Drax a green washing 'con'?

[GarethM]

13 minutes ago, scbk said:

Yup, even in rural areas there's plenty of very large industrial and commercial buildings that should be covered in solar panels before they allow planning to convert farm land into solar.

Even I have a 60x45 shed that could have I think something like 25kw.

 

If these companies approached people like myself, there would be 150kw in just 1/4 mile. Offer them a reasonable return with maybe a alternative option of say 10 year you own it we'd all say yes please.

Edited January 17 by GarethM

[openspaceman]

3 minutes ago, doobin said:

Problem is the roofs aren’t built to take the weight in an awful lot of cases. 

Yes and big investors don't want to deal with lots of roofs, it's a bit like forestry where small woods are unattractive for harvesting machines.

 

In principle I agree roofs first especially on new builds.

[Steven P]

However the loss of crop productivity is quite small considering the area of solar panels take up - just need clever thinking that they can keep using the fields for something else.

 

But yes, in my mind it would be good to make it worthwhile to put solar panels on buildings. It will be a cost thing that fitting them will not give a 5 year payback or whatever landlords want why it is not taken up. Electricity will be paid by the building tenants, the landlords will see no real benefits there, export will probably give them 10 to 15p a unit, so not mega bucks that they might get from spending the same cash refurbishing an office space

[openspaceman]

20 minutes ago, Whoppa Choppa said:

There are a number of grid watch websites; this one and another are permanently on my desktop. And the edf Nuke live 😀

 

Price per megawatt hour will generally mirror interconnect imports / exports.

 

National Grid: Live

GRID.IAMKATE.COM

---

Shows the live status of Great Britain’s electric power transmission network

 

Her site is good but for a quick look at a glance I prefer

 

https://energynumbers.info/gbgrid

 

[Mark Bolam]

9 minutes ago, Steven P said:

However the loss of crop productivity is quite small considering the area of solar panels take up - just need clever thinking that they can keep using the fields for something else.

 

But yes, in my mind it would be good to make it worthwhile to put solar panels on buildings. It will be a cost thing that fitting them will not give a 5 year payback or whatever landlords want why it is not taken up. Electricity will be paid by the building tenants, the landlords will see no real benefits there, export will probably give them 10 to 15p a unit, so not mega bucks that they might get from spending the same cash refurbishing an office space

 

They shouldn’t be given a choice.

 

And housebuilders definitely shouldn’t.

[sime42]

21 minutes ago, scbk said:

Yup, even in rural areas there's plenty of very large industrial and commercial buildings that should be covered in solar panels before they allow planning to convert farm land into solar.

 

13 minutes ago, doobin said:

Problem is the roofs aren’t built to take the weight in an awful lot of cases. 

 

Yep, this seems like such an obvious idea, it's weird that it's not been implemented yet. There must be thousands of acres of distribution centre roofs alone now. Alongside the solar generation the surfaces could also be used for rainwater harvesting. Water shortages being another issue waiting in the wings, and large scale rainwater harvesting may even help flooding by reducing run off.

 

Fair point about current roofs not being strong enough, but ought to be fairly easily rectified.

[Dan Maynard]

Hospital and school roofs haven't been built strong enough to hold themselves up - RAAC disaster.

[Steven P]

17 minutes ago, Dan Maynard said:

Hospital and school roofs haven't been built strong enough to hold themselves up - RAAC disaster.

 

Strengthen the roofs as needed and add in solar / windmills at the same time, bonus! (a domestic windmill on a roof won't detract from the solar and all the gubbins are there to take the power and put it onto the grid)

[openspaceman]

1 hour ago, Steven P said:

a domestic windmill on a roof won't detract from the solar and all the gubbins are there to take the power and put it onto the grid

No way

[Muddy42]

I have covered half of an asbestos shed roof with 8-10kw of solar. I would have done more but the grid won't let me which is frustrating. I just need to decide whether to go down the route of battery storage or just solar diverters for hot water heating.

 

I wouldn't want solar panels on the ancient slate roof - it leaks badly enough as it is.