Of course they would because it's work being taken away from them but it would be allowing people to plug generators into ring finals with unidirectional breakers. It's not even guaranteed that the circuit is protected by anything newer than fuse wire or an MCB. No guaranteed earth leakage detection. No guaranteed surge protection. Relying on the cheapest inverters to sync frequency accurately. And

I have more faith in German standards and work ethic than our own.

This Trump-level idiocy that is just never mentioned, even as people blame the gas burned in england on windy days as a cost of wind curtailment, when the curtailment is more a like a third of the cost. Burning gas to power people who chose not to build turbines is the other 2/3rds.

In the alternate world that is tens of billions of gas costs avoided to date and tens of billions more in future.

I read what is happening in exactly the opposite way. To me it shows that Milliand and the government at large do very little with no strategic thinking and no plan (same as the guys before in fairness but this government was supposed to be soo different...) and, in this case, is only reacting in a panic after almost 2 years in office to the pressure of "doing something" because of the Iran war, while also being told (slight mitigating circumstances for Milliband) that it mustn't cost anything. I always picture scenes from The Thick of It/ In the Loop when I imagine how they come up with 'ideas'.

When solar OVERproduces you have to literally pay someone to consume that energy, most probably wind farms, which could be producing energy instead. So you pay actually twice. When the solar underproduces, you need to bring in alternative sources, but those now have to cover all their fixed costs and generate return on investment over this limited timeframe, which means the actual backup prices hit stratospheric levels.

What's the actual cost of solar with actual net-billing?

Legislation is, in fact, specifically made so people (i.e. landlord) actually can't easily stop you from doing this.

Not especially, given that the inverter has a microprocessor in it. All it has to do is measure the phase of the existing grid.

I don't have references for how it's actually done, but one obvious approach is simply to wait at each zero-crossing for a new half-cycle to cross a voltage threshold before turning on the output. This also implements the requirement to drop out if the grid goes away. It is probably also possible to measure during the "off" side of inverter output PWM, in the same way that variable frequency motor drivers work.

If everyone plugged one in, could the transmission network reliably deliver the power generated where it's needed? I thought that was a serious long term challenge for utilities wrt solar.

Some systems are capable of running in isolation from grid (providing 230V AC on their own), but this is less common and often unnecessary.

So politicians have a choice: do what's right for the people, or gain more power/money for themselves. Not every one of them chooses poorly, but enough do that it is difficult for real progress to be made.

> my answer is that the payback is imediate,

So if I pay $35k for an install, I get a $35k check the first time I connect it to the grid? Pretty sure it doesn't work that way. But it would be a nice subsidy from the government if they were really motivated.

I guess you're saying you start to feel good and validated to have spent the money by seeing _some_ savings every billing period. It's hard to argue with feelings of course, but that's not not the original concern. People want to know how long is it going to take: 1, 5, 10 years or ... never (if panels degrade or break before it will never pay off) to pay off their investment.

At the same time, many people will just use a solar calculator or watch or yard lights etc, oblivious to it all.

Show people a solar powered laptop, a solar powered phone, or a solar powered tablet, then they will be impressed.

Remember the craze about solar powered car competitions?

permacompute + solar would make for quite the $100 laptop competition.

Like many UK houses, we have gas central heating too. I guess if we had a battery too (more investment) then we could switch to using electric oil-filled radiators, though they would not heat the whole house. And we could install a hot water tank.

I guess for new builds there is a real opportunity, but for an existing household I'm struggling to see how it works - and I want it to!

This will also happen to people that use residential gas. As less and less people use residential gas, the maintenance of the gas network gets distributed among less and less customers.

> The 'balcony power stations' are the same thing. They get subsidised, and you even get a fixed kWh price when pushing into the grid.

They are subsidized on purchase, but the price they get when pushing energy into the grid is by default fixed at 0. The network accepts the power, but there's no payment. It's also capped at 800W delivery, meaning that at peak power generation, you'd earn a whopping 5 cent an hour with the current subsidy for full scale solar power. So in practice, the only benefit owners have is that they draw less power from the net which is much more attractive because of the pricing structure. You can, optionally, register your balcony power station as a regular solar power plant, but then you're subject to a whole bunch of rules and regulations (for example you need a suitable elctricity meter etc.). This option is generally not attractive for such small power generations.

Fundamentally, though, the same issue as with the water and gas network exists with all localized (solar) power generation. If more and more people use the grid only as a backup, or for winter energy needs, then the overhead of maintaining the grid will have a larger cost contribution to the total cost of electricity.

The reason why personal solar installations are profitable is that you can buy electricity for fixed prices from your local power company. You pay the average of the vastly different low (or negative) prices during the day and the extremely expensive prices on windstill nights. Solar allows you to use your own electricity when the average is below spot prices, and get power for much less when the price you pay is cheaper than spot prices. It's like a state-approved scheme to play the market in the name of decarbonization while actually increasing everybody else's prices and possibly even CO2 emissions.

Neither of these is going to be true for the UK balcony scheme (you can't get export generation pricing unless it's an MCS-certified install).

> drive up the truck tolls.

The price of diesel is going to do this anyway very soon.

What is this supposed to mean? You flush less water, therefore water price is more expensive, because flushed water needs to be paid too?

All this stuff root top solar, plug in solar costs at least twice what utility solar. And only makes sense when you have messed up rate setting schemes that enable arbitrage.

But it's not what you want if you want to get the most GW connected as fast as possible.

Like the requirements that new houses have roof top solar. You could get twice as much if you just invested the money in a conventional solar farm.

Germany makes a lot of high quality solar panels.

But whether you like China or not, buying their panels and equipment to make yourself energy independent is a reasonable option, especially if (when) their products are good quality and priced well.

Your independence is only at risk if China decides to stop offering you the things you need. In that case, your future supplier will have to change. But not only is that unlikely to happen, it's irrelevant to the NOW. In the NOW, you could be buying tons of what you need to become self-sufficient.

The photos hitting my solar panel don’t travel through the straight of Hormuz.