Renewable energy sources - the good, the bad and the ugly

We will never totally eliminate the grid and really, if we went to small nuclear stations to power their local area, the grid could be run by nuclear alone. Particularly in such a mild climate as you have over there!

I just think that if individual residential homes were less reliant on the grid, it would mitigate the need for giant power plants everywhere or at the least, lower the stress on the grid to accommodate business use.

We do not have steady winds to rely on as people like me are some 1,000 miles from the ocean so I am referring to mostly solar power for domestic use.

@Clueless 1 v2 I take it that you have never used solar power other than for maybe small camping style gear?

I use solar power to run all the fans, lights, pumps , etc in my greenhouses. Both day and night. And now I realize that I have too much/unused power so I think I will pipe some of that power into the house. These panels last some 25 years and currently there are methods to reuse the materials to make them, once again, viable. Sun power, long term, is free. It is not "of" this earth. Using it takes nothing from our planet nor converts any of our natural resources in any way.

Heck, I quite often cook in a sun oven and you can't get much greener than that!

 

No. But I have never criticised solar as a domestic energy source. In fact I've considered having solar panels installed. The reason I haven't, and won't unless I win the lottery, is because nobody seems to want to share objective data. There's plenty of anecdotal evidence in its favour, with people living in entirely different areas to me, leading entirely different lifestyles to me, saying it works great for them. And then there's the calculators on the installers websites that say it might work well for me because I've got exactly the right roof conditions. But what I've never been able to find is actual statistics. If I could find a dataset that gave average power per square metre, by hour of day and by month, spanning at least five years, then I could do my own calculations to see if it's viable. That data must exist because enough people have solar and many have smart meters, but it doesn't seem to be readily available to the public.

I can't even find reliable data on how much the power is affected by weather. There are statements like 'it still works when it's cloudy', but if I'm going to make a decision backed by numbers, I want to know how much the efficiency drops on a cloudy day compared to full sun.

If we were talking about maybe a grand, I'd take a punt. But when a solar installation plus backup battery comes in at over 10k, I'm not willing to gamble that much, and gambling is exactly what it is if it's not backed by reliable data.

 

Do you get anything at all out of solar panels on cloudy days?
Might be my imagination but its more often cloudy than not around here.

Its also not very windy for long periods.

We dont have any hills or mountains for hydro electric and even the tides are not that high in this area, I dont think.

@CanadianLori , has it ever been suggested putting wind turbines out on the lakes?

 

It is not the same thing, but I have solar-powered lights in the garden and in the summer when it doesn't get dark until almost 11 pm they are great. However, in winter, within an hour of getting dark, they are like a cigarette in a wet paper bag. Solar panels here would be rather inefficient for most of the year.
We do however have almost constant wind, probably why the hills around here are covered with wind turbines.

 

The problem at the moment, with high energy costs homes are struggling to go green.

According to numerous sites solar panels, heat pumps, double glazing, loft insulation etc etc have all increased in cost and longer time leads to install. Solar panels are reported to have increased in cost by 23% and double glazing by 30%.

Last year, on hotukdeals there was numerous deals on loft insulation, not now. As an example, wickes last year were selling rolls of Knauf super top up insulation 200mm for £18.50, cost now £30.00. Demand is probably so high, they don't need to offer discounts anymore, hence why there is none.

I know somewhere on the forum we discussed that solar panels should be mandatory on new builds, I was one of them but only if supply outstrips demand. The problem we are seeing now, demand is outstripping supply, which results in higher costs, what would the costs be if it was mandatory.

 

Yes, there are some wind turbines on lakes but only a few. We do have some on higher elevations, say about 100 miles north of me but they really aren't efficient because the grid is not set up for storage, only transmission

@Clueless 1 v2 judging by what the members that have solar power say, it is a good deal but as you also say, if you don't have the money to buy in, it really is a pointless exercise doing any calculations.

 

It's not about not having the money. I'm fortunate enough that while I'm far from rich, I'm not skint either. I have spare cash for one simple reason, which is that I manage my finances well. Part of that is not making big spends blindly. Bit by bit I'm making my house more eco friendly. There are lots of things I can do with 10k to that aim. Things that I can back up with solid data. Solar without a battery is about 6k, but given that our main energy use is evening time, and the feed in tariff is a fraction of the price per unit from the grid, that's probably a bad idea. I say probably because nobody seems to have actual data. Solar with a battery is around 10k. That's a big spend to make without data.

Ok, some people say it works great. Those people are not me. They don't live my life and they don't live in my house. Their situation is different.

Look at it this way. Let's say a few people all bought the same model of car for around 10k (it must be a cheap small car). Those people might love it and it might serve them well. They give it glowing reviews. Without ever having seen or driven that model of car, would you buy it just because it's worked well for others? Your local roads might be different, you might drive at different times of day, you might drive more or less than average, you might have more or fewer passengers or luggage. That specific model of car might be totally unsuitable for you and you had no way of knowing because nobody shared the data and you'd never even seen it before buying it. It's exactly the same with solar. People who've had success with it live in different houses, have different family size, different lifestyles and different energy demands. Without data, you have only anecdote and subjective opinion. For me, that's not enough to gamble 10k on.

 

But you can go and test drive a car whereas solar and battery storage you cannot. It is a leap of faith.

 

I'm a member of Radio Caroline support group. The company are now getting quotes to install Solar to power their 4 Kw transmitter.
Radio Caroline can be heard on 648am, online & various DAB sites in the UK.

 

For real? Is that still a thing? I thought radio Caroline was a pirate station from the 60s, run from a boat just outside UK territorial waters. I thought it suffered misfortune in suspicious circumstances and sank.

 

Battery storage.

 

The first ship, The Mi Amigo did sink, the second and present ship The Ross Revenge is now anchored in the River Blackwater, Suffolk.
You can find the history of the ships & station online at radiocaroline.co.uk