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'Pavement power' - The bad idea that never seems to die

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

I live in a place that's much sunnier than the UK and most of the EU

And that's dandy. In parts of the world where sunshine is plentiful and reliable, then PV's a great idea. Even more so when peak solar output is closely correlated with peak demand. Throw in some battery storage and you can really be cooking on sun.

But in the context of the UK energy system that doesn't help. Our peak demand is the coldest winter days after dark. During winter capacity factor on solar is about 5% (less on cloudy days or if there's snow). So for the UK government to subsidise PV at the ridiculous rates that it did in recent years was madness. All that it achieved was to take demand away from thermal plant, without obviating the need for the thermal plant for those cold. windless winter days and nights. As a consequence the utilisation of thermal plant fell, efficiency fell as well (so offsetting a fair bit of the claimed benefits of the PV) and government had to introduce subsidies to keep thermal plant available.

UK energy policy has left nothing to chance in ensuring that the end user pays the highest possible price for energy. Networks have been required to spend billions on connecting new "renewable" plant with a guaranteed return, wind turbines have been subsidised and mandated, solar PV has been heavily subsidised, new nuclear is getting a big fat subsidy, new interconnectors will be subsidised by regulated returns, biomass plants have had big fat subsidies under various schemes, thermal plant, nuclear and interconnectors all get "capacity market" payments. To make up for a broken and disfunctional welfare system, government throw a £1.5bn at Winter Fuel Bribes for pensioners, energy companies are required to throw in about £500m to a similar scheme (Warm Homes Discount), and then a further £700m to energy efficiency measures for customers. And even that list is only the big ticket stuff - below that there's vast amounts of subsidies and transfers on all manner of other rubbish.

It is a huge, huge mess.

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