Green Energy Republic

Roofs, yes. But PV or not PV – that’s the question

Secret files on solar energy collaborator, Part 1:  Dave Hampton

EVIDENCE
9-panel, 1.66KWpeak, photovoltaic (PV) solar panel installation

LOCATION
on the Carbon Coach’s home in Marlow, Bucks

COST
£10,000 all inc

SUPPLIER
Freesource, Good Energy’s chosen renewable energy installation partner

ACCOMPLICES
Transition Town Marlow 100 Solar Panel project:http://www.transitionmarlow.org/index.php?p=1_2_Solar

The low-carbon detectives are on my trail. Here’s my review of the installation.

I am delighted to report that my PV panels are up, on the roof, and generating much clean raw power, plus useful cash.  The panels are of course being very closely watched and monitored, by me, and by my friends and Marlow neighbours.

They make me feel deeply and inordinately happy. I get waves of pleasure just to see my powerful panels and to witness their production of sustainable energy.

They look good, feel good, are in good taste, and, by golly, they do you good!

Hi-visibility roof coat
My installation is on the side roof, the exposed side of our house which is on a corner plot.  The nett (curtain) effect of which is that my panels are quite noticeable to passers by. I view my panels with as much awe and admiration as I would a Picasso original. They are both a work of genius.

The elegant clean lines, the silver and dark blue crystalline refraction/reflection effect, the large-tile-upon-small-tile pyramid cubist design. The light and shade, the diametric composition of juxtaposition and orthogonality…

None of my neighbours seems unhappy about the installation. One said he didn’t exactly find them attractive, but neither did he notice them much. Most neighbours are interested in how we get on with them.

One household is having a survey, and is currently deciding if they want to go solar.  I hope they will.

Local nuclear – or new clear vision

If some people insist they really ‘don’t like the look’, then I suppose I could ask them if they would prefer a small local nuclear power station – somewhere near them – in Marlow on (cooling water) Thames instead?

Some of my friends are positive or neutral about nuclear, but I don’t think any would welcome it within 50 miles of their home town, let alone bolted onto their roof. Like my micro ‘nuke’ is…

My solar PV installation is in effect a local nuclear power harnessing plant, human scale, with the core reactor located a nice, safe distance away. (93 million miles: The Sun.)

The waste trail you don’t see
Upstream in the supply chain, to make my solar panels and kit, if you think about it, is an alarming trail of waste, mining, manufacturing and energy use, from all over the world. Long before they generate their first unit of clean power in Marlow, my beloved panels have left some sort of trail of pollution behind them. But here’s the deal. It’s not big.

In ball park terms, the upstream damage, the ‘eco-baggage’ that my panels arrived with from day one, amounts to some 1000kg of greenhouse gas equivalent impact. They will pay that back in full within two years.  They will sweep up all their own eco-mess, their footprint in manufacture etc, during the first two years of operation.  Thereafter, for the next 20 years or more, they will be sweeping up other people’s pollution – and fully be in (planetary) credit, increasingly so, for each year they keep on keeping on.

In carbon terms, my panels weigh less than minus 10 tons – over their lifetime!

This thought gives me a little lift.  Like the balloons in the movie ‘UP’, my panels uplift me.

In less than 20 years, well before my 70th birthday, my panels will have saved a nett 10 tons of CO2, after taking into account the CO2 involved in manufacture and transport. And they will have saved, at a power station, over their lifetime, the equivalent of around 20 barrels of oil being burnt as well. Picture all that fossil fuel being left in the ground.

The whole process of old-fashioned power generation, from the oil well, coal mine, fuel extraction, fuel intake, the waste streams (heat, smoke, spent fuel) and all the risks, is fully concealed from us. It takes place many miles away, behind concrete walls, with coal trucks, smoking chimneys and warmed up local rivers the only tell-tell signs. In contrast, PV panels are open, transparent, risk free and locally autonomous.  Also, the more they generate, the more they don’t pollute, whereas the more power old-fashioned fossil or nuclear plants generate, the more they pollute, and the higher the bill, until eventually they cost us the Earth.

Each PV panel ever made has effectively a negative legacy footprint on the world. It is also carbon quids-in, providing it is given a nice roof to sit on, and a nice home to power for life. The technology is ecologically restorative, when it displaces dirtier generation.

The more PV we use, the less CO2 we put into the atmosphere overall.
In this sense, planting PV panels on your roof is almost as good as planting a tree.

Put your money where your roof is

Despite knowing all this, it still took me five years to take the PV plunge. And to save up the money. When we eco-refurbished our entire house five years ago, we satisfied ourselves with just a solar hot water panel (and a small token PV panel for the pump for the solar system.) But I had set aside an area of south-facing roof. It was designated for PV one day.

£10,000 is a shed-load of money

Let’s get the big, scary number out of the way.

£10,000 (fully inc).
£10,000 is a shed-load of money. It’s a roof-full of PV.  It’s also on a par with an ISA, or a slice of pension fund, going without a new car for a few years, or missing out on a family foreign holiday or two.  I appreciate it is still a shed-load of money, and I know I was lucky to be able to do it, and not everyone can. 

If you are a homeowner, the ‘asset value of the home’ is a moot point, as no-one really knows what the asset value is, but I wouldn’t be surprised if our home would raise £10k more on the open market than a similar property without the PV panels.  So you can view it as home improvement.

And Home improvement too – with a capital H. 
Sooner or later we need to start living on our HOME planet as if we intend to stay here forever. See ‘HOME’ the movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU

It is possible my kids will benefit more from the legacy of millions of solar panels than they ever will from the legacy of £1000s in my will.  Is PV making my WILL POWER-ful?  Globally, there need be no shortage of will power.

Rent
"No generation has a freehold on this Earth. All we have is a life-tenancy—with a full repairing lease." Rt Hon Margaret Thatcher MP
If you rent your home, there is every reason to lobby your landlord or the council to fit PVs.  Many landlords are already considering doing this. Your voice in support could tip them into action.  You may even be able to help educate them about the grants, Feed in Tariffs (e.g. business benefits, etc. Don’t assume they know all about how good it can be.)

PV is a well-kept secret that the nice fossil companies don’t really want people to discover...yet...

The Numbers
I don’t want to throw too many numbers at you, but here is the deal.  Depending on the weather, rain, cloud or shine, my panels generate about 10 to 70 pence an hour during daytime. 

On a bright day, and averaged over 24 hours, my nine panels supply ALL my electricity needs. Over an entire year, I expect them to generate around a THIRD of all that we use.
Over a year we expect the savings, plus the Feed in Tariff income, to be worth £800.

Our energy provider, Good Energy, won’t be sending us bills. They will be sending us cheques! Cheques for the (government enhanced) value of all the FiT power we generate, less the small cost of the energy we import.  

Next week I will be reviewing the highly acclaimed ‘Wattson’ remote energy display meter which is the perfect accompaniment to a PV installation.

Dave Hampton

The Carbon Coach

http://www.carboncoach.com/

Because Marlow’s Energy is its People

By Dave Hampton, Carbon Coach

One in 25 of Good Energy’s electricity customers is also a renewable generator, so we really understand the benefits that generating your own energy can bring. Our regular guest-blogger Dave Hampton lives in Marlow, where Good Energy and Transition Town Marlow are set to start on an exciting project to get residents generating heat and power from sunlight. And that’s just the start. In this latest blog, Dave sets out his inspiring vision for the town...

Because Marlow’s Energy is its People

Marlow is, as local readers will know, a beautiful Thames-side town with plenty of good history: a bit of a ‘gem’ on the UK tourist trail, being a popular destination for US visitors. For some, Marlow has a connotation with simply messing about in boats in the summer, rowing regattas, Sir Steve Redgrave. For some it is the quintessential or quaint English architecture, cricket greens, open space, playgrounds, crazy golf and leafiness of Higginson Park.

There’s good community spirit, good schools, and people develop common bonds, through sport and through community groups. Whether they meet in Churches, or the ‘temples’ where they congregate are river banks, allotments, book clubs, playing fields, or other spaces of common interest, Marlow has a strong sense of community.

10,000 Marlow homes – £50million pounds a year - up in (invisible) smoke?

I would not be surprised if Marlow’s average energy bills are higher than UK average, which is £1400 per annum. For electricity, my guess is that the annual spend per household will vary from £200 to £2000. For heating there will be a similar range, let’s say £300 to £3000 a year.  Where are you?  Let’s guess a £1500 p.a. overall Marlow average, bearing in mind some are much lower, and some much higher.

What we spend on fuelling our cars probably ranges from £10 a week up to £100 a week or more.  Let’s hazard a guess at £1500 p.a.

Finally, holiday air travel. Let’s make a wild guess of £1000 overall average spend per home per year.  (I know some never fly, and some fly quite a lot.) 

You are of course free to use your own best guesstimates, reader, and do your own ‘back-of-an-envelope’ calculations, but I don’t think I will be far out here.

So just supposing the average annual fuel bills per household were:

• Electricity £700
• Heating £800
• Petrol £1500
• Flights £1000

then the total energy spend per Marlow home would be about £4000 per year. 

Even if this were an overestimate by 100%, even half this amount, or £2000, would be a sizeable chunk of the average Marlow household income... and a big chunk of power to waste.

And the really funny thing?

We don’t need to be paying this.  Or leaving this con-trail for the kids.

Our town could be a nett generator of energy. No, not a power station, but a highly organised and efficient network of home energy generating ‘cells’ interconnected like the internet.  Clever, new, local, renewable energy technology; not central, dirty, old fossil.

Imagine all the existing big fat (invisible) power cables, the invisible oil pipeline (steroid injection), the night-time oil tanker deliveries, and the safely buried gas mains into Marlow ALL severed and redundant.  Breaking free from the grid.  Off grid.

That’s not quite true. We’d still need an electrical cable – a smaller one - to carry the excess power – the spare that we may be able to export!  Less of an ‘umbilical cord’ of addictive dependency, and more of a ‘power accord’ of inter-dependence. 

And the people of Marlow £50 million a year richer. 
Making money selling our home-grown energy too.

We could cut our dependency on (and the fortunes we pay annually to) ‘those in power’.
This is, of course, controversial, and deeply unpopular with those currently in power and those who defend them. But we would be 500,000 empty oil drums lighter, and 300,000 tons of CO2 cleaner and more respectable.

Just like that!

Except of course it isn’t quite ‘just like that’. We’d have to work hard for it. We’d have to insulate our homes, install solar panels, build small community wind farms, small community heat and power stations (e.g. powered from sewage) and much increase our use of the bike and foot. We’d have to kick some pretty engrained ‘oil-addict’ habits.

But a High Street where most people are biking or walking could be THE proud status of the Marlow future, not a relic of the past. 

We can happily take more ‘stay-cations’ – even take one EVERY weekend of the year  – in one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world: Marlow, UK.  Luxury.

Surely the kids are worth it?

If we pulled it off it wouldn’t make one iota of difference to USA or China’s footprint, but then we can’t really force them to do what we don’t do anyway, can we?
But we can inspire them to follow our first carbon-free footsteps, can’t we?

Even if we failed, we’d still end up with lower bills, less pollution, higher house prices (for their higher energy efficiency rating), healthier kids walking more, bike lanes, less traffic congestion, a better railway, and more community spirit in the park in the summer, instead of a mass exodus of Marlow people for the Maldives (by then underwater).