Sunday 2 September 2018

Why rooftop solar pv will be failed by the Government's so called market based approach

It's rubbish for anybody to claim that rooftop solar pv arrays  will be given a decent reward for the sale of electricity that they send onto to electricity distribution system through the competition existing, or likely to exist, on electricity markets.

Yet that would appear to be the direction in which the Government are heading, under an argument that the market will reward the small generators for the power they supply - Under the feed-in tariff regime small generators have been guaranteed around £35 per MWh for this 'excess' generation - on top of the feed-in tariff payments for all of the generation. But. it seems, this guarantee is  to be removed.

Feed-in tariffs are over for new schemes, and, so, barring a successful pushback by the solar lobby - will be guaranteed payments for excess (to home consumption) sent to the grid.

As the Government gets down to considering the response to its consultation about arrangements to follow its ending of feed-in tariffs for solar pv and other renewables, we need to call out the so-called market competition nonsense rolled out by the Government to justify its apparent wish to end all guaranteed payments for excess power sold to the grid.

For a start even £35 per MWh is a low price compared to the £45 per MWh or more that we have seen in recent times as the price of power on the wholesale power trading market. Even accounting for the costs of the variability of solar power this remains the case as the cost of such intermittency for the system is estimated to be less than £5 per MWh even in (hopefully) in the future when there is a dramatic expansion of solar pv. See the analysis at http://www.solar-trade.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Intermittency-and-the-cost-of-integrating-solar-Aurora-Energy-Research-September-2016.pdf

Under the way the grid is organised generation onto the grid by solar pv is counted as reduced consumption and worth nothing on power markets. Only if there is an arrangement whereby it is metered or 'deemed' - and then for the generation to be given the status of a tradeable commodity (which it would have to be if any electricity supplier could make money out of it) would the exported solar generation have market value.

 But even if electricity  suppliers could trade electricity generated by rooftop solar pv panels, there is no reason to think that they will give small solar pv generators much (if anything at all) for it. That's because the solar pv producer is also beholden to the electricity supplier's tariffs.

 It might just happen that an electricity supplier (let's call them 'Green Energy') might offer a tariff for solar pv exports, but the solar pv generator will also be an electricity consumer. It will be very difficult to tell whether the tariff that they are put on for their electricity consumption (when they are not using the solar pv generation) is inflated so that the suppliers claws back any money they get paid for their own generation.

Quite possibly, even if electricity suppliers claim to be green by offering tariffs to solar generators to sell electricity to the grid, the home-based solar pv owners will probably have no clear way of knowing whether they are actually getting paid much for that power - That is because the electricity supplier may well in effect charge the solar pv generator a higher bill for the privilege of being given the impression that they are being paid for the power they sell to the grid. The rules simply favour the electricity suppliers. If they can, the electricity suppliers will use a bit of greenwash to get the generation for free - and the system is opaque enough for them easily to do this.

The electricity suppliers won't pay out to anybody unless they have to. They don't have to in this case, so they won't.

The competitivity of the market depends on the rules, and their transparency, and there is little chance of the rules being effective in giving solar pv payments for their exports that reward their value to the electricity system - that's because the rules are designed for the big players, not the little ones. That wouldn't matter much if it wasn't for the principle - which the Government is supposed to buy into - that clean energy should be favoured - or at least be given an even break under the rules.

Hence the only way of giving solar pv generators a reward that reflects their value to the market is for the Government to continue the current system whereby solar pv generators are guaranteed a payment for power sent to the grid. That is the system employed by other Western states to reward solar pv generators.

Now the official consultation on this subject has (just) closed, the best way to argue on this subject is to write to your MP about it asking for a reasonable guaranteed sum to be paid for energy generated by rooftop pv producers

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