Same with places prone to radical weather. Or just anywhere that doesn't get a lot of sun (the farther you get from the equator, really).
Because even if we get solar panel cost down in the next few years, it is still going to be expensive and need a fair amount of maintenance. And if that doesn't offset the cost sufficiently, it isn't worth it
Believe me, I want clean energy and do think solar should be exploited where it is reasonable (same with wind) and wish we would at least use cleaner sources where it isn't. But studies/experiments like this tend to rely on best case scenarios and corner cases and often just don't take economics into consideration.
Are they good as proof of concepts and PR? Yeah. But they still aren't that representative.
The initial reason for this was that to get electricity from the grid to them was going to cost _lots_ of money. Solar is an important part of their mix - the Hebrides get a a good chunk of sun in the summer (and long days too). They've been a case study for a number of similarly isolated communities - either islands or other locations far away from existing electricity infrastructure.
Making batteries more efficient (and cheaper), and making each of the renewables mix more efficient and cheaper will make this possible for more and more communities.
Renewable, but mostly as hydro.
Things are easier when you have large hydro (relative to your needs), Iceland's electrical production has been 100% renewable since 2008 (and was 99.9% renewable before that) because they have a ton of hydro (80% of total capacity), and a fair amount (and growing) of geothermal (geothermal is 2/3rd of their energy consumption but the vast majority is direct use for heating, not electricity generation). And note that ~70% of Icelandic electricity generation is solely for aluminum production.
> Three hydroelectric generators produce electricity from running water. The biggest hydro above at Laig on the west side of the island is 100kW, with two smaller 5-6kW hydros on the east side.
> Four small 6kW wind turbines below An Sgurr
> 50kW Photovoltaic array producing electricity from the sun.
> Although the capacity of the scheme is around 184kW, not all renewable resources produce their maximum output all the time or at the same time.
I think this means that solar would provide 27% of their total coverage if everything was running at full capacity (which never happens). Long summer days with low cloud coverage at time of low wind makes solar an important part of their summer mix.
They're also experimenting with using solar on homes to heat water to see how much much less fuel they burn.
>The sun can be used to heat water instead of fuel. Solar panels are being installed by islanders on three homes on Eigg to test how much less fuel is being burnt, and how much money is saved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXe1hBvlylw
It has wind power, sea water sourced heat pumps, a little bit of solar, a test rig for underwater wave power, batteries that are used to relieve the peaks on energy transmission to the mainland and projects to increase electric car uptake to soak up excess energy production.
The UK is surprisingly far north. It's always surprising to me what North American places line up with European ones. Luckily for northern Europe, they have lots of other renewable resources to make up for the lack of sunshine.
I think possibly your opinion on Solar is a bit too UK-centric, since it's already very competitive in other locations, particularly anywhere that air-con is commonly used since that electric load is correlated with solar activity.
No, but wind energy does make sense and the UK already generates rather a lot.
>Believe me, I want clean energy
People say this but it seems rather easy for astroturfers to kill green energy projects in the UK based upon the flimsiest of pretexts (e.g Navitus Bay Wind Farm Proposal).
Do you want to know why so many of these initiatives fall apart? Because they get sold as pipe dreams. We'll just throw solar cells on every roof (what I was actually replying to) and free energy for all! Yeah! We'll power the entire planet! Disagree with me? Screw you, you are just working for big oil!
No. We need to be realistic. In some regions, solar is the bomb diggety. In others, wind can generate a lot of watts. And pretty much anywhere that has hydro or geothermal as an option do great. And in a subset of those, it is sufficient to handle power needs.
So sell it that way. Don't perpetuate the myth that we are "just about there" because that makes it an easy target. Explain that it is still mostly about supplementing power and lessening dependencies. Because pushing the former just leads to "Your proposal will handle about a quarter of non-peak energy usage. And it will take at least a decade until it might get to 50?"
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Also, you may want to consider reading other branches as most of your points (aside from the accusations of astroturfing...) were already brought up in other branches. And you'll see that I even praise the UK.
No.
I think when many people say "I want clean energy" they're not actually all that bothered.
That's how proposals like the one I mentioned get killed off. Oil/gas interests can gin up a tepid nimby backlash and with a nod and a wink get the government to kill them off in response, and the government pays no political price for it.
Meanwhile, a Chinese run nuclear project that makes NO financial sense gets government subsidies and fracking gets the go ahead largely because of who the Tories are friends with.
This is the reality of green energy these days: it's not market forces keeping it down, it's being kept down by active suppression of market forces.
>Do you want to know why so many of these initiatives fall apart? Because they get sold as pipe dreams.
Are you saying that the Navitus Bay proposal was a pipe dream?
>So sell it that way. Don't perpetuate the myth that we are "just about there"
Price per kwh-wise, we are already there: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/wind-power-now-the-...
My point was more in balancing out the common misconception of "Let's just put a solar cell on every roof".
Sure it does, this is a tired old anti-solar trope that gets sillier every time it's repeated. UK does fine. Germany does fine.
There's definitely a lot of room for growth for solar, but it's not a panacea. I'm looking forward to what we can come up with.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=q1FyDAAAQBAJ&pg=PT1613&l...
When you consider it, most of our roofs are unused, and would make an ideal location for tiny panels + battery packs. Similarly new blocks of city development can be planned around a central panel+pack with housing surrounding it.