DECC have announced the final FiT levels in advance of the incentive coming in in April. Having had a number of disheartening conversations with policy makers over the last few months, the FiT levels are no surprise. No one in government seemed to mind that the FiT would be a subsidy for middle class greenies and folks like McAlpines. The important thing was that the FiT wouldn’t cost too much.
Posted in biofuel, biomass, chp, climate change, energy, engineering, feed in tariff, renewable energy, renewable heat incentive | 5 Comments »
My headphones died a couple of months ago – a great pair of Sennheisers. The cord had shorted out for the second time in a just a few weeks. The first time it happened I’d got a replacement from Amazon and to have them break again so soon made me sick. I’m sure Amazon just chucked the old ones in the bin and posted out a new pair, so this time I decided I’d fix them myself.
Late at night under the kitchen downlights I grimly set to work on the headphones with my multitool. My multitool, incidentally, has become my entire toolbox since all my actual tools are in Italy – we live in a rental now, profound interventions are banned.
I poked and probed the headphones looking for a way to take the jack apart but it was soon clear that there was no easy way. The rubber casing was fused on. Undeterred, I pared the rubber back with the knife looking for the shorted connection. But the wires were encased in solid rubber at random depths, the connections to the jack fell to pieces, and in short it all went wrong.
I was gutted. Clearly these were unmendable consumer goods intended to be used for a few weeks or months and thrown in the bin. Worse, I suspected that shredding my own headphones with a multitool had invalidated the warranty so no chance of a replacement from Amazon.
The reaction from folks in the office the next day was: of course you can’t fix headphones, just get a new pair. I muttered disgustedly to myself and resentfully jabbed the keyboard as I bought another pair online.
Then, a few weeks later on an icy day just before Christmas, I slipped on a platform at East Croydon and smashed the screen on my iPhone.
Posted in consumerism, other stuff | Tagged iphone | 9 Comments »
Despite Phil’s best efforts, I’ve resisted tangling with twitter. Mostly because I’ve had trouble understanding how it would make my life better. (I’ve had even more trouble understanding people’s determination to apply it to things like construction management or FM.)
And other people seem to be coming round to this view. Ricky Gervais is the latest high profile twitterer to drop his account.
Looks like Mr. Gervais and I are in good company. Cultural juggernauts Stephen Fry and, er… Miley Cyrus have also recently ceased to tweet.
Maybe it has its uses but I can’t see them. Me, Ricky, Stephen, and er… Miley will be over here on the high ground if you need us.
Posted in other stuff | Tagged twitter | 4 Comments »
I’m on the train through Surrey on my way into London and there is still a thick blanket of snow on the ground. But not necessarily on the roofs: some are covered and some are bare. Occasionally the rows of terraced houses alternate like squares on a chess board. And it all depends on heat loss.
It’s funny catching such a stark glimpse of something that is ordinarily invisible. Heat, and therefore money, from these homes is gushing out through the roof. Ordinarily the symptoms only appear on a monthly bill where they’re too abstract and unlikely to have any effect at all. What do you suppose would happen if people could see a bit further up the red end of the spectrum and looked at their own houses on a chilly morning?
Posted in energy | 3 Comments »
Things are picking up in the market. At Fontenergy, we’re run off our feet and will shortly need to expand the team. Right now, I’m looking for a consultant or engineer to work with me on DE and consulting projects.
Posted in uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Wrong. Unless they include extra charges.
The Code for Sustainable Homes, upcoming changes to building regs, and national emissions targets are all driving the industry towards much wider use of on-site generation.
Reducing carbon with on-site generation (also called “distributed energy” or just “DE”) brings extra costs relative to the business-as-usual approach of individual gas boilers and grid electricity. Cyril Sweett and others put the additional cost of building a zero-regulated-emissions house at £10k – £13k per dwelling, and some recent projects at work have borne this out.
This £10k – £13k is a massive problem for developers and housing associations, in some cases making projects infeasible.
There’s a widespread misconception that ESCOs can make the problem disappear. Some of this misconception has been fostered by ESCOs keen to get deals on the books (I’ll come back to this in a minute), but I think most of the problem is down to a poor understanding of distributed energy and how ESCOs make money.
So how much capital cost can ESCOs take on? Here’s an example: Continue Reading »
Posted in Code for Sustainable Homes, ESCO, energy, feed in tariff, sustainability, utilities, zero carbon | 4 Comments »
As currently proposed, the feed-in-tariffs are likely to be the exclusive domain of the middle class with lower income households shut out from participating.
To prevent the FiT being accessible only to the middle classes, it needs to be set at a level that allows banks and private equity providers to step in and cover the capital costs of PV while sharing some of the benefit with householders.
In order to be attractive, the return needs to be between 7.5% and 8.5% (ungeared) depending on interest rate and how the FiT revenues are taxed. Some institutional investors say it needs to be higher, but if we stick to this figure we stay on the conservative side.
Taking PV as an example, the FiT as currently proposed would generate a 3-4% return in a mature market (e.g. £4700/kWp installed for a household system as we’re seeing in Italy). In a less mature market (e.g. £5.5k/kWp) the return would be 1.9%.
Looking at it another way, in order to achieve a 7.5% return in the real world based on the proposed FiT, the installed price of PV would need to be £3350/kWp! The other £1.35k is value shortfall (i.e. the difference between £3.35k and £4.7), which might be covered by an eco-minded middle income household but will certainly not be attractive to a low income household.
Bottom line: the proposed FiT for PV is too low. In order to provide an 8% return in a mature market (£4.7k/kWp installed for a small system), the FiT needs to be set at around 55p/kWh. For the largest schemes (>100kW), this would step down to 37p.
Sorry I’ve departed from my usual policy of putting all the underlying numbers up. The calculations are pretty straightforward but they require a spreadsheet and I don’t have a public facing version yet.
Posted in PV, feed in tariff | 5 Comments »
Linked In seems to be nothing but a tool for head hunters. I’m not looking for a job so what good is it? I find my finger hovering over the delete button.
Has Linked In done anything for you? Phil? Mel? Anyone?
Posted in other stuff | 8 Comments »
Although PAYS has been conceived to address retrofit, developers and RSLs are hoping it might also reduce the financial burden of meeting more stringent upcoming regs for new build.
In theory it works like this: by capitalising future energy savings, developers could afford to put in the low carbon measures they need to in order to hit strict limits on emissions. The occupants then use a portion of the savings to pay off this capital lump.
Developers hit their targets and occupants get savings. Everyone’s a winner. But in the case of new build, what are the savings measured against? The UKGBC final PAYS report suggests that:
Posted in PAYS, zero carbon | Tagged UKGBC | 1 Comment »
I spent yesterday at Alex Moody’s house (ex-colleague at XCO2) eating barbequed pizza (awesome) and wiring up a home-made PV panel from single cells (even better). Equipped with an almost-hot-enough soldering iron, I was a one man tabbing line while Alex put the wooden box together. When I left in the late afternoon, Alex took over and finished the lot.
This panel will one day power Alex’s LED-based garden lighting. Next steps are to get the string working with the charge controller and battery.
At Fontenergy, we’re doing some industrial PV installations in Italy. I’m really looking forward to seeing them up and running but I can’t help feeling that building a single 60W panel from scratch might be more satisfying (if in a slightly different way) than seeing a rooftop covered with someone else’s panels.
Posted in PV | 1 Comment »
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