By Paul Homewood

 

 

You may have read press reports the other day about the first “subsidy free” solar farm, which was officially opened two days ago.

 

 

For instance:

Britain’s first solar farm to operate without a direct subsidy opens today and is expected to generate enough power for 2,500 homes.

Clayhill solar farm contains 31,000 ground-mounted panels and occupies 45 acres of farmland previously used to grow wheat and rapeseed near Flitwick in Bedfordshire.

The farm is able to operate without a subsidy in part because of a steep fall in the cost of solar panels and also because it is linked to giant batteries that store power and release it at times of peak demand.

http://ift.tt/2whum65

 

But it turns out things are not as quite as black and white as either the operator or the government would like us to believe, as GWPF explain:

Hot on the heels of the uncritical media fuss around the recent Contracts for Difference awarded to offshore wind (for comment see “Forget the Spin: Offshore wind costs are not falling”) comes an equally misleading set of headlines falsely claiming that Solar Photovoltaic generation is on the brink of operating without market distortions and coercions. The truth, unsurprisingly, is quite otherwise.

Claire Perry MP, Minister of State for Climate Change and Industry, will today cut the ribbon at the Clayhill Solar Farm, a project that the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has welcomed with a striking press statement entitled “Subsidy Free Solar Comes to the UK”.

Naturally enough this has generated a good deal of supportive press coverage, but, like the recent excitement about the low prices awarded to offshore wind, it sounds too good to be true and in fact turns out to be so.

The truth is that while the Clayhill scheme does include 10 MW of solar panels, its economic heart is comprised of five BYD batteries, apparently with a peak output of 6 MW and a storage capacity of 6 MWh of electrical energy.

These batteries will seek lucrative retaining contracts to provide system balancing services, probably under the Capacity Mechanism. Economically, Clayhill is not a “subsidy free” solar system, but a battery storage project providing rapid response power and using onsite solar as one of its charging options.

Thus, contrary to the absurd PR coming out of BEIS, Clayhill is in no respect an indicator of incipient economic maturity in the solar sector, and underneath the silly headlines parroting BEIS’s nonsense even the site’s developers and the Solar Trade Association both give the lie to the exaggerations.

Mr Shine, chairman of Anesco, which owns Clayhill, has very honestly admitted to The Times that solar farms are “still not economically viable” (“Clayhill, Britain’s first subsidy-free solar farm, revives fading industry”), and in the FT  he is unequivocal:

“‘It [the Clayhill project] wouldn’t pay with solar by itself at the moment . . . it needs the storage as well,’ said Mr Shine.”

Elsewhere in the FT’s story the Solar Trade Association (STA), alert to the possibility that the BEIS hype might put an end to any hopes of a renewal of subsidies to solar in the UK, is quoted as saying:

“We absolutely applaud them [Anesco] but government shouldn’t then assume the industry is away — it isn’t […] It is only going to be exceptional projects [that are built subsidy free].”

Indeed, the STA spokeswoman is further reported as observing with complete truth that “Government subsidies would still be required to support the majority of solar projects in future.” (“Solar power breakthrough as subsidy-free farm opens”).

If these contradictions were not bad enough for departmental credibility, there is behind it all a still deeper irony: the Capacity Mechanism and its market for expensive grid balancing options such as batteries only exists to address the undesirable consequences of the government’s cack-handed market distortions in favour of uncontrollable renewables such as solar and wind.

http://ift.tt/2x0eQuR

 

The Times tells us about giant batteries that store power and release it at times of peak demand.

In fact they are Mickey Mouse affairs, only able to store 6 MWh. Given the solar farm capacity is 10 MW, that battery storage is not going to last for long.

If the storage gets a contract under the Capacity Market, as John Constable surmises, it would probably be paid a subsidy of about £150,000 pa (assuming a rate of £25/KW). This would be in addition to the revenue from any electricity sold.

 

The solar farm would produce in the region of 8760 MWh pa (assuming 10% loading). At a typical market price of £40/MWh, this would generate annual revenue of £350K.

In other words, the Capacity Market payment would account for 30% of the total revenue for the site. As John Constable correctly suspects, the whole solar farm would be uneconomic without this money.

It is no wonder the guy from the Solar Trade Association is worried people might get the wrong message!

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

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September 28, 2017 at 02:09PM

Democrats are like two year olds. They can’t get through a day without protesting something. Here they are in Denver protesting the overheated atmosphere.

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via The Deplorable Climate Science Blog

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September 28, 2017 at 02:01PM

With OJ Simpson getting out of jail, he can join his NFL teammates protesting unfair incarceration of black people – by trashing the flag and national anthem. Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman will not be in attendance however.

via The Deplorable Climate Science Blog

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September 28, 2017 at 01:31PM

This is from a Q&A on a website linked with Sydney Observatory. We add brief notes at the end.

Lionel asks: Congratulations on your Venus book.

Excellent. I notice that there is a 243 year cycle for Transits of Venus
243 x 365.242 = 224.7 x 395
So far so good. The axial rotation period for Venus is 243.1 days.
Is this a coincidence or is there some underlying geometrical fact that I cannot see?
well-done,

Answer: An interesting and complex question that I address below.

Patterns in the transits of Venus
Let us first look at the patterns in the transits of Venus. We need to note that Venus and the Earth line up with the Sun every 583.92 days or 1.59872 years. This is called the synodic period.

If there was a transit, say the one in June 2004, for another transit to occur, the two planets must not only line up with each other and the Sun, but do so after an integer number of years so that they are back in the right places on each of their orbits.

Venus and Earth fulfil these requirements after five synodic periods = 7.9936 years as this is almost, though not quite, equal to the integer eight. Thus transits of Venus generally occur in pairs eight years apart. However, because of the slight inequality there is no third transit after another eight years.

A more accurate relationship occurs after 152 synodic periods = 243.00544 years or ~395 Venus years. The pattern of Venus transits thus repeats at 243 year intervals (This is the cycle quoted by Lionel in his question above). For example, the first pair of June transits after 8 June 2004 begins on 11 June 2247. Of course, in the meantime there is also a pair of December transits beginning in 2117.

The rotation of Venus
Scientists using radar observations from the 1960s onwards discovered that Venus spins backwards, that is in the opposite direction to its motion around the Sun, at the slow rate of 243.02 days.

They soon realised that means that Venus, almost but not quite, shows the same face towards the Earth each time the planets are lined up with each other and the Sun. Somehow there is a resonance between the motion of the Earth around the Sun and Venus’ spin around its axis. Scientists are unsure why this is the case, but one suggestion is that Venus is more massive on the face turned towards the Earth at those times and consequently it was gravitationally captured by the Earth.

How is it worked out that Venus shows the same face towards the Earth each time they line up? The quoted value of 243.02 days is with respect to distant stars. With a little arithmetic (taking inverses) we can easily convert that value to the rotation period with respect to the Sun or, in other words, to the day on Venus. It is 116.75 (Earth) days. Five of those periods equal 583.75 days, which is almost the same as the 583.92 day synodic period. So each time the planets line up Venus shows almost the same face to the Sun and hence the same face to the Earth, which is always on those occasions on the opposite side of Venus.

Coincidence or not
As Lionel points out it is interesting that transits of Venus repeat in a cycle of 243 years while the rotation period of Venus with respect to the stars is 243 days, The above detailed discussion indicates that there is no obvious connection that gives rise to the same number in each case. However, the calculations all depend on many of the same factors such as the orbital periods of Venus and the Earth so maybe there was a chance that the same number should recur.

Note the values quoted above are from the NASA Venus Fact Sheet.

Source: Are transits and the rotation of Venus linked? – Observations
– – –
Talkshop notes

Re: ‘Five of those periods equal 583.75 days, which is almost the same as the 583.92 day synodic period.’ [‘Venus and the Earth line up with the Sun every 583.92 days or 1.59872 years’]

Note 1: 23 solar rotations @ 25.38 days = 583.74 days
This also looks like a resonance, this time between the Sun and the Venus day.
. . .
Re: Venus and Earth fulfil these requirements after five synodic periods = 7.9936 years
A more accurate relationship occurs after 152 synodic periods = 243.00544 years or ~395 Venus years.

Note 2: using their own data, 157 synodic periods is more accurate, i.e. closer to a whole number of Earth orbits.
1.59872 * 152 = 243.00534 years (as stated in their notes)
1.59872 * 157 = 250.99904 years
Of course that would be an ‘extra’ five synodic periods = 7.9936 years.

That may contradict the official ‘wisdom’ but there it is. It was discussed in some detail in this 2015 Talkshop post (some readers may find the comments to be of interest):
Why Phi? – a Venus transit cycle model

via Tallbloke’s Talkshop

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September 28, 2017 at 12:27PM