I sometimes do not agree with what Greenpeace are trying to do, like the one below:
We petition the NZ Government to establish a feed-in tariff which power companies must pay for surplus power fed into the national grid by people with photo-voltaic panels or other generation using grid-tied inverters. The tarriff should be approximately 80% of the national average retail price of electricity.
Source: Establishing a feed-in tariff for electricity | TOKO Petitions
I'd sign the petition instantly if it was referring to battery backup up grid tied system or at least including plans to build grid storage.
Similar systems were established in Germany (and the UK)as the petition correctly mentions. What it does not mention is that those systems were more or less disestablished because it is unsustainable both financially and ecologically.
Initially okay, with more uptake becomes financially a burden to the tax system. More importantly grid tied system without battery backup create a lot of surplus on clear sunny days particularly in summer, yet once everybody comes home at night and switches on TV, lights, shower, oven etc, where does the energy come from: Ask Germany, their coal use went up, particularly in winter because gas and coal is the only fast-response energy generation if do not have storage ie hydro-lakes etc.
Amongst all the glitter about renewable success in DE, also read the other articles outlining the issues please to get the full picture..
WE NEED GRID STORAGE FIRST for such systems to work.
I have been arguing for years that we have had the technology to generate all the energy that we would need in renewable manner, however renewables are usually not “on-demand”, in particular wind and solar. So despite of the necessity to have a good mix of various types of renewables, we also need to be able to store the energy somehow for peak demand for example. Germany for example used to have a number of hydro dams already before WW2 where water was pumped up during the night and released through turbines at peak demand during the day. Sort of night-time storage. For solar to work, we would almost need the reverse: Pump up water during sunny days when we have surplus and release at peak demand in the evenings. The other option is what Tesla and LG are doing: Providing home battery packs to store energy at home, non-centralised. Another good example is the Vector solar scheme that comes with batteries. I guess they know why.
So as a bottom line, it would be good if we were thinking about the whole picture and a long-term plans rather than just constantly pushing for the grid-tied solar. This is really outdated.
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