Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Renewable Reality

I was referring to the link I posted ( https://www.nationalgrid.com/electricity-transmission/about-us ) which is the public facing page of the national grid introducing themselves (" who we are "). It does seem odd that solar is glaringly missing from the suppliers? I've no idea why but it's suspicious isn't it?
Nick

Yes - some domestic properties do have 3 phase supplies.

If you have 3 phase then you should use either a 3 phase inverter or 3 x single phase inverters.
The users distribution board should have all the loads balanced across the 3 phases and therefore you need to balance the PV generation over the same 3 phases otherwise you won't be consuming as much PV generation as you could and also non balanced PV generation is not allowed by the DNO.

Isn't it a bit cheeky to tell him he's wrong then? I mean people considering to include stuff surely doesn't carry as much weight as a statement from the National Grid themselves?

Hardly suspicious, probably just reflecting the fact that solar farms are connected at distribution network level rather than the transmission network. It's certainly true that solar generation doesn't represent an enormous proportion of our consumption nationally (something around 4% on average, at the moment it's providing about 11% or 3.6GW) but the idea that it's all wasted because it can't be used is pretty wide of the mark.

There would be no incentive for outfits like NextEnergy to invest upwards of £40m into subsidy-free projects like Llanwern if they weren't going to be able to sell their power. Llanwern generates something like 75MWp, so quite a significant contribution.

There may be a bit of 'mission creep' here .... I know little beyond the basics when it comes to grid connection as we've been totally off-grid for 30 years (completely off-grid users are rare beasts) .... however I would wager that a major multi-megawatt project with its dedicated sub-stations is a very different thing from a domestic system trying to push a handful of Kw at best back up their domestic supply.

K

Sorry to go off thread a bit but I just got this from British Gas -

“The prime minister recently announced the Government Energy Price Guarantee – meaning that from 1st October, the cost of energy for the average home will be no more than £2,500 a year for the next two years. However, your bill could be higher or lower depending on the size of your home, how many people live there and how much energy you use.”

So that’s clear then.

I don't think the statement that domestic generation doesn't reach the grid can be re processed as the idea that it's all wasted! What is consumed on site is obviously highly beneficial and significant to the individual. What is wasted is the payment to those individuals for a "notional" feed to the grid.
My source never claimed the big projects were similar to an individual's roof panels.
I wonder why we would bother trying to defend something (the illusion that excess domestic production can be sent to share with others) when it's looking pretty obvious to me that the message was designed purely to facilitate a move towards more domestic involvement which, of course, does help reduce the demands on the grid so is beneficial in that way.

In the same way, the belief that generation from domestic use does in fact reach the grid just because alot of the paperwork that has to be filled in to fit it seems a little naive to me when we know that the authors of the paperwork are the same people who sold us the illusory incentive in the first place.

Also I wonder if the paperwork is the same in France as here in UK?

I'm looking forward to asking him about that point though and will report back. It's really interesting to hear both sides of this for me.
Nick

IMHO ..... The statement is pretty clear .... the quoted price is for an average house ... if your house isn't average then you may pay more or less.

Accurate within itself, but inevitably doesn't give an exact figure for any individual house.

K

Basically they are capping the price per kwh to 34p - not the overall yearly cost.
An 'average' house consumes 3700 kwh per year so if your a four bedroom then that will probably be at least double that....
A year ago you were paying about 18p kwh.

Come December, the expected price per kwh was 54p

I just looked up Llanwern. It's interesting how the whole solar press is subtly misleading. Their front page makes the statement
"The project supplies enough clean energy to power 20,606 households. The project cost is $59.192m".
To my way of thinking that statement implies that many households can be taken off an alternative power source. But, in reality, is it fair to say that those households can only be supplied whilst the panels are working...daylight hours, for instance?
So wouldn't an honourable message be stated as "half the requirements of 20,606 households" Or maybe "the daylight needs of 20,606 households"?
Don't get me wrong, I think the move to renewable is great... it's the misleading nature of the advertising that disturbs me.

Or is there something fundamental that I haven't understood about this particular type of claim?

Nick