ok - heres some ammunition - adjust the first paragraph as per
I hope the following notes will make sense to you and that you can use (or not) the information to help you build a letter/email of your own to concisely bring attention to the issues concerning all of us. Remember politicians and administrators are not experts so throwing lots of technical detail at them will just confuse them. Try to keep to terms that they will understand. I think the most important problems are as follows
1) Disproportionate payout to embedded energy.
The point about embedded energy is the reality that PV gets 41.3p and hydro gets 19.9p. PV panels have a set lifetime (20 or 25 years) during which time they degrade, so produce less power. Hydro has a high level of financial input at the start, but can easily run for 100 years plus without lowering the power output. I am currently generating 5kw from my 1890 waterwheel and 1720 leat system (my generating and grid tie equipment is new). We do have to make repairs, carry out maintenance, and our wheel has been refurbished, so not necessary cheap - but far more environmentally friendly. Most of the cost in getting a mill site working is the man hours in repair and ground works. I am not sure how the carbon impact would be worked out for this, but it is all done locally with the minimum materials necessary and potentially provides a new habitat for ecosystem diversity..I can't see how PV or wind would do this. It is a mistaken belief that waterwheels are inefficient or outmoded. There are companies making and installing waterwheels successfully today. The efficiency of a correctly designed waterwheel is in excess of 90%, using modern bearings and power transmission - which compares directly with modern micro turbines. The waterwheel has a very wide working range, enabling it to still work efficiently at much reduced - or indeed increased - water flows. They do not usually require the complex flow management of a turbine. Waterwheels are also very environment friendly, aerating the water, and debris tolerant, thereby negating the need for water course cleaning systems.
The Franklin Institute in detailed experiments from 1829 to 1831, that overshot waterwheels were quite capable of achieving 80% efficiency. Considering that this was using inefficient Lignum Vitae or brass bearings, this still compares well to modern turbines. With sympathetic melding of old and new technology, this figure can be raised significantly, using modern roller bearings.
The final point on the energy provided by hydro is it tends to be constant, unlike PV (only works in day time) and wind (only when its windy). Surely a steady supply is better than a variable one that the consumer or power companies cannot anticipate for?
2) New versus refurbished.
I imagine that having read (1) you may see where I am going with this, in terms of refurbished equipment. It does not mean cheaper necessarily and it does mean that a lot of historic hydro sites would not be eligible for FIT's even though they were eligible under ROC's. We belong to a growing group on Exmoor who would like to do as we have done, and get our old buildings working again without taking away from their historic importance within the National Park. Mill owners already have to tackle with the environment agency and planning, on top of which, Exmoor is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty that makes changes even more difficult. Within ten miles of our mill there are at least 20 others, all of whom see the financial problems of getting going but not the returns being offered. The final point about refurbishment is that it provides jobs and small scale engineering industry for Britain supporting our own economy.
3) Exemption of the prime mover from hydro schemes
Because of the comparatively small number of sites that can be used to generate, the cost offset of the accreditation is disproportionate to the number of installations. Unlike PV or wind, where a large number of similar units can be accredited and sold as complete units to customers. At a cost of £3000 per unit accreditation over 1000 1kw solar panels this only means an additional £3 to the set up cost, where as a breast shot waterwheel may only be installed on three sites throughout a year forcing an extra £1000 on the cost of an installation. If the prime mover was to be exempt but notable within the installer accreditation (tick box for hydro) this would also solve the problem of refurbished mill equipment.
4) Missing out on FiTs
As a new energy producer, that has missed out on FiT's by 12 months, we propose to petition the government to allow us to join FiT's; but as they know how long we were on ROCs for, to have that time period removed from the end of the guaranteed period. So, for example, if FiTs is guaranteed for 17 years we only receive 16 years. We did work out the maths and it would be more financially viable for a person with a 3kw PV panel who installed it a year ago to destroy the panel (as it now has zero second hand value) and start again under the FiTs scheme!
The following was sent to me via another mill owner but I did think it was very relevant and concise
On 1st Feb the Government announced how it proposes the FIT will be implemented. For micro hydroelectric installations under 50Kw the new tariff will replace the Renewables Obligation scheme. The FIT will make a fixed payment for every unit generated and surplus energy can be sold to the national grid. Superficially the FIT sounds good with a reasonable tariff payment, index linking and, for domestic installation, the income will be tax-free.
Despite considerable lobbying throughout the consultation phase the government i.e. DECC (Department of Energy and Climate Change) has now announced that the payment will only be made to schemes, which use ‘accredited’ products and are installed by ‘accredited’ installers, certified under the MCS (Microgeneration Certification Scheme). Whist this may sound laudable, in reality it could be disastrous for micro hydropower.. The current position of MSC regarding Hydropower is, there are no accredited products and no accredited installers. In addition, there is no means of becoming accredited, as MCS are still drawing up the product and installer requirements. With the 1st April drawing ever closer the MCS short term solution is to have a "transitional period" which will allow equipment builders to sell equipment and installation companies to install them providing they are under contract with an accreditation body to become accredited when the MCS requirements are finally announced. Effectively companies must contract to comply with a yet to be determined requirement at a yet to be determined date at a yet to be determined cost with a yet to be accredited creditor. This entire process will undoubtedly prove very expensive. It will bring negligible benefits and its cost will certainly be passed on to the customer.
Accreditation requirements aside, the problems actually lie in the accreditation being a requirement of the Feed in Tariff. (It was not a requirement of the Renewable Obligation, which it replaces) As already mentioned, the industry and other environmental bodies lobbied hard to get this requirement taken out of the draft FIT proposal, but to no avail.
Compared to Europe, and the rest of the world, the UK micro hydro industry is tiny. However it is growing and in recent years the number of installations has seen a steady increase to around 40 new sites a year. Up to 2003 there were less than 30 grid connected (sub 50Kw) hydro installations in the UK. Since then this number has grown to over 100. The reasons for this are the availability of reasonably priced equipment, a greater awareness of environmental issues, the increasing cost of electricity and the Renewables Obligation scheme.
The vast majority, (est. over 80%) of the new sites were not installed by companies but by site owners who used their own organisational and practical skills to realise their schemes at an affordable cost. Clearly some took advice from the so-called experts but their perseverance and cost effectiveness were the primary factors in getting a viable scheme up and running. The situation now is all these “user installed” schemes will be a thing of the past and the number of new schemes will be drastically reduced. The accreditation body (MCS) estimates there will be only a handful of accredited micro hydro installers for the whole of the UK. It is not difficult to imagine therefore that the number of installations will fall and installation prices will rise. Renewable energy companies with a core business in other technologies have indicated they will simply walk away from micro hydro as the cost and complexity of accreditation far outweighs any achievable profits.
The knock on effect of the decline in the number of installations will be a cut in the demand for equipment. This reduced demand will threaten the viability of the (very few) small firms supplying the industry with specialist equipment, particularly turbines and control systems. Without these companies UK micro hydro will be put back to where it was a decade ago. It will be some considerable time before other firms come forward to fill the gaps in supply…if they ever do. In the meantime the only source of equipment would be from mainland Europe or the Far East. Previously this has proven to be prohibitively expensive, in the first case, and of dubious quality in the second.
In addition to this there will also be no FIT support for refurbished equipment and this includes converting turbines in sites formally used for other purposes e.g. flour/woollen /cotton mills to generate electricity. At a stroke, second hand equipment is now worthless. This perverse thinking beggars belief considering the thrust of the FIT initiative is renewable, recycling, and sustainable.
In its attempt to devise a “one size fits all” package DECC has completely failed to realise that hydro installations are very different from other renewable technologies e.g. solar or wind and cannot be treated in the same way. Hydro installations are small in number, different in nature and all are bespoke built; there are no “off the shelf “ solutions. Currently the UK micro hydro industry is growing, but only slowly. It is already heavily burdened with environmental and planning requirements and a myriad of other legislation to protect the customer. It does not need a further, totally unnecessary, burden in the form of accreditation.
The purpose of the Feed in Tariff is to promote the installation of renewable energy schemes to generate green energy and reduce our reliance on carbon-based technologies. As far as micro hydropower is concerned this new accreditation requirement, it will do the complete opposite. This requirement must be removed from the FIT proposals before the Bill is put before parliament.
People we need to contact
The following are a list of email address's that we should try to write to, please also try to include your MP if they are different to LiddleGrainger.
isu@foe.co.uk - Friends of the Earth mark for the attention of Dave Timms who will be talking at the PRASEG meeting on the 24th
ianliddellgrainger@hotmail.co.uk - MP West Somerset
charles.graham@phonecoop.coop - Green Party rep Taunton
mcs@gemserv.com - Microgeneration Certification Scheme they are the people currently putting together the policy documents
stringerc@parliament.uk - Contact within the Conservative Party environmental team
debbie.enever@libdems.org.uk - Contact within the LibDem Party press office
consumeraffairs@ofgem.gov.uk - General ofgem email address
