When are all the solar farms going to be built?

Red for Danger

Several large solar farms have gone through the planning process and been approved all over the country, some have been approved for more than a year and as far as I'm aware none have been built yet

When are they going to be actually built?

How long to build your average 25/30 acre solar farm?

Whats the hold up? I mean if the solar companies are waiting for clarification on the refit, can they not just build them anyways and get whatever is the current going rate for producing electricity.

In no refit comes or if it's delayed for a few years, will the solar companies lose out from the time and money they've spent on applying for planning.

Down South

Grid connection is a big delay
Without visibility on tariff you cant raise finance and how would you know if it was going to be profitable? Wholesale rate only would mean they are loss making

Rigor Mortis

The first hurdle is the new RESS scheme. Until there is a market mechanism in place to guarantee a price nothing will build. Thats likely to be approved in Ireland in early 18 with state aids clearance in late 18, early 19.
By that stage grid connections may get sorted.

The nature of the support scheme will probably be a capped auction. With developers fighting it out to build say 1ooo MW of solar. This will probably mean that most of the smaller projects that have planning will never be built. Smaller projects wont be cost efficient to build.

A decent size solar project can be built in six months fairly handily.

cgcsb

I'd be curious how they can get the solar projects to pay. Obviously with wind there were incentives (probably still are) for onshore, but wind is generally 30-40% efficient. I'd imagine solar would have much lower reliability in this country.

Rigor Mortis

The UK is a reasonable bench mark in terms of conditions. The model works by offering a subsidy for projects in the first five years and then cutting the subsidy and moving to competitive auctions. At its most efficient, solar probably needs a price of about 10c in Ireland. This is +3 over onshore wind. The need for that should disappear fairly quickly The advantage of solar is that it is very quick to deploy and relatively unobtrusive. Legal and planning costs should be significantly lower.

On the grid scene, things should improve a little once Eirgrid decide how they are going to handle all these solar projects. There are a number of consultations going on about grid connections at the mo

LeinsterDub

cgcsb wrote: »

I'd be curious how they can get the solar projects to pay. Obviously with wind there were incentives (probably still are) for onshore, but wind is generally 30-40% efficient. I'd imagine solar would have much lower reliability in this country.

I was reading that in Indian and other such sunny places solar is the cheapest form of power generation. I'm not sure how that applies to the Irish market however

Rigor Mortis

India is auctioning solar at 2p per mw, that is unlikely to ever happen in Ireland. Ultimately, the goal is to get to a stage where you are competitive with conventional. Thats about 6-7 c

Red for Danger

Rigor Mortis wrote: »

The first hurdle is the new RESS scheme. Until there is a market mechanism in place to guarantee a price nothing will build. Thats likely to be approved in Ireland in early 18 with state aids clearance in late 18, early 19.
By that stage grid connections may get sorted.

The nature of the support scheme will probably be a capped auction. With developers fighting it out to build say 1ooo MW of solar. This will probably mean that most of the smaller projects that have planning will never be built. Smaller projects wont be cost efficient to build.

A decent size solar project can be built in six months fairly handily.

Can you say more about the grid connection process?
I could be wrong about parts of this, but my understanding is that it goes,
-first come first serve with each application taking the esb 5/6 months to process
- if the grid application is successful the solar company get a connection date (roughly 18 to 24 months later) they cannot connect before this date.
So while the solar companies were applying for planning they were simultaneously sorting out the grid connection therefore they'd be good to go in 2018 or 2019 as soon as the RESS is sorted.

Can you explain more about capped auction?
What is considered to be a smaller project?

Down South

New consultation doc on grid connection just released by CER. Proposes that the connection process will be planning led.

Rigor Mortis

The RESS consultation at the moment is looking at how to finance renewable projects. They are looking at either technology neutral or technology specific auctions. Tech specific auctions will have to be capped. The suggestion (only speculation) is that there could be capped auctions of up to 500 mW for solar and offshore.

To my mind, anything sub 20 MW is small, but opinions would definitely vary on that.

Red for Danger

Rigor Mortis wrote: »

To my mind, anything sub 20 MW is small, but opinions would definitely vary on that.

Maybe i'm not doing the correct searches but from looking at the Bord pleanala website most solar pv farms are coming under 20MW, with a lot at 5MW.

Am I right in saying that a 5MW farm would take up 25 acres and cost roughly 5 million.
So a 20MW farm would take 100 acres and cost 20million.

Taking into account the cost involved in getting a solar project over the line I find it hard to believe that approved solar projects wont go ahead, getting a grid connection,land lease agreement, finance, and planning permission most be coming to well over 100k.
Many of those involved have had considerable success in wind energy not only that, but they're currently working on 5MW/10MW projects which are at a very early stage why would experienced people be taking such a risk.

Rigor Mortis

Most of the early applications were for smaller projects. The more recent ones are for much larger projects. The maths are wrong because there are reasonable economies of scale to be had.

The reason i dont think all these smaller projects will go ahead is because the Dept of Energy regards the current spate of applications as a gold rush and they would prefer not to repeat the main mistake of Ireland's wind energy development, ie that it was developer led and and not strategy led. My guess and it is based on quite a few chats with the dept is that we will have an auction for solar, it will be capped and a criteria will be proximity to existing grid. In a competitive auction, 5mw projects wont be able to compete with 50mw projects.

two wheels good

In Enniskeane and Carraigaline Co Cork apparently. If planning permission is granted.
I wasn't aware of the proposals until I noticed the protest signs on passing through Enniskeane yesterday.
Interesting that the Southern Star reports it as nimby-ism

I found myself pondering the benefits of living next to a solar farm compared to an intensive dairy farm.

Rigor Mortis

I really dislike the term nimbyism. It's lazy and disrespectful. People have a perfect right not to want to live beside anything, that's why we have planning decisions - to weigh the rights of individuals.

The benefits locally are pretty much down to the money it brings to the local economy and the presumption that some of that will be spent locally.

Red for Danger

From reading the submissions of those opposed to solar they have a common theme.
In the cases I've read, there is a lot of so-called concern for wildlife but when you look a little closer, it's clearly coming from the people living closest to the proposed site and in many cases their real concern is for the value of their house.

About the traffic and glare issues raised in the newspaper article above,
-Solar panels don't reflect light they absorb light
-Apart from the the initial 4 to 6 months construction phase the additional traffic could be as low a one van per month.,(from reading the planning directions)
You'd have to wounder, if in some cases people hear about the money involved and try and get in on the action.

Rigor Mortis

Red for Danger wrote: »

From reading the submissions of those opposed to solar they have a common theme.
In the cases I've read, there is a lot of so-called concern for wildlife but when you look a little closer, it's clearly coming from the people living closest to the proposed site and in many cases their real concern is for the value of their house.

About the traffic and glare issues raised in the newspaper article above,
-Solar panels don't reflect light they absorb light
-Apart from the the initial 4 to 6 months construction phase the additional traffic could be as low a one van per month.,(from reading the planning directions)
You'd have to wounder, if in some cases people hear about the money involved and try and get in on the action.

The most common concerns are property value, glint and glare, loss of visual amenity, wildlife, route of cabling and traffic management.

All of those, even wildlife are legitimate concerns. Your house is most people's greatest asset, it is not unreasonable that people have concerns. All too often those concerns are dismissed as nimbyism, with the implication that this is selfish.

I'm pro - solar and pro - wind and work in this space. The smartest developers are the ones who start by accepting that they are the people entering a community and that they need to earn the right to develop there.

Red for Danger

Rigor Mortis wrote: »

The most common concerns are property value, glint and glare, loss of visual amenity, wildlife, route of cabling and traffic management.

All of those, even wildlife are legitimate concerns. Your house is most people's greatest asset, it is not unreasonable that people have concerns. All too often those concerns are dismissed as nimbyism, with the implication that this is selfish. .

I know wildlife is a legitimate concern but it looks cynical when so many only become proactive about their wildlife concerns when they happen to live close to the solar park.

Rigor Mortis

Red for Danger wrote: »

I know wildlife is a legitimate concern but it looks cynical when so many only become proactive about their wildlife concerns when they happen to live close to the solar park.

Oh i do agree with you, it is used as a cover by many who are appealing for other reasons. My contention is that
a. if i wanted to appeal for house value reasons, logic would suggest i make the strongest case and in many cases the strongest case is to claim damage to a protected species or habitat. It is the strongest case because planning law has given significant protection to nature
b. there is nothing wrong with an appeal which is motivated by property value

ted1

cgcsb wrote: »

I'd be curious how they can get the solar projects to pay. Obviously with wind there were incentives (probably still are) for onshore, but wind is generally 30-40% efficient. I'd imagine solar would have much lower reliability in this country.

Wind is a by product of solar and utilises about 1% of it so it’s .3% efficient.
Wind us caused by the uneven heating of the earths surface and air.

While some me countries do get warmer temperatures, there are many months when we get much longer sun light hours.