Ot: Harry's Game...the magnificence of Solar PV

Nov 18, 2016 10 Replies

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The Natural Philosopher 9 years ago

Since I reluctantly decided to add Sheffield University's *estimated* solar output to Gridwatch, I thought it might be amusing to contrast all those wonderful planet saving solar PV panels with the rest of thge grid to see how jolly well they are doi8ng in this glorious Novenmber sunshine.

So what was the AVERAGE contribution of all those panels in November?

mysql> select avg(solar) from day where timestamp like '2016-11%';

+------------------+ | avg(solar) |
+------------------+ | 559.568368330637 |
+------------------+ Golly. Over 10GW of panels installed say the renewable chappies and chappesses. And they barely scrape in 5% of that on average.

WEll at least at that level at what - 50p a unit FIT? - its only costing us £6m a day more than sensible alternatives.

In summer it might be £20m a day...Almost half of what we waste on the EU, wasted on solar power.

The EU and climate legislation costs us a LOT..

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Information here may be outdated?

dennis 9 years ago

FIT on solar is only about 16p for most of the panels. harry's first lot will be about 50p his second should only be about 16p unless he is cheating.

Can't leave the EU out of anything. You have won, just put up with what you have won.

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harry 9 years ago

Correct. They did quite well today. Cold and sunny round here.

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harry 9 years ago

Well L.S. This IS the bad time of year.

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Chris Hogg 9 years ago

Not directly relevant to your observation, but the Load Factor, aka Capacity Factor, for solar in the UK in the last quarter of 2015 was

4.4% according to this government web site

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Scroll to p.51, Table 6.1, 3rd category (Load Factors), last column, 3rd row.

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Brian Gaff 9 years ago

And what exactly is your point? Seems to me you can criticise all you want but seemingly have no better ideas. maybe we get all the illegal immigrants spongers and crims on a huge treadmill? I am joking. Brian

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The Natural Philosopher 9 years ago

Basically to show that green energy so called ins expensive and useless.#

Of course I have better ideas, Scrap renewables and build nukes, frack gas, and burn coal.

Would generate even less. And they still have to be fed. Better to simply burn the food.

I've calculated that one, too.

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Tim Streater 9 years ago

Build nukes, as has been stated *many* times.

Gridwatch shows that our nuke fleet puts out 8GW reliably day in, day out. Unlike the unreliable wind/solar lot.

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The Natural Philosopher 9 years ago

Well it is at the moment because EDF has worked damned hard with servicing and refuelling to make sure it is practically 100% available - I think just one reactor is down out the 14 or so we have - and that's for statutory maintenance and will be back up in a couple of days.

Nevertheless we are cutting things mighty fine and it just takes one or two unexpected events to happen coincidentally and the whole UK and indeed N W European grid may be in serious trouble.

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