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eppur_se_muova

(36,227 posts)
Tue May 13, 2014, 06:30 PM May 2014

{UK} Government to slash subsidies for large scale solar farms (BBC) {too successful!}

By Matt McGrath
Environment correspondent, BBC News

The government has unveiled proposals to limit the subsidies paid to large solar farms from next April.

Owners of installations bigger than 5 megawatts (MW) will have to compete with other renewables for financing.

The Department of Energy & Climate Change (Decc) says it wants to encourage the development of smaller scale and community energy production.
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The government proposals highlight concerns that this switch to solar is happening far too quickly. They are worried that by 2017 there will be more solar energy being produced than the UK could afford.
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If these costs of production drop, as has happened to solar power over the past four years, there is no way for the government to claw back any of the subsidy.
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more: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27393805




Worth a read. Apparently the current program has led to a few big interests building large solar arrays in fields; the govt wants to encourage solar panels on rooftops. Some restructuring seems to be in order -- they are mending it, not ending it.

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{UK} Government to slash subsidies for large scale solar farms (BBC) {too successful!} (Original Post) eppur_se_muova May 2014 OP
The world is going to have a tough time adjusting to the crashing price of solar. Benton D Struckcheon May 2014 #1

Benton D Struckcheon

(2,347 posts)
1. The world is going to have a tough time adjusting to the crashing price of solar.
Tue May 13, 2014, 06:46 PM
May 2014

The problem at its root is that solar is a technology that is now at its inflection point: the pace of adoption as the price continues to collapse is going to completely outstrip the pace of legislative policy. I have actually adjusted my personal portfolio to cut out as much in the way of utilities as possible, which is counter to what people are supposed to do as they get older. (I'm over 50; don't ask me how much over....)
Solar is going to take over at a frightening pace, and most of it will be distributed generation backed by storage; storage solutions are being worked on feverishly because advanced storage is needed not just for this but for other applications like cell phones and laptops. Storage solutions that work for these small scale things will be scaled to work on residential storage because of the huge need for it that is opening up. Only densely packed urban areas like NYC will still need centralized power producers.
Bottom line, I don't think most utilities are going to be viable in 10 years. They'll still exist, but they'll be on life support.

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