Brexit & My MP

I recently emailed my MP:-

Dear Anne,

May I thank you for your very prompt reply of 28 June 2016 to my email about the outcome of the EU referendum. I note that you said you had many emails at that time so I do appreciate your rapid response.

I refrained from following up our correspondence at that time as I felt it sensible to await events. I now consider that sufficient water has passed under the Brexit bridge to warrant further comment.

I note that you confirmed that in June you voted Remain, as I understand did the majority of MPs. I take this to indicate that you considered maintaining membership of the EU to be in the best interests of the UK. However, I also note that on the 7 December you voted "Aye" to division 103 on the Government's plans for Brexit. This action may easily be read as your supporting the Government's intention to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty by the end of March 2017. Is this the case?

In my original email to you there was an implicit question as to your intentions should Parliament have the opportunity to vote on invoking Article 50. You did not reply to that question. Given the contents of my previous paragraph I believe it is vital that your constituents know whether you support the Brexit process or not. I would therefore like to ask you a few straight questions.

> Do you still believe that remaining in the EU is in the best interests of the UK?

> If not, what fundamental changes have taken place in order for you to alter your opinion?

> If you do still believe that the best interests of the UK are to remain in the EU will you vote against invoking Article 50 (should you have the opportunity)? Will you vote against revocation of the European Communities Act 1972?

As you pointed out in your email, the majority of your constituents who voted in the EU referendum voted Remain. I believe they have a right to know whether you intend to support this position or not.

Thank you for your attention,

Yours sincerely,

Her response was:-

Do you think that was an adequate response?

No, neither do I.

EDIE Lists 10 Battery Schemes

This is a fascinating article from Edie listing "ten of the best battery projects across the World". I suppose it should come as no surprise that nearly all are based on Li-ion technology although I find the lack of diversity a little disappointing. However, good to see mention of Li titanate and an unspecified redox system.

Why All The Packaging?

I've just purchased 4 new printer cartridges from an on-line retailer. Did these come in one nice package? Did they heck! Four separate sealed plastic bags! Then....inside each....four tasteful cardboard boxes each one about twice the size actually required to hold a cartridge. And inside those.....a nice new cartridge sealed in another plastic bag! Why?

Is Bioenergy Green?

I've long had an uneasy feeling about the efficacy of bioenergy without ever settling down to do the appropriate calculations. Recently I've become aware that accounting methods used in assessing the benefit of bioenergy actually ignore CO2 emissions associated with its production. I gather this was agreed so that there was no risk of double counting but the net result is that C savings from bioenergy are very much less than claimed and in some case may even be negative.

Let's take a simplistic example: I chop down an old tree that's been in my garden for absolute ages and burn it in my living room grate, so displacing the use of a certain amount of coal. I immediately plant a new sapling to replace the old tree. So I've "saved " the CO2 that would have been produced from the coal. However, wood is a poor fuel compared with coal so I've actually produced more CO2 from generating the same heat from my poor defunct tree. Furthermore I've removed the capacity of that tree to absorb CO2 and my new sapling will take up significantly less. Oh dear, I've actually increase global warming by being "green" and using a biofuel.

As I said, this is a simplistic example but with over 60% of the EU's renewable energy coming from biomass there would appear to be the potential for a big accounting problem.

Pricing Solar Out Of The Market?

My few dedicated followers will know that nearly five years ago we installed a PV array on our roof. We were lucky - we just managed to qualify for the original FIT rate, the main aspect of the house is SSW facing and the roof pitch is approximately 40 degrees - not perfect but pretty good. I built a calculator to assess the economics and went with a system that the model suggested should pay back in just under 10 years. So far, returns are just above the calculated rate (not by much) and I am expecting to, indeed, break even during year 9. I'm a pretty happy bunny.

I was struck today by a blog posting from Kieron suggesting that a new system for him was just not economic. I've plugged Kieron's parameters into my model just to get a feel for the most recent FIT rates. My model is set up for the sunny south of England and came back with a not too thrilling break even point in year 17, an IRR of 4.5% and a 25-year NPV of £295. I would not invest against those figures. Poor Kieron is looking at a property in the west of Scotland and I guess he has factored in much reduced incident radiation. He certainly is showing a loss at 20 years into his putative project.

I know that this is only one isolated case but if this is indicative of the generality of current domestic PV economics it would seem that HMG is pricing all but dedicated enthusiasts out of the market.

Grid-scale Storage

Storage on the electricity grid has been a peripheral interest of mine for a while. Although it might be argued that 6MW is not really "grid-scale" news of successful trials at the SNS facility in Leighton Buzzard are heartening. Furthermore scale, as in size of facility, is perhaps not the right measure; what is important is scale in terms of overall capacity across the grid and that certainly is ramping up. The need for storage in a system containing substantial intermittent generators is a well rehearsed argument. What is now required is the certainty of a robust and stable regulatory and financial system to support it.