inaccurate) figure is entirely arbitrary.


"I will continue to think that people who blindly sing the praises of a power source that has been proven to be highly innefficient are slightly mad!"

Mad? Or simply informed?


"Fact from where? I have a friend with a 3kW system (all south east facing) and his produces roughly a third of that?! Explain that?"

I can't explain it. What I would say is that your friend needs to investigate exactly why this is happening. If someone buys a car from a garage and it breaks down, he doesn't just ignore it and consider the automobile industry to be a waste of time.


"I have no experience of reading the masses of complaints out there from people who are confused as to why their PV system isn't performing as they were told it would!"

There isn't a mass of complaints about the viability of solar panels. Some systems have been mis-sold. Even the majority of these are outperforming predictions. The ones that have been correctly installed and sold are hugely outperforming.

Windows have been mis-sold in the past too. Does that mean that people with windows have simply been misled by salespeople?


"Haha, brilliant, so they are even worse that I thought! You prove my own point!"

I think you actually missed the point. Repeatedly.


"Well that is subject to opinion. You have stated yours, I have stated mine, can't really say much else other than mine is just as valuable as yours"

Not all opinions are equal. The right to express them is equal, the validity of them is not. If I turned up a CERN tomorrow and complained that they were using the Hadron Collider wrong as I'd read a couple of Daily Mail stories hysterically claiming that they risked creating a supermassive black hole, would it be accurate to say that my opinion was just as valuable?


"I'd sooner spend the money on LED lighting, correct insulation and A rated windows and still have enough money left over to go for a beer, or a thousand, after fitting it al"

Led lighting, insulation, windows. All excellent ideas and definitely worth implementing. This doesn't really say anything about the viability of PV though.


"From what I have seen and heard, I find these figures hard to believe, especially when the average light energy intensity in the UK on a south-facing roof is around 250 Watts per square metre (I can cite many sources for this figure). How is it possible for a 4kW system to produce 3600kWh per year???"

Well in that case you have seen and heard the wrong things. Either that or you have simply misunderstood.


"So you say you have an annual energy consumption of 5000kWh and you fitted a PV system of 4kW which should produce 4000kWh in a year? Why then has your energy consumption only halved? Shouldn't it have dropped by 80%?"

If every kWh of energy produced in the property was used then this is probably the figures you would expect. However, this is unlikely. Figures of around 50% use are more likely, depending on the habits of the homeowner.


"Essentially, there are fellas out there (not all I must add) robbing the tax payer blind because they have fitted a 4kW system to a north facing and shaded roof."

Did you hear the one about the guy who ripped off British Rail? He bought a return ticket and never came back.

If someone has installed on a north facing roof, then his predicted yield figures should simply reflect that - figures which are actually better than you might expect. That way no one has been ripped off, not the installers, homeowner nor the tax payer.


"People should get paid for what they ACTUALLY produce, rather than what the installer says it will produce under standard test conditions"

Sounds like a great idea. If only they'd have thought of that when they introduced the Feed In Tariff scheme. Oh, wait a minute.... that's right. They did.


"the company still gets paid for 50% of the 1000kWh. This is how I understand it anyway. If I am wrong, tell me exactly how this is prevented?"

Prevent it for what reason?

After reading all of that, I can conclude that the reason why you think I know 'very little' is for two reasons. 1. because I used the figure of 30% instead of 20%. 2. because I believe the subsidies that pay for solar power are a waste of taxpayers money. My views are full of opinion regarding the wider subject of energy production in the UK, how you can deduct that I don't have a clue from what I have said is beyond me.

I'll give you an example, I disagree with a very established member on here with regards to a paticular topic surrounding TT systems and their effective Ra values. I think he is wrong, he thinks I am wrong. Many people agree with him, many people agree with me. Does that mean he knows very little about TT systems? No, in fact quite the opposite, he's probably the most knowledgable guy on here when it comes to TT systems. We just disagree!!!!!!

That is the point here!!! I just disagree!!!

At no point have I tried to make out that I'm some sort of solar guru, neither have I tried to say that solar panels don't work for individuals and companies that want to make a quick buck at the taxpayers expense, just that I don't believe in them as a viable solution to the whole of the UK's energy needs. YET. That is all!

 

[Gavin A]

To put that into perspective, the Kyocera 80Wp panels I bought for a project in 98 cost around 3 x more than I now pay for 250Wp panels.

I'd lay odds that there isn't another power generation technology that's seen anything like that level of cost reduction and efficiency improvement over that sort of timescale.

 

[SolarCity]

After reading all of that, I can conclude that the reason why you think I know 'very little' is for two reasons. 1. because I used the figure of 30% instead of 20%. 2. because I believe the subsidies that pay for solar power are a waste of taxpayers money.

1. I didn't even try to correct you on your 30% figure. I did try to explain how it isn't relevant.
2. That is subjective and not even something that I covered in my post.

I'll give you an example, I disagree with a very established member on here with regards to a paticular topic surrounding TT systems and their effective Ra values. I think he is wrong, he thinks I am wrong. Many people agree with him, many people agree with me. Does that mean he knows very little about TT systems? No, in fact quite the opposite, he's probably the most knowledgable guy on here when it comes to TT systems. We just disagree!!!!!!

Subjective and objective. Whether or not PV system are good value for money is subjective. A matter of opinion. Whether or not a 4kWp system can produce 3600kWh a year in Britain is objective. It is a fact. You can believe that it is not possible. But you would be wrong.

That is the beauty of facts. They remain a fact whether your believe in them or not.

At no point have I tried to make out that I'm some sort of solar guru, neither have I tried to say that solar panels don't work for individuals and companies that want to make a quick buck at the taxpayers expense, just that I don't believe in them as a viable solution to the whole of the UK's energy needs. That is all!

Who said they're a viable solution for the whole of the UK's needs?

They can and should be part of the whole solution. I don't think anyone on here would argue otherwise.

 

[Earthstore]

I think my point was that it's not win this thread, wherrth doing it anyway. Doing it badly then just makes it laughable. Solar panels are what, about 30% efficient on average? Then deduct a further 80% from that initial 30% for a solar panel in the UK and what you're left with is a rather expensive mess on your roof, an invitation to thieves and a danger in high winds. All this for an astronomical sum of money that won't be recuperated for at least 25 years. I'd say anyone buying a solar PV system is either completely bonkers or has been missold the product!

I don't blame the installers for fitting them (well, that is), they are just supplying a service for which there is still a tiny amount of demand for. Neither do I blame the fitters for installing completely useless North facing systems when the FIT rates were still at criminally high levels. I do blame the government however for allowing this misrepresentation of solar power to go on for this long.

Mr Skelton sir, I thought I would reply to your second post, where you stated that PV panels are so inefficient that they are not worth installing in the UK, I answered this with a real life system that is installed in the UK, I could give you many other examples too.

Now you appear to have changed tactics and it is about taxpayers money and/or Government funding, I must say, that for what may be an intelligent gentleman you are very ill informed.
You see sir, I was involvedvin this industry for quite some time and had to follow the politics and media circus that surrounded it, and that is what is wrong with PV, not the efficiency of panels, not that we live in the UK, but politics...

I will now bow out of this, I am all up for a debate and will always listen to a reasoned opinion, sadly though, this is not one of them..
Just an observation, this thread was started on Friday 13th...

 

[Gavin A]

Well done Gavin, the only Installer I have seen on this forum of late who can explain the pv questions and give answers which we can all understand.

I've been making the case for solar PV since the mid 90s, it's far far easier doing it now when I can point to clear evidence to back up my assertions than it was back then when the best I could do is reference a KPMG report predicting that solar PV costs should fall in the future if the market was stimulated to a level that was massively above the virtual cottage industry at the time.

I'm like a kid in a candy shop these days, going from the point where solar PV was incredibly rare to the point now when I can't remember the last time I was on a roof where I couldn't see several other solar PV systems on other roofs in surrounding streets. This energy revolution really is happening incredibly fast now, and I'm pretty much certain that by the time the new nuclear station opens it will widely be viewed as being a huge economic folly by this government.

ps the alternative to that nuclear plant D Skelton is so enamored with was the severn tidal barrage, which would have supplied around the same level of energy generation, used the same grid connection, but would have been operating for hundreds of yeas after it was built, rather than 40 years then leaving hundreds of years of nuclear waste disposal to worry about.