Beelbeebub

I was thinking of the higher rates! They were 15p, now 12p And I suspect they will keep falling as solar generation gets more and more common. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/02/solar-powers-record-share-britain-electricity-july

Yes, no plans to sell. I've looked at the multi tenant systems (solshare or something). They are pretty pricey (5-10k) and have 15 outputs (5 x 3phases) so make the most sense in blocks of flats. That is the most hard nosed approach but the benefit to the tenants is much more limited - especially with lower export rates.

If I did an AC transmission system the temptation would be to make it a non battery system and leave fitting of batteries to soak up the excess something for the tenants to do if they wish. This might be easier with plug in battery systems.

There are 4 houses in a loose crescent around a "green". A field backs on to the "green" to the north with a high hedge The panels are being fitted to comply with the EPC regulations and get each property to. "C" grade 1 house is a good candidate for normal E/W roof solar being a bungalow with a low pitched concrete roof. The other 3 have problematic roofs. Either not good aspect (shaded) or not good enough condition to allow solar to be fitted with out a new roof first or both But a ground mounted array could be fitted in the "north" field out of sight (and far enough back so it's not shaded by the hedge. I figure it's easier and cheaper to install and maintain one array in a field than 3 arrays on 3 roofs. And then for the bungalow I have to decide if it's cheaper/easier to put panels on the roof Vs chuck some more up in the field array and run a cable to it (that would be the 100m one. The others are closer to 50m) Strictly speaking the batteries are not needed as the EPC system currently only accounts for the panels and inverter - you get no points for batteries. But it gives so much extra benefit to the tenants it's hard not to justify it beyond the purely mercenary view.

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!

When gas prices fall. And when they do, they'll eventually go up again the next time some geopolitical cluster fork disrupts gas supplies again. But so far this year renewables have displaced just shy of 2/3 of the gas we would have had to buy which has cushioned the blow to electricity prices. The most recent energy price cap raised gas prices by 25% but electricity by only 5% partly because of this displacement.

To break his arguments down by section 1. He makes the mistake that declining N.Sea production is a choice - it isn't the rate of decline is slightly modifiable but not to any significant degree. We are arguing over the green line or the red line. He also makes the mistake that our high gas and electricity prices are due to us deliberately running down our production. Aside from my point above, they are high due to the high price of gas and the international price of gas is not changed by the UK output. The price is set by the international markets and those are (nominally)supply and demand. Even at best, our output is too small to change the international price. It should be noted that the rise in electricity prices and gas prices was very closely correlated in 2022 because a much larger proportion of our electricity came from gas. In 2026 the rise was much less direct because less of our electricity comes from gas. He talks about the supply chains for renewables being dirty and having emissions. This is a variation of the landman rant (and the "EV's will never pay back the carbon used in making the battery" argument before that). Study after study shows wind turbines, solar panels and EVs are all net negative for carbon well within their lifetime. It also ignores the carbon and pollution from fossil fuel extraction as a comparison. 2. He talks about "what happens is the gas prices fall?" Well, they will eventually for a while,until the next crisis. Then they will fall again until the next crisis and so on. So far we have had 2 massive "once in a lifetime" shocks in the current decade -that we are only half way through... Does anyone want to bet Trump doesn't do something stupid I'm the next 2 and a bit years. What would happen to oil prices if the world's largest oil producer suffered massive political instability? Say a the kind caused when a leader who loses an election tries to cling to power using a paramilitary police force or even elements of the armed forces.... Who wants to say that is fantasy land? 3. He seems to get mixed up on the cost of capacity. With renewables capacity is a more statistical figure than gas plants etc. With ccgt plant the peak cavity is easy. Just an engineering question -"that plant, at full chat, will produce 2GW of electricity." With renewables there is a theoretical capacity - what if everything was perfect, but that's only a few % of the time. A better question would be "what is the 95% available capacity" ie the level it can produce 95% (or whatever arbitrary figure you want) of the time. So my 11kwp solar array has a 95% figure closer to 1kw (during daylight obviously). Essentially we will have to dump a load of capital into building these assets. Once e have built them they will provide cheap energy for decades. Or we could kee the capital and dole it out to buy oil and gas as we need it. That's our choice. Right enough for now....

To drag back to the original topic. The article about the solar farm was emotive (as all anti ones are) invoking the loss of "prime" land that was actually not particularly prime. The second article made the "gotcha" observation that renewables do it always produce at their peak output.... Not news and built into the calculations. This is why we need considerably more peak capacity than our nominal maximum. This is the calculation every one with solar panels makes. I have 11kwp of panels on an 9kwh inverter feeding a house that runs about 500w continuous and peaks at maybe 7kw if we really try. Why have I got so many panels? Because it means they produce enough to power the house even in sub optimal conditions (most of the time) It's the same with our national capacity -we will prob need something like 2 or 3x our nominal peak demand, so north of 120gw peak. Will we ever see that demand? Hopefully not! But it means that the system will still be able to provide a significant amount of our national demand even when operating at 20, 25% of maximum

The author ignores the enormous hump in the blue and orange line that occured during the COVID epidemic but absolutely didn't show excess deaths from COVID.....😁 But @Spinny to address the graph fully you need to understand what was done They took all the previous years (usually omitting COVID)and effectively produce a smoothed average. If you visualise a smooth line running through *the middle* of the bundle of lines that's the baseline. You then look at the number of deaths in the target period Vs that theoretical baseline -as you can see the 2026 line is towards the upper end of the "bundle" hence there are "excess deaths". The difficult but is to differentiate between excess deaths that are abnormal and excess deaths that a normal (ie natural variation). Clearly the COVID lumps were abnormal (🤫) but the heatwave deaths, much harder to call. It is highly likely there were excess deaths, there always are when it is hot or cold. It's likely that there were more excess deaths as the temperature for hotter. But the exact number, to a corpse, will never be known.

I mean I read through it and there wasn't much wrong. Personally I would have used less precise % given the inherent uncertainty in these methods. I wouldn't say "39%" i'd say "around 1/3" I wouldn't say "59%" Icd say "over half" But apart from that there want anything controversial - I mean we broke multiple records are saw exceedingly high temperatures even for August and Europe saw even worse. We would be daft to ignore this event even if we escaped it.

Sorry what do you base "it's a lie" on? Obviously it's impossible to compare the counter factual of no heatwave, but the practice of looking at what the expected death rate in June would have been in most summers and then looking at the actual death rate to compute a difference is fairly well established. It's some for every major public health intervention. For example the recent news about the drop in cervical cancer deaths amongst girls due to HPV vaccinations was done by a version of this method. We do the same when a report comes out about how many extra deaths are caused by a cold winter. Your entire rant rests on the notion that the met office statement about extra deaths is a deliberate untruth on their part. If the number is calculated using mundane regular methods we use for every other similar situation then your entire point collapses. Extra deaths caused by an unusually long hot spell is exactly the sort of information the met office should be providing.