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Comment by bebe8393jrir | Hacker News Reader

> If I increase the power output of the system then the additional capacity will not be eligible for the feed-in tariff and will revert to present-day prevailing tariff which is about 4x worse before you even consider that I currently get to use electricity and still get paid for generating it.

> This is the yin and yang of market-distorting incentives. Today's incentive to install solar becomes tomorrow's disincentive to upgrading it.

I am not sure what author is trying to hint. But solar does not need artificial subsidies, and can pay for itself!

There are no subsidies in UK! Homeowners get so much money, because of all that sunshine and wind energy, their house generates! UK goverment just run out of money, when energy got expensive!

UK goverment needs to step up, to replace gaz with renewables!

You can not expect homeowners to sell energy bellow market price!

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> solar does not need artificial subsidies, and can pay for itself

That's true now, but wasn't true when those panels were installed. There were subsidies available to get the market kick-started.

They consist of an extra payment for every kwh you generate on top of the payment for delivering the power to the grid. The amount varied depending on when you signed up to the scheme, but at certain points it was as much as 50p/kwh (+ inflation, so more than that now).

Solar gets lots of subsidies in the UK. Homeowners who installed it 10 years ago get a ridiculous payment for generating excess, even if the grid doesn't use it.

> I am not sure what author is trying to hint. But solar does not need artificial subsidies, and can pay for itself!

I think he is describing a subside that some governments gave years ago: you installed for example 5K, and get paid for whatever they generate at 300% market price, for a long time (25 years?). Today you find out that upgrading panels would made perfect financial sense, if you were selling at 100% and are going to sell electricity at 100% (you will be doubling the output for a tenth of the inversion 15 years ago), but as the subsides of 300% no longer exist, you will be actually losing money by upgrading.

That's not true. You can upgrade to the same capacity on the previous feed-in tariff and keep what you had. It makes sense to upgrade as you can then fill the extra space with additional panels (which will not be on the old tariff, but can be a separate system).

> I am not sure what author is trying to hint. But solar does not need artificial subsidies, and can pay for itself!

At grid scale, yes.

For the house, not so much.

The feed in tariff was at one point 41 pence per kwhr which is probably £10 a day in summer.

but at 12p a kwhr it drops to £3.6

However, 10kwp of panels is ~£1800, but the micro inverters needed to drive them are >£3k (as its outside you can probably use two larger inverters.) Then mounting system is probably a good 800 quid too.

when it first started it was basically 450GBP/MWh (In 2010 GBP). and that was paid for every kWh generated (whether exported or not). And the PPA lasts for 20-25 years.

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