You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'wind turbines' category.
Last night, Lord Hunt came back with his amendments to the Energy Bill and, as promised, here’s an update. For electricity feed in tariff, he’s proposed:
- Feed in tariff for renewable generation up to a maximum of 3MW (excellent).
- Qualifying technology: biomass, biofuels (oh dear), fuel cells, photovoltaics, water (including waves and tides), wind, solar power, geothermal sources, combined heat and power systems with an electrical capacity of 50 kilowatts or less.
- No timetable for implementation (as far as I could see - is it buried in there somewhere? What will the Baroness say?)
On a heat incentive:
Away from the fanfare around Ed Miliband’s announcement that a feed in tariff (FiT) is on the way, the Lords have been debating an amendment to the Energy Bill that has the support of Conservatives, Lib Dems, and even some Labour peers.
What’s in the amendment? It says the Secretary of State has one year from the passing of the bill to bring in a feed in tariff. And the qualifying technologies, their maximum capacity, and their level of support are left to the Secretary of State to decide with no specified cap.
Despite wide support, it was clear that the Government wouldn’t officially get behind the bill as it wasn’t their idea. In fact, as recently as June the Government were firmly against a feed in tariff.
Baroness Wilcox, the amendment’s sponsor, has now withdrawn it, but only on the condition that the Government meet specific terms in their own amendment, which they’re expected put forward on 5 November. However, if the Government doesn’t fulfill her demands, she will reintroduce her original amendment. Here are her terms in a nutshell (my comments in italics):
Yesterday BERR and OFGEM released proposals for changing the way the electricity regulations work with regard to distributed energy generation. This is particularly important because it’s BERR’s first public reaction to the Citiworks ruling by the European Court of Justice two weeks ago.
Listening to Radio 4 on my phone on the way home I heard the evening news: Gordon Brown, keen to show he’s doing all he can to ease the fuel crisis, has taken two decisive actions.
First he’s met with North Sea oil producers to urge them to pump more petroleum from their fields, which have been in decline since 1999. He apparently managed to persuade these producers to up their output by promising them a tax break (i.e. subsidy), which will make costly enhanced recovery techniques economically viable.
The total additional output is expected to amount to about 50 million barrels, enough to keep the world running for about 13 hours. Given that petroleum is a fungible globally traded commodity (there’s no such thing as local prices as the oil price is entirely determined by global factors), this tiny drop in the bucket won’t do anything to lower the price of fuel here in the UK or anywhere else. And you’ve got to think that if $130 a barrel wasn’t enough to stimulate recovery, maybe that subsidy would be better spent elsewhere. After all, given the record profits posted by oil companies this year, I think we could find one or two other technologies more deserving of a break.
From out of nowhere, twice in one week, there have been indications that a feed in tariff is on the way. First, at Tuesday’s PRASEG (Parliamentary Renewable and Sustainable Energy Group) meeting, BERR and DEFRA both hinted that a feed in tariff would replace the renewables obligation for installations under 50kW. Then on Thursday at Think08, Hillary Benn delivered the same message (thanks to Phil for pointing that out).
So how soon might this happen? Probably not as quick as we’d like as it’s likely to require a change to the RO legislation. But until then hopefully small generators will be able to console themselves with double ROCs.
If you build to Passivhaus standard, there’s no point in putting in a wet heating system. In fact, the key to the economics of Passivhaus design is that a conventional heating system is rendered redundant: you’re supposed to use the resulting savings to help fund the efficiency measures. Instead of a boiler and radiators you might only need a small electric heating coil in your mechanical ventilation system.
Level 6 of the Code for Sustainable Homes is modelled on the Passivhaus standard. As a result, until the Code changes, you’re likely to see more and more developers trying to move towards electric heating systems. You might argue that given the quantities of electricity we’re talking about (15 kWh/m2.yr), even if you source the electricity from the grid, it’s no carbon catastrophe. Unless you consider the bigger picture.
Making new buildings zero carbon is an excellent requirement, but by focusing our efforts (and a hell of a lot of money) on ratcheting down the heat demand from new buildings, we throw away the huge opportunity of using new developments to slash emissions from existing stock. Read the rest of this entry »
Following on from here, I have been chasing BRE & CLG to clarify the situation. The sorry response is that no-one was really aware of the potential implications of this piece of policy. So it’s official, at this point it is not possible to include the power output from communal on-site wind turbines, even where connected via a private wire network.
I have been tasked by Ted King, Head of Building Regs at CLG, to formally write to all stakeholders highlighting the issues so that they can be considered (not necessarily resolved) during the revisions for SAP 2009/10 for the next Part L update. The good news is that this work is already underway to be ready for the consultation process in January 2009. So, no comfort for my client, but perhaps others will be able to avoid this.
For what it’s worth, I also contacted the BWEA to check whether they were aware of the situation, and no they were not but obviously very interested to make sure that their industry is not penalised in this manner in the future.
Recent Comments