angelaraffle |
What do people advise about how to account for electricity generated from home solar pv panels and exported to the grid? Can this be a negative in the persons CO2 footprint?
Angela
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started on 11/3/2007 22:16
What do people advise about how to account for electricity generated from home solar pv panels and exported to the grid? Can this be a negative in the persons CO2 footprint? How much to offset for electricity exportswritten on 12/3/2007 00:25
If you were being generous to yourself, use UK Fossil electricity at ~-636g/kWh [1] You should also maybe count lifecycle PV costs: +60g/kWh from all your electricity [2] So a (slightly generous-to-yourself3) figure would be -636+60 =-576g/kWh. NOTES [2] http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/postpn268.pdf [3] But electricity can be wasted if not used and can be somewhat inconvenient to grid-demand planners! This problem would be solved if we all had electric car batteries!! [4] I’ve had the same issue with potential national exports of electricity [5] CO2 Per kWh of Electricity Denmarkwritten on 16/3/2007 22:33
Would be interesting to know what the Danish figure is now that it has gone over big time to wind! I went to a Royal Society of Edinburgh energy forum yesterday (in Glasgow!) where Scotland was described in Alex Salmond’s phrase as “the Saudi Arabia of Renewables”. Roll on wave power! http://www.royalsoced.org.uk/enquiries/energy/full_report.pdf PS. Check out lovely colourful figures and pie charts! exported electricity from microgenerationwritten on 12/3/2007 10:11
That’s a really interesting question. My initial reaction was yes. But I think it should be zero rated. If you buy electricity through the grid from a decent green supplier e.g. good energy, it would normally be zero rated. However some CRAGS have put a penalty on it (reflecting the fact that there is unsufficient renewable energy in the UK). I appreciate that the argument is that you are displacing fossil fuel generated electricity. But commercial wind farms don’t get special payments above the market price of the renewable energy they are selling to the grid. Whether CRAGs should offer to pay individuals to promote microgeneration is another thing. Let’s look at the situation if personal carbon allowances were to be introduced. Assuming it were technically possible, you could sell electricity to your neighbours. But as this is a carbon free source, you and your neighbours would just settle up, as usual, in cash, sheckels or goats; there would be no exchange of carbon units. thankyouwritten on 15/3/2007 09:17
Thats brilliantly helpful, thanks. The combination of a note of encouragement, some valuable technical info, and the exploration of the principle. The fact that an allowance is an allowance is key. Selling microgeneration is not the same as trading part of your carbon share that you are not going to use. So contraction and convergence principles would dictate that if you export you just get the price (small compared to if you live in Germany) that the national grid pays you for it, but it doisnt alter youre crag carbon accounting. Angela Raffle |
beyond zero carbon!
andy_ross
Is a (potential) CRAGger actually doing this? If so tell us more!
Andy