Solar PV (1 Viewer)

[Anthony]

a woman i know still has one of the old meters - the spinning disc ones. the lads who fit her panels for her told her to guard that meter with her life.

Interesting, I know someone with panels and an old style meter. Allegedly the meter spins backwards when they're generating power. I sort of don't believe them, open to being proved wrong.

 

[Anthony]

Interesting, I know someone with panels and an old style meter. Allegedly the meter spins backwards when they're generating power. I sort of don't believe them, open to being proved wrong.

Mainly because they say it has been going backwards for years, even before they got the panels. ??!

 

[ann post]

At present the need to encourage home solar and stuff is huge - this has been between 50 and 70% gas for the past few days. Import/other refers to UK lines I'd suspect.

Long term you'd want this to be 100% renewables which would mean offshore wind, something hydro and lots of domestic solar. At that point It could be 30% of power being from customer.

So if you are negotiating with LIDL, and talking about supplying 30% of potatoes collective bargaining is in the future for sure.

 

[rettucs]

a woman i know still has one of the old meters - the spinning disc ones. the lads who fit her panels for her told her to guard that meter with her life.

however; in what other context would you, as a consumer, be able to sell to a wholesaler at the same price they sell to you at retail? especially when you can make zero guarantees about the consistency of your supply.
i know there needs to be more financial impetus for people to fit the panels, am just looking at the above part separately.

I'm not asking them to do that though.

I'm suggesting that if I use 10kw/h a day and I generate 10kw/h per day, then there should be zero charge to me, even if I have imported some of my usage.

However, if I use 10kw/h a day and generate 12kw/h, I am fine to sell it to them at a lower cost than I would buy from them.

 

[magicbastarder]

question - if you generate 10kWh and use it as it's being generated, does that show up on your meter as 10 in, 10 out? or does it show up as 0 on the meter? in that instance, yes, i would be annoyed if i was being charged.

but then take your example of generating and consuming 10kWh, but *out* of sync - you're expecting those base load operators to supply that electricity to you when you're not generating it, and them only being paid half per unit what you are being paid when you're generating? that's the issue which you'd need to address.

 

[JohnnyRaz]

View attachment 17221

At present the need to encourage home solar and stuff is huge - this has been between 50 and 70% gas for the past few days. Import/other refers to UK lines I'd suspect.

Long term you'd want this to be 100% renewables which would mean offshore wind, something hydro and lots of domestic solar. At that point It could be 30% of power being from customer.

So if you are negotiating with LIDL, and talking about supplying 30% of potatoes collective bargaining is in the future for sure.

are there any community solar project in ireland?
ie where an estate or similar basically turns their roofs into a solar farm, benefiting from economies of scale.

My gut sense is it wouldn't work in the irish context for the same reason a number of my neighbours arent speaking to one another because some of them applied to the council to gate the back lane after a spate of burglaries and muggings in the 90's.

 

[rettucs]

question - if you generate 10kWh and use it as it's being generated, does that show up on your meter as 10 in, 10 out? or does it show up as 0 on the meter? in that instance, yes, i would be annoyed if i was being charged.

but then take your example of generating and consuming 10kWh, but *out* of sync - you're expecting those base load operators to supply that electricity to you when you're not generating it, and them only being paid half per unit what you are being paid when you're generating? that's the issue which you'd need to address.

not sure, actually. I never checked what the meter says.

But I think, and I expect, the meter only shows what you import. So, if you use what you are generating, that should not show up

 

[ernesto]

What? If you sell anything to someone for re-sale then you're not getting the retail price. Can I bring a bag of homegrown spuds into Lidl and insist they pay me a euro per kilo for them?

Potatoes from field to shop need more refinement and manual work than electricity already on a grid

 

[Space]

Potatoes from field to shop need more refinement and manual work than electricity already on a grid

The key word here is the grid which costs a whole lot to maintain.

 

[rettucs]

another point thats being missed is that there needs to be an incentive to people to fork out for solar in the first place. Most people aren't in a position to wait 10 years until they see it start to pay off, so that, by itself isn't enough.

Offering a financial discount by means of a reduced connection charge, and only being charged for the excess you import over what you generate, would be a great start.

The more people with solar, the more pressure gets taken off the grid. From an infrastructure/energy management point of view, it would be a great investment.

Either that or the grant should be doubled or tripled to make it more affordable to install.

 

[magicbastarder]

i would agree wholeheartedly. but i would suggest that the incentives should really incentivise battery storage - which the grid can call on as required; that'd be much more useful than an 'uncontrolled' feed into the grid from a system with no storage.

 

[Anthony]

question - if you generate 10kWh and use it as it's being generated, does that show up on your meter as 10 in, 10 out? or does it show up as 0 on the meter?

Shows up as 0. That is to say the meter doesn't move.

 

[Anthony]

There's a whole load of "should be like this, should be like that".

I'm looking at it how it IS, and trying to beat the system. At the moment our bill is €36 and €31 of that is the standing charge of €.99 per day, plus we charged the car a lot that month. I reckon we can bloody do it in the summer months where herself isn't in work so we won't be charging the car much at all.

 

[egg_]

The more people with solar, the more pressure gets taken off the grid. From an infrastructure/energy management point of view

Depends what you mean by "pressure". AIUI ESB networks have had to do (and are continuining to do) a huge amount of infrastructure work to change the grid from something that has a small number of large inputs to something with a large number of inputs of wildly varying sizes

 

[rettucs]

Depends what you mean by "pressure". AIUI ESB networks have had to do (and are continuining to do) a huge amount of infrastructure work to change the grid from something that has a small number of large inputs to something with a large number of inputs of wildly varying sizes

I mean that less power will be drawn from the grid by households.

I have a modest sized solar installation and I have imported less from the grid in the past month than I normally would in 2 days without solar.

 

[magicbastarder]

and that's part of the problem - it's wildly varying; you've managed that during a drought. but they still have to manage the grid on a dark december day when no-one is producing any significant solar; the business cases for the large generators generally is that they would have been running consistently throughout the year; now even what they do will become more seasonal.
eirgrid can and does tell those producers to dial down (or up) based on load. you've now got all these microproducers they've no control over.

 

[egg_]

I mean that less power will be drawn from the grid by households.

Ok sure - but that doesn't mean that the people who run the grid have to do less work. I agree with you that incentives for people to install PV is a good thing, but if we're just talking fairness then the electricity I produce from my PV array is definitely not as valuable to the ESB as it is to me

 

[magicbastarder]

what is being asked is to be able to sell to the grid (regardless of scale) at retail when you've an excess, but expect when you are running a deficit, that whoever is generating that electricity is being paid at wholesale.

 

[ernesto]

The key word here is the grid which costs a whole lot to maintain.

Grid is already in place. And once set up requires less maintenance

 

[ann post]

There's a whole load of "should be like this, should be like that".

I'm looking at it how it IS, and trying to beat the system. At the moment our bill is €36 and €31 of that is the standing charge of €.99 per day, plus we charged the car a lot that month. I reckon we can bloody do it in the summer months where herself isn't in work so we won't be charging the car much at all.

What would it have been pre solar? p/m?