Solar Panels - change of views on this NG?

[tim....]

They are government guarenteed. Whilst the Government may renege it will be by act of parliament, not because some anonymous company goes into liquidation

[tim....]

You don't get a deal like that.

You get a deal whereby the installer installs, you pay him and he walks away.

The amount that you get back (from the leccy co/government) is a "risk", that you take.

the FIT payer is the government

tim

[The Natural Philosopher]

That may be possible. But I think its easier to use a diesl generator.

[Man at B&Q]

And still ignores other factors that are harder to put a price on, such as a personal desire to be less dependent on the grid.

MBQ

[Man at B&Q]

And virtual ownership of your roof.

MBQ

[Man at B&Q]

: [e-mail]...

"PV cells" been around a *lot* longer than that. The modern technology is *certainly* immature.

And sign away the rights to your roof. I certainly would not buy a house with copnditions like that attached.

MBQ

[John Rumm]

Perhaps so, but the floodlighting example does better illustrate the daftness of the scheme ;-)

[The Natural Philosopher]

all this local generation is a sop to greens, and completely pointless really.

Its a good way to get the little people employed sticking them on rooves, and the little people feeling they have Done Something and made a smart profit too.

Troubles is if everyone deos it, all that happens is that there is a

10x increase of electricity prices and you end up where you started relatively.

[John Rumm]

I was under the impression it came via the lekky company? Still if its the gov, then we know we can trust them to never go back on the deal!

(irony alert!)

[John Rumm]

Well worse in reality, since you have just added more variation to the national demand based on cloud movement etc.

[Dave Liquorice]

That I can see happening, though isn't the FIT cash coming via a levy on the electicity companies, rather than out of the treasury? It's only been channeled through the government.

Well they have started chipping away at what is eligiable for FIT payments already. Give it a few years and they will be gone for new installs. As some one said it's a bit of race to get 'em in now before the FIT are either removed or become less financially attractive. You are still taking a gamble on not having significant maintenance costs though.

[root]

While it sounds like a nice idea, I call bull on that. The efficiency of floodlights is quite low and the efficiency of solar panels is, too. Even if the PV converted 25% of incident light into electricity, AND you had lights that converted 25% of their power into usable light, you still end up with 0.25 * 0.25 - 1/16 th of the power out that you put in. PLUS, you'd need a lot of lights to fully illuminate a decent sized array - a single 1KW job pointing at it would not do, since a lot of the array would not be lit by it (unless the PV was circular, and the light was far enough away).

Even if you get zero spill and don't have the neighbours complaining (or grassing) and the cops don't assume you're growing pot, the conversion losses still outweigh the FIT gain.

[Another Dave]

I didn't say he was right :-)

I agree with you that it's not feasible - but with the FIT being 8-10 times that of off-peak electricity it's not that much of an exaggeration. There are LEDs which are nearly twice as efficient as standard fluorescents, although only in the lab.

Dave

[Skipweasel]

You could cheat and just feed off-peak power back into the grid as if it were solar.

[Another Dave]

Correction. More than twice as efficient. So still not feasible, merely possible.

Another Dave

[tim....]

Well it does come from the leccy company but it's "guaranteed" by the government.

see my previous comment about this guarantee

tim

[Andy Champ]

Taxpayer surely.

Andy

[chris French]

Would LED lamps work with a PV panel?

Me and eldest daughter were playing around with a kit she was given that had small PV panel in. We were measuring the output voltage, as it wasn't driving the motor in the kit, IIRC the LED maglite torch we tried on it didn't produce anything really

[OG]

That would be 'alleged' by you.

Good call!

[OG]

It would if you accepted the arguments of idiots.

The FIT is based on a calculated power basis, which uses the alignment, location and area of panels to provide a nominal annual power rating. This is what earns the higher (Generation Tarrif) rate per kwh.

The excess electricity generated and actually sent into the Grid earns the Export Tariff of (gosh) 3.1p per kwh.

If you really think you can floodlight PVs and make a profit at 3.1p per kwh, you are deluded.

And someone believes "a bloke called Ridley", just because he's in a newspaper...