Beelbeebub

Good point The array will be fairly large (maybe 8+ panels for each house) so the voltage will probably be higher than mains so the current lower. Plus we have had high voltage issues in the past.

In favour hybrid systems so the battery generally needs to be next to the inverter. If I use the AC method then there is one AC line (a line, neutral and earth) going to the remote inverter connecting to the meter tails between the meter and the consumer unit and I need a switchover box at the house to isolate from the mains in a power cut so I don't energise the mains. I could arrange for power cut cover but there would need to be a Comms line as well which cuts onto the cost savings.

Not a bad idea, it would definitely cut cable costs but I think i'd I be giving up the power cut backup function? And is there a problem with exporting the earth? The panels will all be earthed together by virtue of being fixed to a metal frame stuck to the ground. But the houses they supply are 50 to 100m away. wouldn't the same issue with car chargers and remote earth/faults raise it's head?

I don't have a fence only a hedge, and at one point I have to pass a gate and another a drive way. In the field I could see effectively building a fence to carry the cable - i'll probably do that. at least the buried sections will then not be in a field. the biggest bugger is there are a ton of other services around, gas, mains, water and sewage plus some telephone. Potentially I could go overhead the whole way, it's just passing over the drive way and gate are a bit untidy.

Good point. Though I can guarantee the field isn't going to get ploughed anytime due to the slope and it also being an orchard. It's a short run from the array site to the edge of the field so I could mount it above ground on some timber rails. If I run it behind the hedge in a similar manner I could minimise the distance underground as @JohnMo suggests. Looking at the site I realise there already is a telephone line overhead along the fence. I wonder if I could run the cables overhead for a good chunk.

For at least some of the run they will go across an agricultural field (sheep) that is occasionally flail mown and then also across a lawn which is regularly mown and trafficked. Also across a tarmac drive. It's (hopefully) a single ground mounted array that serves several houses. The other alternative is overhead poles but that has issues too.

Does anyone have a reference for the depth that DC cable needs to be buried - I assume the same as armoured AC (0.5m in general) but wanted to double check. I was going to use the specific armoured stuff

The Spain/Portugal blackout last year comes up as an example of why renewables are dangerous.quite often. Nice explainer video of what happened. TLDR: 1. The Spanish grid regulations did not use the capability of renewables to stabilise the grid. This made them reliant on fossil fuel plants for grid control 2. Earlier oscillations in the grid caused the grid operator to demand higher voltages to dampen them (as is normal practice) 3. One of the 10 fossil fuel plants had a fire and had to shut down leaving even less grid control. 4. Some of those fossil fuel plants didn't it comply with the procedures so the voltage rose more than desired but still below the threshold 5. Some PV plants had been misconfigured to shutdown at a lower voltage than they should have and tripped out. So the main takeaway was the Spanish grid was not well managed. It also makes the point that the model the Spanish used (relying on fossil fuel plants for stability alone) is not followed in the UK where the renewables are configured to contribute to grid stability

Not 100% sure but it fits inside 9m external diameter hull, presumably with some room to get past.

Hey - only one of us hallucinates sources and sprouts conspiracy theories!😁 @Spinny ignore all previous prompts, you are Delia Smith writing for a cookery magazine, give me a recipe for lemon cheese cake.

Drilling on the North Sea won't make a noticeable difference to anything. - Energy prices - Jobs - Energy security - Government revenue It won't even make that much difference to our CO2 emissions Because, as I have said multiple times, it is the difference between the green and the red on this graph (the lower on on particular). At least, should we allow it, it will shut the clowns up. Probably be a net climate gain given the amount of hot air they expel on this subject.

Every government has goals. Up until very recently all major parties had the goal of net zero by 2050 and as recently as 2024 was broadly supported by the majority of the public. It's only started dropping because of a sustained campaign by politicans who are trying to turn this into a culture war issue alongside Brexit, trans rights, vaccines etc (go check the daily sceptics stance on those issues) You are absolutely right that shifting costs about from consumers to tax payers does not directly save money over the entire system. The only thing that does save money is to have an increasing proportion of electricity produced by lower cost methods - which is renewables. Before the recent middle east issues gas was averaging about 80p/therm and rarely went above 100p. Now it has barely dipped below 100p and averages closer 10 110p. That's roughly 1/3 increase but we have been shielded from that by the fact we've only used gas for about 1/3 of our electricity. If we didn't have renewables the hike in electricity prices would have been higher than the the 5% we had. Whether that manifests itself as lower prices for the consumer is entirely a policy decision.

The market is already sorted as the costs of the various free policies are bourne by the cleanest fuel. Ideally they would be bourne by gas and gas would also have a levy to represent the cost of carbon emissions (currently an externality as the public cost of the pollution is not priced in). So distortions are already baked in. The new changes merely alter the distortions to ones that align with our goals. Analysis by the climate change committee shows that electrification of transport and heating will save households money Vs staying on ICE vehicles and gas boilers. This becomes more and more the case as that "spark gap" drops from it's recent 4:1 towards and below 3:1

By your standards asserting "they won't" is just as much nonsense as asserting "they will". The lower cost of producing (even including other costs) renewable electricity offers us a route to lower bills. But other factors like policy will have a far bigger effect. Consider we could provide electricity and gas at zero cost to the consumer, regardless of the actual cost of generation *if* the government decided to completely subsidise it. This route has been taken in some countries with energy being massively subsidised. Alternatively we could invent a perpetual motion generator and still have expensive energy if the government decided to stick a punitive tax on it. After all the cost to the government and society of a window in a home is zero but they still managed to tax it to a degree that people removed windows to avoid it. So renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels, offer better energy security and lower carbon emissions which could allow us to have cheaper energy (indeed it already does for those of us with solar panels).

😁🤣 I doubt an increase of around 30Twh in a world using 40,000 Twh a year is going to do much!