I hope this is reflected in the UK renewables investment, which currently seems to be wind power obsessed.

A single form of renewable energy is not the answer, we need a variety of renewables including wind, solar, wave and tidal (and others) to wean us off of our fossil fuel addiction.

All the best.

I agree that we need to develop all our renewable sources and bring them into mass production as soon as possible. However we do have great potential for wind generation and it is the most advanced of the renewables technologies so it makes sense to continue pushing it. At present wind produces about 4% of our total electricity production so it has some way to go before it reaches the 25%-30% likely in our final mix of renewable technologies.
There has been a review of hydroelectric capacity and it seems we might be able to double our present capacity using a few large schemes and a large number of micro schemes but it will still only account for 3%-4% of our electricity generation.
A lot more solar could be developed with Government support but it looks as if they are trying to slow the development until the price falls a bit further.
There is quite a large potential for geothermal energy, particularly in Cornwall, which hopefully will be developed soon.
We have great potential for wave and tidal generation but the technology is barely past the prototype stage so will take a while before it is ready for mass production and deployment.

Removing subsidies for fossil fuels will push forward this trend even further.

I can't wait until I can buy cheap & efficient solar panels to stick on my roof, so I never have another electricity or gas bill ever again.

Cheap for me I think would be about 5K for an array.
Efficient for me I think would be one rooftop array provides 100% of my energy needs.
(I appreciated that I will need some sort of associated battery storage, probably tucked away in the attic)

Can anyone tell me how long (in years) it will be before the scenario I have just described comes to be?

My all-electric Los Angeles house with just me in it uses an average 600 W over the last year. Figure 12% fixed solar PV collector utiization and 70% storage efficiency and result is 7 kW nameplate solar PV system. Latest LADWP fixed ground-mount solar PV installation cost is ~5 USD/W, so PV system will cost ~35000 USD.
Golf cart batteries store roughly 1 kWh each. Have to have 30 to give 2 days worth of storage. Attic installation not recommended as total mass will exceed that of an automobile. Figure another 5000 USD for batteries and another 5000 USD to hook everyting up.
Total cost is ~45,000 USD. Property taxes on 45,000 USD at prop 13 1.25% rate will be 562 USD/a. My average 600 W consumption is 5260 kWh/a, costing 763 USD/a. The most I could save, even if the solar PV and batteries were given to me for free would be 200 USD/a.
Perhaps if someone invented roll roofing that produced 120 V AC directly, then wait a few years after that. Also, utilization in England will be worse than in Los Angeles, so economics may still be bad.

Sadly most of this money is not from the USA.
America, at the bidding of BIG OIL, has thwarted renewable at every turn.
America really dropped the ball on this.
Multinationals do not care if US or China or anywhere is #1 in a technology ~ they will do business there.

This is great news. And it's great to see that the spending on renewable energy is spread across the globe, including big spending by the US too.

Impressive growth too.

However, the rate of growth has fallen year on year – last year's growth of 17% on the previous year failed to match the 37% increase in investment from 2010 to 2011.

Given that the growth in 2010 was growth from 2009, the depth of the economic crisis, the slower growth in 2010/11 is not necessarily a bad thing. Plus better to have strong consistent and sustainable growth, than to have a bubble.

Hopefully even the naysayers will see that 250 billion spent in one single year is a very good thing.

Can anyone tell me how long (in years) it will be before the scenario I have just described comes to be?

With a few riders, it's here NOW. You can get 4kWp PV for £6995 from a number of suppliers, and I've even seen one quote of £5995. So scale the size down a bit and you can pay just £5000.

Those riders:

1. Forget about replacing GAS with SOLAR in the UK. Deal with HEAT by not needing it - new build to Passivhaus standard pretty much does that for space heating.
2. You'll have to manage on about 3,200 kWh per year - but that is just about UK average for electricity consumption, if electrically heated houses are left out.
3. Sorry, but NOT going to be off grid - the national grid will be your battery, and financially with Feed-in Tariff actually you are much better off this way.
4. You'll have to be very economical with hot water, or find a bit more cash for a solar hot water system as well as the PV.

However, the boom – which saw investment of $51bn (£33bn) – may be shortlived as investors are rushing to take advantage of key incentive schemes before they are scrapped.

Therein lies the rub. To sustain significant commercial growth in renewables (and no matter how well-intentioned people are, the engine of growth must be commercial) much more aggressive political support, which is expensive, is required globally. In these times of austerity this can't happen, and most of all in europe.

I think you'll find,happyfredd, that a lot of Greens reckon ,with kind of upsidedown logic, that if you don't tax or stick enough VAT on something that they don't like, then that negatve tax amount constitutes a "subsidy". Of course this scheme does not apply to the actual copy price of the Guardian newspaper itself, cos they like the Guardian (as I do myself, thank you very much!), & times are tough enough as it is...

How much has this investment reduced global temperatures by?

A lot more solar could be developed with Government support but it looks as if they are trying to slow the development until the price falls a bit further.
There is quite a large potential for geothermal energy, particularly in Cornwall, which hopefully will be developed soon.

The Government don't want more solar PV because their Big 6 energy supplier masters see it as a major threat to their bottom line as it delivers energy autonomy and smaller electricity bills. This is why the Government put the boot in to commercial scale >50kW solar last summer.

There is little point developing a source of geothermal renewable energy in part of the country with relatively low winter demand (1 in 2 homes in Cornwall is a holiday home kept empty most of the winter by affluent Londoners)

There is little point developing a source of geothermal renewable energy in part of the country with relatively low winter demand (1 in 2 homes in Cornwall is a holiday home kept empty most of the winter by affluent Londoners)

Geothermal is not used only for heating.
It has been estimated that geothermal power from the south west of England alone could meet 2% of the UK’s annual electricity demand.

There are many other areas of UK with potential for geothermal energy. Taken together there is potential to generate 35TWh per year, approximately 10% of our annual electricity consumption.

The European Photovoltaic Industry Association reports that 29.7 GW of PV was installed world wide in 2011. Combining with the $147 billion investment in solar reported above yields an investment cost of around $5/W. Cost for the over time and over budget EPR nuclear power plant in Finland is about $5.5/W.

With the (very reasonable) assumption that the capacity factor of PV in the UK is about 10% and the capacity factor of nuclear is about 90%, and based on these figures, capital cost of PV is eight times more expensive than nuclear in the UK in 2011.

This is very "back of envelope" with no pretense at being exact, but it does indicate that the extravagant claims that PV is cheaper than nuclear need to be taken with a grain of salt.

For a further dose of reality, and (rather generously) assuming a 15% average capacity factor for PV worldwide, that 29.7 GW of new PV in 2011 will generate about as much electricity as about three EPR nuclear power plants.

This is not an argument against PV as such, but it is an argument for the use of the most appropriate and cost effective technologies to decarbonize electricity supply as soon as possible. With emissions up 3% in 2011 and no end to the growth of emissions in sight, magical and wishful thinking frequently accompanied by some less than honest claims about energy is no longer an affordable luxury.

Geothermal is not used only for heating.
It has been estimated that geothermal power from the south west of England alone could meet 2% of the UK’s annual electricity demand.

Australia has vast geothermal "reserves" and some of the best geology in the world for realizing deep "hot rock" geothermal. It also has shedloads of expertise in geology, mining engineering etc. The federal government has provided substantial financial support for development of geothermal power. The investment climate was favourable with several ASX listed "geothermal" companies (whose share price is now pitiful).

Despite all that not a single kWh of commercial deep geothermal electricity has been produced and and there is little indication of when that might happen.

Desirable as it might be, this technology is still at the R&D stage (as it been for decades) with no real indication of when it might be deployable on a scale that could have any tangible effect on emissions.

Desirable as it might be, this technology is still at the R&D stage (as it been for decades) with no real indication of when it might be deployable on a scale that could have any tangible effect on emissions.

Paper giving a very thorough analysis of geothermal capacity worldwide with possible expansion in each nation.
World installed capacity in 2010 10,715MW producing 67TWh. Installed capacity is expected to be 18500MW by 2015. The paper estimates that geothermal could provide as much as 8.3% of world electricity production by 2050.

Your own reference makes this statement:

The estimated potentials differ by orders of magnitude depending if these are based on enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) technology and on the type and performance of utilization technologies or both.

If geothermal is to form anything other than a small niche in future world energy supply, it will have to be by way of EGS. This is difficult stuff as evidenced by the fact that it hasn't been done yet. It involves drilling something like 4km deep wells through overlaying sedimentary rock into hot granite. Water is forced down one well and finds it's way through fractured rock somehow up another well. Drilling these holes in the ground is not cheap.

There is no commercial EGS and in Australia - one of the leaders if not THE leader - milestones have repeatedly slipped. Geodynamics original "plans" for 500MW by 2020 look like a pipe dream.

The truth is we don't know when or even if EGS will become any sort of commercial reality. I refuse outright to place blind faith in completely unproved technologies as any solution to the emissions problem on a global scale. You should too. If EGS becomes proved on a significant commercial scale then a reevaluation is in order but not before.

How much has this investment reduced global temperatures by?

There is no possible way of measuring that, but the point is probably irrelevant. While reducing the amount of fossil fuels to generate energy is beneficial to the climate, the principle issue - the highest priority since the effect is the most immediate - is to find alternative forms of energy generation to replace the oil we're running out of.

The economic framework of our civilisation is based on cheap energy, which is probably why we're so collectively profligate with it. Long before we witness the scale of damage done by climate change, we'll have exhausted our supplies of conventional 'cheap' energy, which will no longer be cheap - the laws of supply and demand will still apply.

Without alternatives, and in a world of increasing tension caused by climate change, energy and resource demands and the increased population that makes them, it is all too realistic to imagine energy wars being fought at the poles and in the deserts, between developed nations who can no longer develop, supported by developing nations whose progress is grinding to a halt as we all run out of cheap energy. Climate change amelioration, to whatever extent it occurs, is a bonus, not the object of the exercise.

This is not an argument against PV as such, but it is an argument for the use of the most appropriate and cost effective technologies to decarbonize electricity supply as soon as possible.

With PV, once it's installed, you've paid the full cost.

With a nuclear station, building the physical installation is just the start of it! No fuel costs with PV; far reaching fuel supply and refinement chain at input side, and long term, extensive care programme for waste products at output side of nuclear. All very expensive.

Fossil fuels - much cheaper to build than nuclear, but priced without their environmental costs.

Yes, compare on cost - not the only issue, but important - but include ALL costs!

With PV, once it's installed, you've paid the full cost.

Not quite true. There are operations and maintenance costs for PV also but they are less than for nuclear or fossil fuels.

With a nuclear station, building the physical installation is just the start of it! No fuel costs with PV; far reaching fuel supply and refinement chain at input side, and long term, extensive care programme for waste products at output side of nuclear. All very expensive.

That's why the metric Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) has been developed. There are various authoritative sources but they all tell you the nuclear is cheaper than PV. Nuclear costs are also quite heavily front weighted as a capital intensive technology, but not so capital intensive as solar and wind.

See the CCC's "Renewable Energy Review" or IEA 2010 "Projected Costs of Generating Electricity" for LCOE estimates.

We have great potential for wave and tidal generation but the technology is barely past the prototype stage so will take a while before it is ready for mass production and deployment.

I think that perhaps it is a little past the prototype stage now, inasmuch as sites off Orkney, Shetland, Anglesey and Islay have been identified for wave/tidal installations, planning sought/granted and some of the devices like the Pelamis seasnake have completed extensive on site/offshore testing.

I'd say that really the tidal/wave thing is in an equivalent state in its lifecycle to (say) that for plans for round 2 offshore wind farms to 2020.

Around 2GW capacity deployed by 2020 is a realistic estimate - but I guess that while worthwhile, it is only a start!

Encouraging that despite the eurozone crisis, global financial uncertainty, that investment in green energy keeps going up.

But I have often wondered why renewable energy investment funds are still doing badly - eg. BlackRock New Energy Technology Fund down 20% on the year. Are these funds just out of fashion in a risk-averse climate? Ie. Small investors pile into gold funds and so-called 'safe-havens' rather than take a punt on longer-term trends.

What part of :"The US and China were the top investors in renewables last year. US investments continued despite the shale gas boom and obstacles because of uncertainty over policy." did you not understand?

Not actually engaging with your question M'Lord but at something of a tangent--solar water heating can take a big chunk out of the electricity used for heating water--it isn't too terribly high tech and has been around for long enough for installers to know what they are doing.

In general the increase in investment in renewables is excellent news--how predictable though that some governments are still dragging their feet on this. Fascinating that solar is now the front runner. And what a pity that wave and tidal has still not recovered from the nobbling it received in the past.

Good points but care must be taken with LCOE as it is based on the future price of electricity averaged over a plants/fleets lifetime and brough back to today. From the studies I have seen future or current subsidies and incentives are not included in these estimates as well as load profiles in the grid (i.e. intermittancy/surplus effects).

For solar we are currently seeing a massive over capacity being cut back (generally lower quality producers) as subsidies and tarrifs are being cut or threatened. Indeed investor confidence is usually not that high in the medium term if the industries relief on such support systems in my opinion. Not only that but power production is generally a low margin industry whereas something like FB or Apple will have larger margins (but perhaps higher risks).
Such culls were common in early semiconductor industries and I assume that investment funds behaved similarly. Looking at that secot to see what happened would probably be a good analog for what is/will happen in solar (assuming the same rate of development which is questionable).

Perhaps that reflects the intense competition in the sector with the downwards spiral of prices impacting on profitability.

RENEWABLE POWER CANNOT SUPPLY MORE THAN A SMALL % OF ELECTRICITY

The main limitation to the use of renewable energy sources is the electrical distribution grid. Renewable sources supply an irregular amount of power at uncontrollable times from numurous discrete sources. The technology needed to control an electrical distribution system with numerous, highly variable power sources DOES NOT EXIST. A highly integrated industrialized economy relies on reliable and consistent sources of electricity. At most, they can supply only a small percentage of the power needed; mostly solar panels that can supply energy at peak hours for airconditioning on hot, sunny days.

No mention of the collapse of Solar in Germany of course. Why am I not surprised.

Any number of articles here, from the German energy blog, can confirm this

http://notrickszone.com

I can't wait until I can buy cheap & efficient solar panels to stick on my roof, so I never have another electricity or gas bill ever again.

For the lucky portion of the population with significantly above average incomes or who bought into the property market at the right point in time (this requires you to be above a certain age), this is a arguably a good investment. I can't disagree that long term it would theoretically help to start to reduce emissions (ignoring the fact there isn't enough time left).

I do question what it leaves the poorer section of the population with for energy (and in the UK poorer often means younger, though I wouldn't like to over generalise). Good luck getting landlords to do this, though the obscene rents they're making now should make it easy...

You don't need anything like the amount of power you think you do anyway. For some years my power was limited to a single 13 amp socket (240V). I used that for everything including heating and cooking. To be sure the temperature would drop down inside to a little above freezing in the coldest part of the cold winters in the UK in recent years - but that's mostly because my little boat had no insulation (at all).

I think most people in the UK are too spoiled to tolerate that though?

But I have often wondered why renewable energy investment funds are still doing badly - eg. BlackRock New Energy Technology Fund down 20% on the year.

A reason might be that the investors lack faith in the continued public subsidies and/or the actual profitability of the volatile form of renawable energy itself.

It seems to me money is more wisely spent on "negawatts". I have never understood why the public in the UK would invest a single penny on solar PV while heat pumps offer a far better return on money with a fraction of the initial cost. As a private individual with limited finiancial means, I would begin with solutions that offer the most bang for the pound, then proceed to the less effective alternatives if I still had some money left. Ok, that is only me and my two heat pumps and the mass heating.

You don't need anything like the amount of power you think you do anyway.

AnEmptyHourglass,
your commentary was quite uplifting -- up until you mentioned the words "my little boat"!

On the back of the envelope, your 13 amps * 230V boat connection would be able to deliver you three times the rate of my average yearly consumption. If you had to replace fuses often, you were probably using even more than that.

Well, I guess you could do the same with a house? (just easier to use more when you have a greater supply, I had a single shorepower outlet)

You're right that in theory one could draw more power than your average use yearly, but in practice my power costs were low. In the summer I'd say less than 10 GBP a month and in the winter - at the coldest point when I'd run a heater intensively - perhaps as high as 20 GBP a week (but that only when it was cold outside - eg around -10C). In the more typical parts of the winter 10 GPB a week would be more normal.

I didn't have any problems with fuses - my then wife did trip the breaker a few times by forgetting the rule "maximum 1 high drain appliance in use at once".

Total annual spend on electricity probably around 200 GBP? (9.8p/kWh)

That said, laundry and showers were in a building on shore - so that portion of energy use probably would add more onto the total (and likely a significant chunk).

We actually both liked living on the boat - originally a "this is the only thing I can afford" decision but turned into a lifestyle choice. Now I have a much bigger one in another country :)

I'd also note that one thing that helped not to use too much power was the need to go to the office and hand over cash to buy the tokens we used. You get a much better feel for the amount of power you're using when you pay for it directly and are watching the meter to make sure it won't cut out overnight (in the winter).

Fortunately it isn't legal for a company to make a profit supplying electricity if they don't generate power (or something similar) so the rate was around 9.8KWh - it wasn't a case of being ripped off via the more usual prepayment meters inflicted on people.

On the whole I can recommend it as a cost effective way to live - my total ongoing household costs (excluding food but including mooring fees, storage, electricity) were comparable to what most people pay in council tax alone (which I avoided by not living in a house). Water and refuse disposal included in mooring fees.

Biggest problem to solve? Not having a proper address. Our society is predicated on the idea that you ought to be easy to find at any time!

Total annual spend on electricity probably around 200 GBP? (9.8p/kWh)

Which means you would have spent about 2,000 kWh per year, plus the laundry and showers, easily 3,000 kWh per annum in all. I'm expecting to spend about 8,500 kWh per year, for a quite typical 1950s Finnish family house, and the room temperature typically at 23C, never falling below 20C. I have an efficient massive fireplace, but I've not even tried to calculate the actual energy content of the (mostly damp) scrap wood I burn. I'm predominantly "renewable" in any case. I sometimes catch episodes of the British "Build a New Life in the Country" series, and I'm just dumbfounded by some of the stuff that go under the rubrik of fireplace in the UK.

You get a much better feel for the amount of power you're using when you pay for it directly and are watching the meter to make sure it won't cut out overnight (in the winter).

... or watch your meter tick hourly on the (Vattenfall) web site, as we have the earth-shattering smart meters installed. I think it says the year 2006 on my meter.

The huge and obvious flaw in your simplistic mathematics is that you assume the 100th GW of solar will cost the same as the 1st. That's clearly not true.

* Grid parity is reached in Germany for solar photovoltaic electricity.

> This is very "back of envelope" with no pretense at being exact...

You can say that again! Estimated Levelized Cost of New Generation Resources, 2017 - wind is already cheaper than nukes. Solar PV will be cheaper by the time a new nuke could come online - 10 to 20 years from now.

> ...decarbonize electricity supply as soon as possible.

So why are you obsessed with nukes? The slowest and most unreliable to deploy, and now the most expensive low carbon energy source. As Damian Carrington put it so nicely: nuclear reactors that do not get built are nothing but hot air. That's all the nuke lobby produces: hot air.

> ...nuclear is cheaper than PV.

Where is the waste going for the next 100,000+ years? If you don't know that, you don't know the cost. And you don't have a clue.

There is no solution for the waste - it's just a never-ending burden on society, and one which the British taxpayer is being screwed for over £3 billion a year for nuke electricity that was consumed in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

~~~

SLOJohnny

> RENEWABLE POWER CANNOT SUPPLY MORE THAN A SMALL % OF ELECTRICITY

Spain recently produced 60% of their electricity from wind. How is that possible if your SHOUTING claim is right?!

~~~

pietari

> ...investors lack faith in ... renawable energy itself.

* Global investment in renewable energy at record high. Solar power gets more finance than wind as recession fails to dampen faith in low carbon technology.

You just make it up as you go along, don't you? ;)

That strikes me as decent if you don't also burn gas? I think stoves can be significantly more efficient for heating than open fireplaces but I grew up in semi remote places in Scotland where we usually only ever had an open fire in the winter (no central heating, nor double glazing etc).

One thing I learned which seems to be "old fashioned" now is the idea that one can put more clothes on (or off) to compensate for the temperature!

At the moment I'm out of the water and using mains power to run tools to do some repairs and modifications (it would be a generator otherwise) but as soon as I'm floating again I expect to be entirely grid independent and running off wind and solar for household usage (generator for emergency repairs and sails for almost all propulsion).

Boats are a special case though, clearly we couldn't all live on them (the one I have now is similar in size inside to a small apartment).

If you're Finland I'm guessing energy efficiency standards are far higher than the UK? (some of the northern countries in Europe seem pretty sensible places compared to most of the world)

That strikes me as decent if you don't also burn gas?

Private households in the main don't burn gas here, except for stoves in some old areas of Helsinki. There are some private gas users spread out in the country along the main gas pipelines from Russia but they are few and far between.

The principle of the Nordic stove is here

it is an original drawing commissioned as royal project resulting in a 18th C Swedish directive whose aim was to make a more efficient use of the Kingdom's forest resources. That has remained the general outline hundreds of years later still. A 20th C derivative.

If you're Finland I'm guessing energy efficiency standards are far higher than the UK? (some of the northern countries in Europe seem pretty sensible places compared to most of the world)

Basically now it's the EU standards that dictate everything in building. The old SFS standards on efficiency (windows and insulation in particular) have been around at least since the energy crisis. More than any actual standards, in this country it's been the sheer scarcity of money that has been the main driver towards solutions what in modern terminology would be called "sustainable".

Where is the waste going for the next 100,000+ years? If you don't know that, you don't know the cost. And you don't have a clue.

"A Dive into Onkalo [Deep geological Repository Test Site]"

The truth is we don't know when or even if EGS will become any sort of commercial reality. I refuse outright to place blind faith in completely unproved technologies as any solution to the emissions problem on a global scale. You should too.

Who is placing blind faith in in EGS, I certainly wasn't? The real key to the renewables option is the development of the concept of widespread multinational HVDC grids. The grid provides the flexibility needed to allow the inclusion of whatever technologies are most cost effective in each location. As new technologies develop and move towards mass production they too can be added to the grid or if necessary used to replace older technologies. Geothermal looks as if it could make a useful contribution to the mix and will no doubt be added as the various versions become viable in particular locations but how much geothermal is included will depend on its cost effectiveness.
Initially however the main sources of renewable power will come from wind, solar, hydroelectric and biomass because those are the most developed and can be deployed in many locations.

Geothermal looks as if it could make a useful contribution to the mix and will no doubt be added as the various versions become viable in particular locations but how much geothermal is included will depend on its cost effectiveness.

30% of new private houses in Finland have a ground source heat pump installed. The bigger the house, the more likely it has one.
Sales of all heat pump types in 1996-2011:

No need to shuffle gigawatts around Europe or wait for the appearance of the Solar God -- there is better technology to save energy here and now, and mind you, extremely locally as well.

In more general terms, combined heat and power is unbeatable in efficiency, and extremely local as well. Instead of chanting their prayer song "oh Lord how I miss my wave and tidal" bihourly, the green UK folks could set any number of CHP projects going tomorrow morning!

No as that would increase investor confidence as it would become clear very quickly who the market leaders were and where the likely breakthroughs would come from.

Ah yes back to Van spouting rubbish. You do not even read your own references.

Grid parity is reached in Germany for solar photovoltaic electricity.

This report quoted sources information from Deutsche bank. You should have read this report as it is in English. See the link below
http://www.dbcca.com/dbcca/EN/_media/German_FIT_for_PV.pdf
The graph that Van is using to claim that grid parity is reached shows, according to DB, that the feed in tarriff for solar installations will drop below the grid price of electricity (for a specific set of installations). This is not grid parity as it clearly shows that solar is still costing more than the standard grid price.
Indeed the report goes so far to say that Germany's solar PV tariffs will remain a key contributor to driving solar PV prices down toward competitiveness with on-peak fossil-fired generation... and the country's feed-in tariffs will eventually drive prices down to grid parity (which is good news).

You can say that again! Estimated Levelized Cost of New Generation Resources, 2017 - wind is already cheaper than nukes. Solar PV will be cheaper by the time a new nuke could come online - 10 to 20 years from now.

I have explained the problems with using the EIA LCOE data before. They do not include subsidies or tax credits that producers will receive. One example is that solar can get a 30% tax credit on capital expenditure. Of the current subsidies for the electricity market in the US, 55% go towards renewables. When taken as subsidy/billion KWh, it becomes much worse.
http://docs.wind-watch.org/US-subsidy-2010.pdf

Further the EIA also states clearly that

Since load must be balanced on a continuous basis, units whose output can be varied to follow demand (dispatchable technologies) generally have more value to a system than less flexible units (non-dispatchable technologies) or those whose operation is tied to the availability of an intermittent resource. The levelized costs for dispatchable and nondispatchable technologies are listed separately in Tables 1 and 2, because caution should be used when comparing them to one another.

In that sence the lower values for wind are fine except that they cannot be compared with standard base load operators. The EIA say themselves that these intermittant sources are less valuable.

Is the UK's and the entire planet's nuke waste going in a hole in the ground in Finland? Of course not. You need to think about the Big Picture - not just what you can see out of your window in Finland... as you did when you claimed radiation poisoning increased fertility!

P.S. Not even all of Finland's nuke waste will be able to be stored in Onkalo. Where are you going to dig the next astronomically expensive hole that will take over a century to complete?

~~~

riveness

Your ideological blinkers always produce the same nonsense: all you can see are subsidies (FITs) for renewables, while you remain blind to the massive subsidies handed to nukes and fossils. I think you might also be conflating wholesale and retail costs - but I can't be bothered to work out what you're babbling about. You're certainly ignoring a huge range of factors, such as grid losses, capital cost, environmental costs, etc.

Regardless of your 'creative' reinterpretation of the data, credible sources are now saying solar grid parity is a reality in Germany. And it's not even a new thing - some energy analysts had announced it last year:

* Jefferies: Grid parity a reality in Germany

And not just Germany:

* California grid parity dawns as developers chase the sun

The future is bright - and it's not from radiation from nuke reactors. ;)

30% of new private houses in Finland have a ground source heat pump installed. The bigger the house, the more likely it has one.

Yes I am well aware of the effectiveness of heat pumps, my father was designing domestic heat pumps in the mid 1960s based on the Stirling cycle and I was doing the calculations on theoretical efficiencies. Heat pumps were basically air to air but the idea we were looking at was to create a heat store under each new house such as an insulated pond. The idea was to cool the house during summer by transferring heat to the pool and then reverse the process in the winter. Now of course they tend to use ground based heat pumps which is probably more cost effective.
Air to air heat pumps are easy to install but the more efficient ground to water heating version are hard to fit retrospectively and are generally included only at the new build stage.
One aspect we looked at for the air to air heat pump was to extract heat from the outgoing air by condensing the water vapour from cooking and showers etc. You can capture even more heat if you are prepared to freeze the water vapour and blow snow out of the exhaust system. The children might enjoy having a constant supply of snow through the winter months. (;-))

In more general terms, combined heat and power is unbeatable in efficiency, and extremely local as well. Instead of chanting their prayer song "oh Lord how I miss my wave and tidal" bihourly, the green UK folks could set any number of CHP projects going tomorrow morning!

If they hadn't built larger power stations further away from people (NIMBY factor presumably) and if not for the drawback that we're into such dangerous territory now we really shouldn't commit to projects that will continue to add greenhouse gas load to the atmosphere for decades...

That said the edge of the cliff has been approaching for some time, and we've continued to accelerate towards it.

as you did when you claimed radiation poisoning increased fertility!

Yes that is correct, my radiation poisoning, and that of my closest neighbours, does seem to increase fertility. I'd want you to add that it also makes the kids healthy and happy. It's summer now and the irradiated seem to be ever so happy to have been poisoned.

Air to air heat pumps are easy to install but the more efficient ground to water heating version are hard to fit retrospectively and are generally included only at the new build stage.

I watched one project fairly close, and I can say you're wrong, If you have existing water-filled radiators, as most 1950-1960s houses here have, fitting a ground-based heat pump (or district heating/CHP as some do) is relatively easy. Typicallly, there will be a truck with a big drill coming onto your yard, the stuff on top of bedrock will be removed at the drill site (can be logistically tricky of the layer is more than few meters thick), a day or two at the site and voila, you have your hole for your equipment. Practically invisible, this will lead to the room where your oil-burner used to be. The actual heat exchanger is surprisingly small, and you will also save some space at once.
These projects to replace oil burners with heat pump did receive some small subsidy for this and the last year, and quite many accepted it.

I watched one project fairly close, and I can say you're wrong, If you have existing water-filled radiators, as most 1950-1960s houses here have, fitting a ground-based heat pump (or district heating/CHP as some do) is relatively easy.

The problem with retrofitting as I understand it is due to the relatively low temperature of the hot water which would require extra radiators to be fitted to maintain the same level of heating. This is often not possible if the house has not been designed to include all those extra radiators. In a new build house the usual way of using ground to water based heat pumps is by fitting underfloor heating which provides a large area to make full use of the lower temperature heating water. Again that is often not very easy to do retrospectively and unlikely to be cost effective.

New houses today should be designed with efficiency in mind so heat pumps and large south facing roofs suitable for solar generation should be standard. They should also have thick cavity wall and loft insulation and double or triple glazed windows wherever possible.