Category: solar

I just had another meeting about the solar farm. We are now talking in very confident and believable terms about the date to actually switch on the farm, which is absolutely amazing after the last fifty billion years oft development. Amazingly, humans continue to exist on Earth and the solar system has not been swallowed up by an expanding star and yet my solar farm may get energized. (Obviously an expanding sun would be, in the short term, great news for PV generation…

This week is an exciting week because the overhead line that initially was supposed to save money and make life easy, but actually ended up causing chaos and delays… is actually being buried this week. This is a 5 day process, because what is involved includes the burying of some new line, recovery of the old line, and the actual proper live connection of the high voltage part of the site (this is the DNO’s territory and problem). This should all be completed by this Friday, which is also the day I am next visiting the site to see how things are. I don’t think THAT much visible will have changed since my last visit, but that was a while ago so its good to have a final walk-around before the next visit which should be switch-on.

Now in theory, as maybe 80% of the site is built out, and the site gets actually connected to high voltage national grid connections on Friday, you might think that we could switch on 80% of the site while we finish the rest, but thats a logistical headache. The removal of the line lets us drill the piles for the last few mounting tables and final inverters, and then connect the last few hundred panels, but all those new panels need connecting to the earthing, and the final inverters need connecting to our switchgear (all at relatively low voltage, about 400V), and doing all of that while the rest of the site is live sounds like hell…

On a huge site, like a 50MWP site, it would be absolutely worth the hassle, because of the opportunity cost of not being connected, but on our site, its just not worth introducing complexity just for literally one month of generation for 80% of a farm in a wet cloudy September…

Anyway, there is still a bunch of stuff to do that you don’t think about, like the tree planting (a condition of our planning application), and a lot of incredibly tedious paperwork to claim REGOs (Renewable generation certificates you get for producing green energy that er traded like a commodity). Honestly if someone like Elon Musk saw the bureaucracy and inefficiency behind the REGO system he would explode, but it has to be done as they are worth about £12/MWH.

The REALLY exciting part though is the arrangement of the power purchase agreement which I expect to sign tomorrow. I will go for either a 1, 2 or 3 year fixed price for each megawatt hour of energy the site produces. The actual calculation is a real paid, because there is the raw traded price per megawatt hour (about £70/MWH) and then the ’embedded benefits’ (about £20/MWH for my site) which are payments for being good enough to generate power where it is needed, and not put a strain on the main transmission network…and then the REGOs (about £12/MWH).

The embedded benefits stuff is interesting. If you think of electricity like traffic, then you have local roads, A roads and then Motorways (highways). As anybody who has built a road will tell you (We did!) the cost per mile goes up a LOT as your road gets bigger. So if generation requires an upgrade to a major transmission line (motorway) its stupidly expensive. If you can generate power that never leaves the local roads, and in fact therefore puts less pressure on even the A roads, then there is value in that, and you get compensated. To put it another way, building a small local solar farm helps supply a rural(ish) community, and puts less pressure on the connections to and from that community. In practice, my energy will certainly never leave Shropshire, and will probably never even leave the local town within Shropshire. I’ve made the job of managing the transmission network easier!

Anyway, for reasons that escape me, it seems that you lock in power purchase agreements for 1-3 years, but the price fluctuates on a DAILY basis, so you have to sign the deal the same day (before 4PM) that you get the quote. So at some point tomorrow I may well make a financial decision that affects my business for a few years. Still, I’m playing the long game here. I might lose money for 15 years then suddenly reap the rewards of madly high prices. Who knows. Doing this stuff is not for the meek. I’ll probably have pics to share on Friday!

Is it depressing that I am actually pleasantly surprised that wordpress handles direct uploading and embedding of video clips? It should be a pretty trivial endeavor in 2024, but I’m apparently shocked to find it working :D. Anyway, here is a video taken by some contractors on the site as they worked on the cabling and site substation.

In terms of progress… well not a lot, despite it being HUGELY SUNNY right now, my farm remains unconnected, earning nothing, due to the insane delays and bureaucracy. There is some good news, in that finally the insane list of delays and excuses got exhausted and I was given an actual firm date for when the overhead line (so small you will barely see it on the video) gets taken down and buried. This is the hugely expensive work that has to happen before we can fill in those pesky gaps in the rows of panels, and then actually do the final bits and pieces before the big ‘energisation’ of the farm when it goes live.

That date is <DRUMROLL>

SEPTEMBER 9th.

There is actually a few days of work associated with all this. The schedule looks like this:

• 9^th September – Deliver materials to site
• 10^th September – Install 2 x HV poles ready for shutdown
• 11^th September – make off 2 x 11kv pole terms
• 12^th September – make off any stay and make sure everything is in place ready for shut down
• 13^th September – Shutdown to loop in new substation

So from the 13th September onwards we will be in a hopefully minutely planned and seamless period of work to install the last frames and panels, and wire those up, plus connect the final bits and pieces, final fencing, and so on before we can switch on the site, just in time for mid-October’s total lack of sunshine. Oh the irony. However, that means a switch-on this year is almost guaranteed!

I will definitely be going to the site to see what is going on during that week, probably on the 13th, and obviously I’ll be returning to see it switched on. I might go back in-between those dates as well.

Some actual progress has taken place in the meantime, but its been slow because frankly there has not been any hurry given that the line-move was delayed so much and then there was insistence on a pointless 8 week delay on top of that. We are currently finishing our substation (mostly a switchboard) and the inverter to substation cabling (underground), and then there is something called ‘tails’ that needs doing, and we need to install the meter to read the generation, and also any power we import to run equipment overnight. The only interesting picture I have of all this is these big phat rolls of high capacity power cable:

So its sort of good news, in that there is progress and then end is in sight. I have not yet signed a deal to sell the energy from the farm (a power-purchase agreement), as its a bit early to do that. Also prices tend to rise as we head towards winter so a late signing probably benefits me. I’ll be considering that around late August/September.

Something interesting is that lithium-ion battery storage costs continue to fall. I had decided not to add a battery but may be able to revisit the economics of that once everything is running. I’ll definitely want a full years data from generation before I even consider it though.

Amazingly this is the first update of the year, and its May. This is absolutely ridiculous beyond words, but I might start getting really ranty and angry if I get drawn into it, but suffice to say that for absolutely zero justifiable reason, nothing dramatic has really happened on the site for months.

Its all due to paperwork. basically the energy company (the people connecting the farm to the grid, at vast expense, all billed 100% to me) decided that they needed a sub-lease from me to put their substation on the freeholder (farmer’s) land. This is fine. I have a lease agreed over a year ago now with the farmer. They want their substation on my leased plot. Fine. Go for it. They tell me that they will write the lease, and they have proposed a signing agreement of £1.

Yes £1.

But ok, whatever, I have basically no say in this. They write the lease, I read it, and agree and sign it within 24 hours. Then we move on. Meanwhile, unconnected to this, I get a nice diagram showing how the farm is wired:

And then…apparently the energy company are not convinced I have the right to sign a sub lease. they demand to see my lease with the freeholder. I say fine, I send it. They then claim there is no evidence the lease is valid because we didn’t register the lease with the land registry. That means I have to hire a lawyer (for the first time in my life, after 27 years of running a video games company that trades globally), to fill out some paperwork with the land registry. I do this, and it takes weeks, because the lawyers don’t believe who I am and demand identity documents ad-nauseum, despite it being a matter of legal public record that I am the director of the company.

Oh well…

Anyway, I do all of this, and they then say that they don’t believe the freeholder is who he says he is either. AFAIK this freeholder has owned the land for decades (probably generations), and lets remember at this point that there is NO DISPUTE about the terms of either lease between any party. They insist on me printing an A3 copy of a map, in color, with my signature on, and physically mailing it to them. I have to find a print shop to do it. I do this. They then want the freeholder to travel physically to a lawyer to prove his identity. There are then other complications which I won’t detail, but at every possible turn, I am delayed, ignored, then handed yet more impossible and ridiculous demands.

They charge me about £5k in “extra legal costs” associated with the pain of me not personally having recruited another lawyer. This is ridiculous, and you can only begin to imagine my rage. I make multiple angry phone calls and send a battery of very angry emails. Meanwhile, we are heading towards summer, but nobody cares, not the energy company, and certainly none of the many lawyers involved.

Unrelated, We put a fence up around the site:

I phone the energy company lawyer to complain, when I’m told some bureaucrats need to physically sign pieces of physical paper that needs to be sent by courier, which might take another week. I insist that if its not done immediately I will physically get in my car, and make a 4 hour drive to their office, pick up the paper myself and fucking drive it to the home of the person who needs to sign it, and sit on their doorstep until they do.

I think they are finally understanding what I think of this process. Of course meanwhile, we hurtled through the 1.5 degrees barrier which was the tipping point for global catastrophic climate change, and UK farmers start to warn people they cannot grow food now. Nobody seems to give a damn.

But woohoo, we have dug some trenches and put some ducting in, ready for the AC cabling that goes from the inverters to the site substation, which is MY substation, where all of the AC stuff gets wired together ready to be handed over to the DNO, who then use a transformer and step up the voltage. Here are the very rare pics of actual progress:

So yeah, there have been no updates because of all this. Words cannot express my anger, despair and frustration at this. Its absolutely insane. Do not ever, ever EVER complain to me that your energy bill is too high!

I am hoping to eventually get a DATE for when the overhead line is moved, for which I will travel to the site to witness, seeing as though it cost more than my first house. I will exhaustively take photos of this event that I have been trying to arrange for almost 3 years.

Its been a long time since my last visit to the site, and work stalled for ages due to arguments and analysis regarding earthing. Finally at LONG LAST, that was agreed upon, and we could recommence work. I went up there with a friend yesterday in pretty bad wet weather to see what progress there had been. Hopefully this is the start of the final leg of getting the farm finished and connected. When I was last there, most (85%?) of the panels and frames were installed, and most of the inverters, but that was it. This time there was some more stuff done.

The most obvious progress on that day was that the DNO (distribution network operator) people were actually on site installing their substation which includes a transformer. There will eventually be two substations, one for the DNO and one for the site, which will contain the meter and ‘switchgear’. The substation is kind of built on site, out of 4 wall panels and a roof. Here are some cool pics:

Thats the roof being lowered onto the DNO substation, which contains their transformer and other stuff,

A shot taken from my drone (in high winds!) showing the location of stuff. The hole at the bottom of the image, filled with stones is the base for the site substation, which will be built any day now, with our switchgear, and eventually meter. This is where all the underground AC cables from each inverter will meet.

Another drone shot of some of the panels. It was windy and I wasn’t able to get a nice clear image of all of them. The gaps between them in the middle here are where the overhead high voltage cable goes. Once that cable comes down, those gaps will be filled with more panels so there will be nice long uninterrupted lines. Those dotted white lines are actually deposits of snow that have slid off the panels a few days earlier.

We also have a lot of ditches. There are ditches that have been dug for a new underground high voltage line (we queried why this had to be underground, as it costs us WAY more, but were basically just told we had no choice… grrr.), and there are lots of ditches (a ridiculous amount it seemed to me…) for the earthing for the site. The earthing as been a huge, monumental pain in the ass.

So in a sense, this looks like good news right? Not really. There are two huge problems still standing between me and this ever getting finished. The first one is an eight week delay that is being insisted upon before the power can be BRIEFLY cut off to 4 houses so we can remove the overhead line. This is beyond insane, and there is ZERO (I checked) legislative need for this, but as with anything relating to a DNO, you have zero choice. (private monopolies suck). That 8 week delay has not even started yet, because it is, itself being delayed because of lawyers. Yes. Lawyers. FFS.

But the SECOND big problem and nightmare is importing energy. We need (In theory) energy supplied TO the site in order to power the CCTV at night, and I suspect to also actually run the meter itself. This sounds trivial but ALL of the big six energy companies I talked to were incompetent, clueless buffoons who couldn’t even understand what I was asking for. The few clued-up energy companies who did offer a quote to supply energy are quoting a standing charge of £55 a day. Yes thats pounds, not pence. The actual energy usage will be under £50p a day. Yes, I have checked. Yes, this is absolutely totally and utterly insane. There are other charges added too which mean the bill would be about £28,000 a year to run 4 CCTV cameras.

Now you might ask “how the fuck can the standing charge for a business at location X be over a hundred times more than the standing charge for a house at X?”. You might also ask why the fuck the DNO can not provide the power. You might also ask why the fucking fuck we cannot use the power we generated ON SITE and use a tiny backup battery to ‘buffer’ some of it. These are all valid questions, and its driving me insane. Let me explain a bit…

There are two types of electricity meter. A standard domestic one, and whats called half-hourly meters. These are for big businesses and stuff like my farm. They have a different system of standing charges, which are calculated on something called a line-loss factor (LLF). Basically companies stuff power into a line, and meter whats taken out, and note the difference. Remote locations will have high LLFs, as a significant amount of power is lost in transmission (also theft).

In a remote location, a high LLF will mean a high standing charge. Initially we were quoted £186 PER DAY. Now its down to £55 a day, because we had to remind them it was now LV not HV. No, they had not even made that change in their database. Anyway, this is irrelevant, because the whole idea of a LLF affecting a STANDING charge is nuts. I don’t care if 50% of the power on that line is wasted, thats fine, bill me PER UNIT OF POWER 50% higher, I understand. And also…I don’t care because I’ll be importing a trivial, trivial amount of power… but thats not how the UK energy pricing system works. Its for some boneheaded, stupid, illogical and insane reason being placed as a lump sum on the standing charge.

This is beyond stupid. If the LLF is 50% (stupidly high example), and I place an aluminum smelting plant in the Scottish highlands, then I will laugh at your £50/day charge as I demand 10MWH of power every day and you have to stick 20MWH on the line for me to get it. As a large, wasteful, remote high energy consumer, I laugh all the way to the bank. But a tiny, energy efficient company in exactly the same location will pay between 50 and 100x as much for their energy as they should. Absolutely bonkers, insane crazy nonsense. And nobody in the industry gives a damn, or shows any enthusiasm to change it.

Welcome to reason #349 why your UK energy bills are so high, but you can expect the daily mail to blame it on wind turbines or something…

Anyway… there is progress. Its super slow, and unbelievably frustrating and is driving me mad, but there is small progress. One day when all this is done I will celebrate by drinking so much alcohol and eating so many cakes I pass out.

Its been a while since there has been any progress update on the farm. I could write at length about my frustration on this topic, but to sum up what I think about the general lack of urgency in the world to get stuff like this actually BUILT, I’ll just use one graph:

Anyway…

We are actually back working on physical stuff, rather than just people arguing over email, which is a change of pace. I am still waiting for the REGO application, which everyone in the industry I talk to says ‘is tedious and bureaucratic and torturously slow’. Amazingly, nobody has ever fixed this, and our government actively despises the environment, so it will likely not be fixed until after a general election (ha…not even then I bet). So no, I do not have ANY progress after MONTHS in trying to get a bureaucrat to say ‘yes, those are definitely solar panels’. Amazing.

The last few MONTHS have been basically a lot of back and forth arguing about earthing design. The site itself needs to be earthed, in case of lightning strikes (almost inevitable given 25+ years of 60 tons of solar panels on a hilltop), and the substation building also needs earthing. There are 2 substations, one owned by us, and one by the DNO (distribution network operator). They have totally separate earthing designs, and electrical experts fret a lot about if they could interfere. They also get very concerned about metal perimeter fencing, CCTV camera towers, and anything else metal in the vicinity.

After a LOT of email back and forth, which frankly drove me crazy, we seem to have finally agreed on everything. That means that we can build the base for the substations, which is the only bit of concrete involved on the farm (except maybe a tiny, tiny amount for CCTV tower bases). Because the substation base has to happen before we install switchgear, the substation itself, or move the overhead line which eventually allows the last few panels/frames…. its been holding up the entire project.

Here is a thrilling picture of a digger digging some substation foundations:

Here is an even more exciting picture of a trench being dug that will be needed for cabling to the substation.

There are also trenches needed for CCTV communication and power, and of course the trenches that link up the final cable runs from each of the inverters to the main switchgear stuff. Obviously its cheaper to get all your earthworks done in one go, and also we have the horrible English weather to battle against. Its been bad.

I have tried exceedingly hard to make this whole project run faster by doing things in parallel. I was hoping to get the PPA (power purchase agreement) sorted at the same time as the earthing, at the same time as the legal stuff, at the same time as the REGO stuff. It seems impossible to do this, unless I spent my whole life trying to hard to stay calm on the phone while literally begging people to get things done. Its infuriating to the extreme, especially given the hugely bureaucratic nature of all the involved businesses. Nobody at the DNO, or Ofgem, or any law company gives a damn if this project gets done on time, or at all. The potential for improving the whole process is epic, but it would require a change in culture.

I have high hopes that we may actually get the earthing done, the switchgear done, and the substation done in the next month. It looks like we wont be connected to the grid until next year. Don’t worry. Its not like we have a climate emergency, or sky high energy bills.