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Britain Opens Its First Subsidy-Free Solar Power Farm (reuters.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the sunny-forecasts dept.

AmiMoJo quotes Reuters: Britain's first solar power farm to operate without a government subsidy is due to open in eastern England on Tuesday, as a sharp fall in costs has made renewable energy much more economical. Britain needs to invest in new energy capacity to replace aging coal and nuclear plants that are due to close in the 2020s. But it is also trying to reduce subsidies on renewable power generation... The 10 megawatt (MW) solar farm, in Clayhill, Bedfordshire, can generate enough electricity to power around 2,500 homes and also has a 6 MW battery storage facility on site.

23 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. awesome! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yet another nail in the coffin of fossil fuels. The sooner oil producing terrorist sponsoring states go broke, the better for our security - Saudi Arabia.

    1. Re:awesome! by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 2

      Yes, but we won't be giving them billions of dollars each year for oil any more.

      Huge wealth drives odd behavior. In this case, saudi princes having hundreds of millions of dollars to toss around on violent strains of islam. And to support the saudi royal family by buying peace from it's citizens.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    2. Re:awesome! by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 2

      Fully electric commerical passenger plains are projected in under 20 years.
      Fully electric small passenger plains already exist.

      You'll only need jet fuel for the longest flights... and you can use biofuel for that. Oil only makes sense when it is cheaper than biofuels. As oil loses it's network effects, volume cost savings, and trillion dollar security subsidies (who's going to go to war over oil if it ceases to be a military resource and isn't used by passenger vehicles), it will become more expensive.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    3. Re:awesome! by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 2

      No idea if you attempt to be funny.
      The typical way to export electricity is called a wire, or a cable.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    4. Re: awesome! by bestweasel · · Score: 2

      In Europe we have these things called cables which can be used to transfer electricity between countries, even between the UK and the continent.

    5. Re:awesome! by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      Do you ever fly? What do you suggest other than petroleum-based fuel?

      Biofuels work fine in jet engines.

      Scramjets run on hydrogen.

  2. Re:2 MW of storage? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 3, Funny

    You bike can store 30 km/h of speed? That's weird, mine can store only about 12 kg/megabyte.

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
  3. Re:Subsidies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    This is one of those products not yet ready for the mainstream. It therefore "can't survive without government subsidies.*"

    *e.g. throw public money at it, and you will end with the public trillions in debt, the project will take longer than desired, and so much market INEFFICIENCY was added that you would have gotten the same results at the same time never subsidizing it to begin with.

    I agree that subsidizing Hinckley Point C, already $2 Billion USD over budget and projected to be late, is a very bad idea

  4. Re:Whatever by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

    I suspect it's also the largest canceller of proposed new coal plants as well?

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  5. Re:Whatever by mspohr · · Score: 2

    China cancels 103 coal power plants
    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...
    https://www.sciencealert.com/t...

    --
    I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
  6. Re:Whatever by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

    China is also the largest builder of new coal plants... Just sayin...

    Per capita, China consumes half as much coal as America.

  7. Cost comparison by Solandri · · Score: 4, Informative

    Usually these renewable reports are grossly exaggerated to make it seem like renewable is more capable than it really is. But this one is actually fairly accurate.

    10 MW * 0.097 capacity factor = 970 kW
    970 kW / 2500 homes = 388 Watts per home
    Average UK home annual consumption is 3940 kWh
    3940 kWh / 1 year = 450 Watts average consumption.

    So their "homes powered" metric is fairly close to accurate (2150 homes would be exact). We'll go with the exact 450 Watts per home figure.

    To put this in perspective, the proposed Hinkley C nuclear plant would have a 3.2 GW capacity. Using the 90% capacity factor for newer nuclear reactors, this would give an actual generation of 2.88 GW, or enough to power 6.4 million homes.

    At a construction cost of 24.5 billion GBP (the UK has some of the most expensive nuclear in the world), this works out to 3828 GBP per home powered.

    If you run the same calculation using the 70% capacity factor for the UK's older nuclear plants over the last 5 years, it works out to 2.24 GW. Enough to power 5 million homes at 4900 GBP per home powered.

    Unfortunately none of the news reports on this new solar farm that I was able to find mention its cost. This site estimates a utility-scale solar installation in the UK costs about 1.1 GBP per Watt. That works out to 11 million GBP / 2150 homes = 5116 GBP per home powered. But it doesn't include the cost of the 6 MW battery.

    1. Re:Cost comparison by Phillip2 · · Score: 4, Informative

      The 24 billion for Hinkley is, I think, construction costs. The lifetime costs vary depending on who you ask, of course, but 35+billion. And, of course, Hinkley is already significantly over budget. Given that the decommissioning costs have only ever gone up, twice the price doesn't seem so far off.

      And, of course, Hinkley C is in one place -- so you have to distribute the power to 6 million people over a wide area. WIth solar, this is less true -- you can site it in many places often more locally, so it might well be more stable than nuclear. Although the grid is currently designed for nuclear type power with most generation at few locations.

      Conclusion -- the headline figure is just that -- a headline. The actual costs are very, very difficult to estimate. Having solar in the UK (the UK!) being somewhat mroe expensive or somewhat less expensive than nuclear is, indeed, big news. Especially as nuclear is second or third generation. Move this equation to Texas, or Brazil, or anywhere sunnier than the UK, and the figures change again,

    2. Re:Cost comparison by whoever57 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Did you fail to read the article? Or do you simply not know how the electricity market works in the UK?

      Either way, I suggest that you don't bother posting when you don't have the facts at hand.

      In this case, the installation is "subsidy free", which means that it must compete with other sources to sell electricity into the grid. You might also note that UK-produced nuclear power is heavily subsidized.
      https://www.ft.com/content/b8e...

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    3. Re:Cost comparison by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Informative

      You forgot to factor the massive subsidy that nuclear gets. Hinckley is guaranteed massive subsidies for life, while this wind farm is subsidy free.

      Including subsidy the cost of Hinkly C is expected to be around £37bn, which is just under 6000 GBP per household. That's assuming it comes in on budget, which is unlikely to say the least.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    4. Re:Cost comparison by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 3, Informative

      One can assume that the british electric plant will produce power at a competitive rate.

      https://www.theecoexperts.co.u...

      So 9-17p/kwh (avg 13.37 p/kwh).

      Nuclear works out to about the same cost of electricity.

      Nuclear plants are notorious for underestimating decommissioning costs AND for collecting profits during lifecycle and then dumping those decommissioning costs on the public by going bankrupt/"selling" the plant to a fake company which then goes bankrupt. (one plant had estimated decommissioning costs of $39 million and ended up over 640 million).

      Texas power is a little cheaper but not much. I pay 11c/kwh and some is offered for 15c/kwh- some for 8c/kwh.

      Given sufficient battery power, solar is also stable.

      Humans have a bad record managing nuclear power plants. Cautious at first and then increasingly cutting corners and getting sloppy as the decades pass.

      The failure cost of a solar plant does not include losing the use of 525+ square miles of prime real estate for a few centuries.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    5. Re:Cost comparison by aaarrrgggh · · Score: 2

      The only challenge is that winter months you get 25% of the output compared to summer with a fixed array (16% with a 2-axis tracker). I would expect winter demand is also significantly higher than summer-- likely at least 50% higher if you aren't using electric heat.

      This makes solar a good part of your power mix-- up to about 10% of winter demand or 50% of summer demand-- but you need other sources. Wind obviously can make a good dent as well-- annual profile is pretty flat and reliable so 50% of a diverse set of sources could possibly work. Both of these would need storage for that level of penetration.

      By my math, that still leaves you with additional needs on a seasonal basis.

    6. Re:Cost comparison by rcs1000 · · Score: 2

      Clearly this is the first nuclear power plant to have:

      - no maintenance costs
      - no operating costs
      - no fuel costs
      - no reprocessing costs
      - no decommissioning costs

      Hinckley Point required an index linked, guaranteed price twice the spot price. It will never achieve 90% uptime, because real nuclear power plants never achieve more than 80% over their lifetime.

      I don't know if this solar plant will ever earn its owners a return above their cost of capital, and I don't really care.

      But I can guarantee you that this plant will produce electricity more cheaply than Hinckley Point.

      --
      --- My dad's political betting
    7. Re:Cost comparison by slashrio · · Score: 2

      I'd suggest you look for an illegal connection tapping off electricity from your home to your neighbour's marijuana plantation.
      Or buy a new fridge.

      --
      "Trump!!", the new Godwin.
    8. Re:Cost comparison by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      There is an additional cost to nuclear - the need for large amounts of excess capacity.

      Nuclear isn't good for ramping up/down its output to follow load. It's also a huge single point of failure - Hinkley C is rated for 3.2GW, so a single emergency situation can instantly take that amount out of the grid. Thus you need significant amounts of power on standby to kick in quickly if something happens, or you face brown-outs and controlled black-outs.

      Because solar is distributed and battery backed, single failures are much less severe. Batteries can easily vary their output in fractions of a second, as fast as the inverters can manage.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    9. Re:Cost comparison by blindseer · · Score: 2

      Given sufficient battery power, solar is also stable.

      How much do the batteries cost? If solar is merely "competitive" without the batteries then what happens when the cost of the batteries is added? I doubt the batteries cost nothing to build and maintain.

      The failure cost of a solar plant does not include losing the use of 525+ square miles of prime real estate for a few centuries.

      No, the success of a solar plant means losing large tracts of prime real estate for the life of the plant, and then some. The failure of the solar plant means we get the land back. I'm not sure this is a good argument to make.

      Comparing nuclear power plant designs from the 1970s to those of today is like comparing a Ford Model T to a Ford F-150. We learned a few things since then.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
  8. Re:Whatever by whoever57 · · Score: 4, Informative

    You should not uncritically believe the NY Times:
    https://unearthed.greenpeace.o...

    --
    The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
  9. But it's got to be subsidized!!! by whitroth · · Score: 2

    Just skimming the newest responses, I see that. And don't forget, the pollution creating them causes *more* than 20 years of not requiring any fuel other than the sun.

    Yep.

    You suckers. A century ago, I can see the daily dot: these car things are just a fad, and they're only for rich folks, and where would you drive them, anyway....?