FIT for Purpose?

Posted on March 21, 2010 by Doug King

The Feed in Tariffs have been almost universally welcomed, but has no-one identified any flaws in the system? Well here’s an issue that people aren’t discussing:

Feed in Tariffs are a public subsidy for the rich.

Feed in Tariffs replace a capital grant scheme. Under the previous scheme anyone who wanted to install renewable energy could get help with the upfront cost. That means that people who didn’t have enough money or insufficient borrowing power could get help to install renewables. OK the previous levels of grant were pitiful, but if the money promised to Feed in Tariffs were made available as grants instead many more people could afford to install small scale renewables.

Under the Feed in Tariffs, the Government will instead subsidise energy generated from renewables, but not the cost of installation. This means that only those who can already afford the cost of installing renewable energy can benefit from it. The tariffs have clearly been set at a level to tempt those with spare cash or the ability to borrow, as the returns will be above the interest rate for some time to come. Interesting to note that Spain cancelled their Solar Feed in Tariff after investors nearly bankrupted the system using borrowed money to install solar panels in fields all over the country.

Feed in Tariffs will exclude anyone who wants to install renewables, but does not have the cash or borrowing power. In my opinion Feed in Tariffs should be cancelled and the money used to install free solar water heating for every pensioner household in the country.

Don’t Mourn Windsave

Posted on March 21, 2010 by Doug King

Windsave, manufacturer of domestic wind turbine distributed through B&Q. went bust recently. Their Chief Exec blamed delays in implementing Government Policy, but I wonder…..

In their original marketing Windsave suggested their turbines would generate 1000kWh and provide “up to 30% of the electricity your household needs, based on average wind speeds and suitable locations”. For a £1,500 price tag this looked to a lot of people like a good deal, and many, including some reputable businesses were persuaded to part with cash.

Unfortunately the reality fell far short of the promises. A survey last year by the Energy Savings Trust found no instance of a micro wind turbine in an urban or suburban location which generated more than 200kWh per year. In some cases the control electronics consumed more mains electricity in the course of a year than was generated from the wind.

The failing was not Windsave’s alone; any rooftop turbine in an urban situation is in the boundary layer where airflow is turbulent and most of the energy has been dissipated through friction. It is simply not possible to generate any sensible amount of wind energy under these conditions.

Nevertheless Windsave seriously overstated the performance of their product. The public backlash started early, with numerous blogs by eco-enthusiasts describing woeful generation from their machines. Windsave were forced into serial retractions of their claims for performance and finally removed all performance information from their website.

If we mislead the public by overstating issues, when they discover the truth they will never afford us credibility again. It is crucial that we avoid doing this when it comes to debating renewables in the context of national energy policy.

Clarity on Performance

Posted on March 16, 2010 by Doug King

Following the piece I did for BBC Country File on Feed in Tariffs, I found myself in an interesting debate in the letters section of New Civil Engineer. As usual, this started me thinking, this time about communicating sustainability to the public.

The standing of climate science is currently pretty low as it has become apparent that scientists overstated some of the issues. The same happens when Government makes overblown statements about the effectiveness of renewable energy in desperate attempts to meet its own policy targets.

The announcement launching Feed in Tariffs suggested that householders could earn £900 per year from installing PV. They failed to mention that this was only true for the South East of England, on a perfectly pitched roof, facing due South; hardly representative of the average. Further, such an array would be a little too large to fit on the roof of an average 3 bed terraced house and would cost £13,000-£15,000.

I believe that there must be much more clarity on the actual performance of real systems. We have already seen the market for DIY wind turbines killed off by public reaction to the overstatement of returns by manufacturers. This has reduced the choices for homeowners, even where these could have been installed in worthwhile locations. For engineers and Government to similarly hype up the potential returns from renewable energy does not do the industry any favours.

We need to build public trust and support for renewable energy by making realistic assessments of the returns they can expect from real installations, not theoretical ones.

Ignorance Isn’t Bliss

Posted on March 16, 2010 by Doug King

A design review this afternoon brought home just how critical the low carbon knowledge gap really is. Two architects presented schemes for projects with high sustainability ambitions. Both were labouring under misapprehensions about daylight and natural ventilation because both had been advised by their engineers that everything would be fine. Unfortunately neither architect had sufficient knowledge to challenge their engineers’ assertions.

It transpired that the ventilation would be fine because the engineers, in both cases, were planning to add fans, so the systems would work when natural ventilation failed. A quick examination of the buildings in question revealed these fans would have to be relied on for ventilation about 95% of the time – hardly natural ventilation.

The daylight issues were also similar; deep plan buildings with fully glazed facades in compensation to let enough light in! Once again, an engineer had calculated the average daylight factor and assured the architect that everything would be OK. I estimated that the light would vary by about 60:1. With such high contrast the interiors will appear deeply gloomy against the over-lit perimeters and result in excessive use of electric light.

Neither building was engineered to achieve the architectural ambition. Both displayed classic mistakes which we teach architectural students to avoid. However, a practicing architect has to deal with many conflicting issues and must be able to rely on their engineer. Yet, engineers are taught to design with fans and electric lights, not to manipulate the building form to promote natural airflow and light.

How many buildings fail by falling between architects and engineers who lack a common language? We must not only join up architectural and engineering education, but we must do it urgently.

Strata Tower

Posted on March 15, 2010 by Doug King

King_D_05-07-2010_010

The Strata Tower at Elephant & Castle featured heavily in the news last week. The developers are clearly very proud of their clever solution to addressing the London Plan’s requirement that 10% of a building’s energy be generated from on-site renewables. The building is to feature 3 turbines of 9m diameter for the princely cost of £1,300,000. However due to the small size and fixed direction these turbines are only expected to generate some 50MWh per year or just 8% of the building’s demand.

Let’s look at the alternatives:

King_D_22-06-2010_074

The well established Proven 15kW turbine has a rotor diameter of 9m and a single one of these costs about £50,000 to erect in a field. If sited in a suitably windy field you can expect to generate around 30MWh per year, but installations have been recorded that generate in excess of 50MWh. The same generation capacity as Strata for 4% of the cost!

On the other hand let’s consider Ecotricity’s turbine at the Ecotech centre in Norfolk.

King_D_07-06-2013_085

The first MW+ rated turbine in the UK this one weighs in at 1.5MW, and would cost about the same to install in today’s money as the Strata turbines. According to Ecotricity’s website this machine is generating 3,500MWh per year, 70 times as much as Strata is predicted to do!

This fad amongst local government to demand on-site renewable energy must stop; it’s eco-correctness gone mad! Rules like this force developers to waste money on eco-bling rather than investing in basic energy conservation and large scale renewables which can make a real difference.