Friends of the Earth Campaign for more Solar

Thought this was rather interesting:

Friends of the Earth wrote:

Solar power play off

Germany has 200 times more solar power than England. Why? Because German households and businesses get paid a renewable energy reward for the solar power they generate. It's known as the 'feed-in tariff' and has helped make Germany a world leader in renewable energy. Let's have the same for Britain. Take action at http://www.solarplayoff.org

Fee

Tis, my MP has an email waiting about it Wink

Just to be devil's advocate it has created a slight problem in that it leads to some schemes being built which do not generate sufficient energy. This is particularly a problem for wind power and is why people who don't like wind farms love to select examples from Germany and then claim that their figures show that wind turbines can never pay for themselves.

Brandon

i would love to see a similar system of grants in the UK, but lets also bear in mind that these same grants and schemes are keeping the cost of PV high.

thos

In Belgium there are subsidies and tax allowances for the installation of solar, wind and hydro. Any electricity produced in excess of own use turns the meter back. In addition the User gets a green certificate for each MWh produced. This has a guaranteed price of €65 per MWh but is currently trading at €90, because non-green suppliers are forced to buy them.

Therefore each kWh produced generated 31c on weekdays and 21c at weekends.

As this is not sufficient to provide a decent return on investment, the government awards small produces five 1MWh certificates for each MWH produced, and this is guaranteed for 15 years - which is a significant distortion of the market. All electricity produced, whether used or put in the grid, is worth an average 64c per kWh.

Of course with a 5MWc system, this still does not make it cost-effective.

gnome

i followed your link, but it says that action has now expired. it sounds like a good idea, but our government has a policy of taking from consumers and giving to companies - not the other way round. hate to sound cynical, but our country has many more times the people per square mile than Germany, so the cost of such a scheme would be very high, whilst the benefits in energy saving would be a gamble. the energy business makes a huge profit from overcharging us, and any efforts we make as individuals to generate our own power would give us more independence from the power companies - something neither they, nor the politicians they control will ever permit.

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