back to article Solar power boom 'unsustainable', says Gov

The Great British Solar Power rush may soon come to a dramatic halt: the amount knocked off 'leccy bills for solar-powered homes will be slashed. Energy minister Greg Barker confirmed today that if cuts to the feed-in tariff (FiT) aren't made, his budget will simply run out. But by how much will it be reduced? Details leaked by …

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    1. phoenix
      Thumb Up

      No issues here

      Totally agree. This is the problem with the green movement sometimes the wood cannot be seen for the trees. Some 60% energy use in a house is heating. Better to spend the money on insulation and other energy use reduction techniques. Too much weight is given to alternative generating systems when more should be given to energy efficiency measures. Two ways to deal with the issue; produce more by no non-polluting methods or use less.

      1. Silverburn
        Happy

        @ Phoenix

        60% of energy is heating? good lord, what sort of techie are you??? :-)

        All the tech here are probably running at least 4-5 machines in the house, plus HD TV's etc etc...my electric is DOUBLE my heating.

        Mind you, when running an 800W game rig who needs additional heating...

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And the cost to the Earth long term??

    is?

    Seriously, this is a joke when it started! Solar Power? In the UK??

    LOL

    Nuclear is the only viable way forward.. And the gov know it but someone is always against it.

    1. phoenix
      Stop

      Expense

      It is a way and a very expensive one at that. I believe not one nuclear station (in this country at least) has generated enough profit over its lifetime to pay for its decommissioning costs. Low / no C02 (ignoring manufacturing and building) is in its favour with the global warming issues (though I believe electricity generation was never very high on that list anyway). There are questions over stability of uranium supply and the amount the world has left in the ground to factor in as well.

      1. itzman

        you believe wrong

        Or rather since only one nuclear plant has been fully decommissioned, its specious to say what you said.

        At about 800MW a small Magnox plant at - say - 5p wholesale cost generates £350m worth of electricity a year

        they have been operating for ~50 years - say around £17bn worth of electricity.

        They (new nuclear plant of similar capacity) only cost about £2bn to build these days. It is hardly likely they will cost 10 times as much to decommission as to build.

      2. Andydaws

        I'd love to see those numbers

        Because looking at the numbers for new build - where there's now good data from the 8-10 light water reactors that are well advanced in decommissioning, about half of which have restored the site to unlimited use - even including NPV effects, the cost of decommissioning is 2-3% of the value of electricity generated over life. Add in the NPV effect and it's even less.

        Typical decom cost is $500-1000/Kw of capacity (if anything, that should come down as the experience base improves). For a 1600MW EPR that's £1.2Bn

        running for design life at 85% capacity factor for design life (60 years), and averaging £60/MWh is £42Bn. That £60Mwh provides for a return on capital of about 8-10%.

        I'll do theNPV version later, but even assuming prompt decom on shutdown I'm pretty certain it'll be under 1%.

      3. Joel 1
        Boffin

        Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors

        LFTR technology has been around from the 50s, but had the "disadvantage" that they can't be used to make bombs, so were not developed. Produces far less waste and far more efficient than Uranium fission. Thorium is widely available, unlike Uranium. Thorium has 1 million times the energy density of hydrogen/carbon bonds, and can be run in small reactors.

        Recently the Chinese announced that they would be looking to develop LFTR as a commercial energy source. I think that the government should be pushing investment into developing this technology.

        A good intro can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LeM-Dyuk6g

  2. Tom Reg

    Same thing in Canada

    We in Canada (pop 35 million) will pay $200 billion over the next 20 years for about $15 billion worth of green electricity. It works out to several thousand dollars per tonne of CO2, in the best case scenario. It does get urban voters excited, though.

    You can make a phone call, someone comes over installs PV panels - no money leaves your pocket, and you are 'guaranteed' about $1200 per year.

    Keep the 'guaranteed' part in mind - Spain broke all its wind and solar contracts last year, cutting payments.

    Wind does not even work well in Ontario, where we have several GW of water power from Niagara falls, etc.

  3. All names Taken

    Wot? No gordon?

    I am surprised the Gov did not do a gordon on it and turn the the FiT into a TiT (Tax in Tariff)

    1. Andydaws
      Unhappy

      Any guesses who was SoS for Energy when this farce was introduced?

      A certain E Miliband.....

  4. Tony Paulazzo

    Part II

    They can use a couple of months defense budget for the initial outlay, they won't miss it.

  5. Richard Wharram

    Hurrah

    It's a start I suppose. Although, I have a bit of money that I was considering putting into a solar panel to take advantage of this crazy scheme.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Solar Panel and Wind Turbines

    They are both piss and wind! The sun don't shine enough in the UK, & it's not windy enough in most places. Where it is windy, it's often TOO windy, so they have to be shut down.

    Lets get real here - Nuclear is the only green (zero carbon) option for sustainable energy for the UK.

    Yes - they are expensive to build, and dangerous if they leak, and cost a fortune to decommission - YET they are still the best of a bad bunch compared to Oil and Gas or these pointless solar/wind/wave non-entities.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Heat pumps #

    "Air source heat pumps in the home."

    As part of an experiment for an old boss at Defra, I rebuilt my mother's house, and put in four Mistubishi ashps, (though it turns out, one would've been enough,) and a custom designed (by me,) thermal store which heated water, and powered the wet central heating for backup.

    After a measured year, running her whole house on electricity. (Cooking, lighting, telly, heating, hot water.) I managed to average a year round 21 units per day. This is in County Durham. I was fecking cold that winter (-17 outside and they still worked, though god knows how.)

    Furthermore, one of the other recommendations I made was the FiT. Naturally, I ended up working for a solar company, where I intended to propose covering her house, and mine with the bloody things, as advertising.

    Alas, as a contractor, I went this morning as they scaled back.

  8. Tony Paulazzo
    Happy

    >if you own property and can afford the up-front cost, you are being subsidised by those who don't and can't.<

    Eat the rich!

    Here's an idea, any government that implemented it would be guaranteed a shoe in in the following election:

    The government pays for every roof in England, Wales, Scotland and NI to have PV installations all feeding the national grid (plus I guess wave, wind and river generators), then lower the price of electricity so the companies aren't posting such obscene profits - instant popularity with the electorate.

    1. Richard Wharram
      Thumb Up

      Of course

      The 50% base tax rate to pay for this will be insanely popular \o/

      Where did I put my voting slip ?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Another case of Socialism for rent seekers and pain for everyone else.

    Few people can afford to put up panels and wait so long for a payback, also the economics don't add up, so this is just another Socialist Ponzi scheme as the bent quango finally selfishly recognises when their budget is threatened!

    I decided it was a waste of money and a big risk to become a Solar parasite, because I can make much bigger returns by optimising my power usage and investing in honest physical investments; investments which have genuine value without needing any Socialist market corrupting state subsidies to prop them up!

  10. Jack Lampka

    Long live Andrew Orlowski!

    Andrew Orlowski is completely right. We should stop subsidizing energy production. Bye bye subsidies for nuclear power (over 1 billion Pounds in the UK annually). Bye bye subsidies for coal (about 2 billion Euros in Germany annually). Bye bye subsidies for oil (about 4 billion US$ in the U.S. annually). Well, bye bye 550 billion US$ subsidies for fossil fuels spend annually by all countries across the world.

    Too bad, solar energy, you are late to the game. If you came to the game earlier you could have received tons of tax payers' money to help you get going like the nuclear power industry. The nuclear industry has received for example about 150 billion US$ subsidies since its inception in the U.S. alone. And too bad that the cost of fossil fuels exclude all the external cost, we cannot rig the market anymore. Solar energy, no subsidies for you!

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