If you follow this blog a lot, you will know that we actually started generating power on our solar farm in October 2024, but there was some downtime in November, and then more downtime in December due to an extreme storm damaging the site (we lost 10 panels, since replaced), so we didnt have a straight six months of data until yesterday.
Also, because of the way solar is generated over the year in the UK, you want either jan-june or july-dec in order to extrapolate. The output of solar panels is basically a bell curve, peaking mid year, so once you have six months of data, you can make an educated guess (but only a guess) about the whole year. Just who shallow or steep that curve is will depend on a few factors, but in general I think that improvements in panels has flattened that curve a bit. Lots of technical changes to panels mean that they are more tolerant of ‘partial shade’ than they used to be. Handy in a cloudy country!
So how much power have we generated in six months? well its…. 766,739kwh. (766 MWH). So we can assume that if this is a typical year, that would mean 1,533MWH in a year, or 1.5 gigawatt-hours. Enough to run the average TV for 1,700 years. Or enough to fill a large electric car from empty 19,000 times. In some ways this seems a lot, but how does it compare to what we expected?
Well it depends… If I dig up the oldest email about the sites initial plan, the assumed generation output was just 957MWH so this sounds amazing. That was then changed to 1,245MWH it was later changed to 1,347MWH . The final setup for the export meter seems to say that the expected output is 1,339MWH. So the actual expectations are all over the place, but all below the current value. I THINK that we had a very very good April, and that is skewing the results. If we hit 1,400MWH in the year that will be very pleasing. It is too early to really be definitive about whether or not this means that the farm makes a profit. I would be nervous of judging that without a full year. Especially as a maintenance contract is still not signed yet.
In other news…
You may have read posts by me banging on about REGOs. A REGO is a Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origin certificate. When you generate a single MWH of power from a renewable source, you can tell a government regulator (ofgem), and they give you a certificate. There is no subsidy, but you can sell them. Who buys them? Companies and energy retailers who want renewable energy. To be able to sell your power to customers as 100% renewable, you need to buy REGOs to cover all your energy. There is an open and competitive market for REGOs, and currently they are worth £10-£15 per MWH. Thats equivalent to 0.1 to 0.15 pence per unit of electricity, no not a lot from a consumer POV. Like most companies, we have our REGO sales ‘bundled’ in with the PPA (Power purchase agreement) we have with the company who buys our power. In this case OVO Energy.
Thats the theory. In practice, this process is HELLISH. It genuinely feels like ofgem have been told to make the process of getting accredited as impossible as they can. The amount of bureaucracy, inefficiency, radio-silence and pickiness over the grammar and punctuation in every piece of text in every document required in order to qualify is beyond insane. I applied as SOON as was possible (your site has to already be generating, which is stupid as hell), and it still took SIX MONTHS to basically have a form processed and accepted. We even had to argue basic maths with them, such as arguing that 400+500 = 900, and not as they claimed… 810.
Anyway, that insane process (which reminded me of the DNO legal process, which reminded me of the planning process….etc) is finally complete, although not without a formal complain to ofgem about it. And I will not bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that obviously they are still arguing about it, and saying its not right, even though they have approved my site, and approved my output data, and credited me with the certificates which I have lready sold. Its insane beyond words.
And actually the entire process is a colossal waste of time, because there are already a network of organizations who entire existence is simply reading meters and verifying that they are accurate, and reporting that data online. I am charged about £250 a year for this ‘service’ (the real cost is likely under £1, its just a meter). Now ofgem could trivially just connect to the databases for those independent companies, read everyone’s data automatically, and credit the REGOs without any human interaction whatsoever. And as for verifying that the data really is renewable, the people who 100% absolutely independently KNOW what equipment is connected, are the DNO (Energy distribution network operator). There are a handful of meter readers, and a handful of DNOs, and this would be easy…but NO! Lets set up a torturous six month minimum process that involves websites that crash, tons of paperwork, complicated rules and processes and a staggering waste of everybody’s time. Because thats the UK energy industry. Are you surprised your bills are high?
So yeah… its been interesting.
I am HOPING that within a month, I will have stopped getting irritating emails from ofgem, I will not get any more letters about lawyers and leases, from one set of lawyers to another (I would love to jettison the entire profession into the sun at this point), and have a maintenance agreement signed.. and then finally I will be able to basically forget about the farm, apart from enjoying checking the stats!
I do still LOVE the fact that I built it, and own it though. Its awesome :D.