[DebF_EONNext]

Hiya everyone!

What do you all know about solar micro grids?

I came across this interesting blog post 👉 Underserved Communities Are Reaping the Benefits of London’s Solar Microgrids and thought I'd share as it's an interesting read.

I personally think this is a fantastic idea, as someone who came from an under-served community where unemployment was high and poverty sadly was the norm for most families. Sustainable solutions wouldn't have been a priority for most due to the costs involved, making it virtually inaccessible for those communities.

The fact that council's are recognising this and trialing these initiatives seems like a really positive step to me and I really hope that more follow suit!

• What are your thoughts on initiatives like this?
• Do you think this is the way forward?
• Who do you think should bear the cost of initiatives like this - is it down to the council, the government, energy suppliers or all 3?

[DebF_EONNext]

@wizzo227 @geoffers @meldrewreborn @P962c @ANN8619

I don't know if you have seen this but thought the article might be of interest to you. I'm guessing you all know way more about the subject than I do, this is something new to me and I'm still learning - but I do love the idea of it.

If you have any further insight into this that you can share please do as I would love to learn more!

[meldrewreborn]

@DebF_EONNext

i lived in Hackney for many years and family did to until very recently.

this is a good idea but will it actually deliver the claimed benefits it promises? Hackney council has history of letting down its residents and tenants with poor performance. Time will tell. The roof has to be properly orientated and the power savings distributed to all who participate, and the number of floors below the roof is another factor - the more floors the lower the benefit.

Lets hope it succeeds, but I’ll not hold my breath.

[DebF_EONNext]

That's always the worry isn't it @meldrewreborn

You would hope that it would be something sustainable over the longer term however there's lot's to consider, such as the costs and maintenance involved. How will councils be able to maintain this both physically and financially over the longer term, especially if it were to be rolled out to more borough's etc?

I do like the idea of an estate become self sufficient though, could you imagine the impact that could have on future generations!

[wizzo227]

The picture from Hackney is of a Peabody Block. Five stories of multiple flats in a brick building with shared stairwell and multiple front doors along every balcony. If you'd lived in London you'll have seen lots of these. In my opinion, the sensible thing to do, like the every Peabody in London windows replacement had done, is to schedule and go around them all; every single one, in due course. The common shared design replicated costs less than the first bespoke retrofit. There should be a date for every building when the rewiring is due, and that is the best date to schedule a new better 3 phase connection in the basement, general rewiring and lighting improvements throughout, a smart building advisory scheduler (the 1994 description included that every flat should have a little blue indicator light show while surplus renewables are available) new max 3 phase solar on the roof as pictured, and a few EV charge outlets, also one battery per block, not per flat. A building that size might afford eight 3.2kW vehicle rechargers daytime only and subject to surplus being annouced by the building battery controller (unless you selected to pay more for greedier vehicle recharge). I'm still highly skeptical of overweight long range vehicles which use more power than would each flat. I'm in favour of series connection of at least one new extra ordinary warm water radiator per flat with more than one heat pumps belonging to the building, with aim to supplement not replace existing. Warmth from at least two heat pump collector units circulates through all of the flats on one floor.

Since new money for best batteries best solar car recharge and heat pump is not obviously available, I'd suggest ongoing bond sales to deploy London money of pensioners and rich people for these very safe and well-understood assets, which are needed by Londoners who don't usually have spare money (if they did, they could buy the same bond papers as anyone else).

Hackney are probably not the best borough for branding on the bond market. Everybody at one time had heard of Peabody though. And what works on a Peabody block should also work on any other block for which the covenants in every rental or leasehold flat sales agreement requires that the building owner may access every flat (with proper notification) for sensible classes of scheduled maintenance, such as rewiring to proper IDNO standards. The government, possibly through Ofgem, might be the lot to write fair and proper standards, so that such works can be done and paid for in a fair way which doesn't make Mrs Reeves cry about the cost of it.

[meldrewreborn]

@wizzo227

Some individuals can weigh up these type of projects and finance them, working out the likely return on investment to be an acceptable period.

the theory is that nobody can borrow money cheaper than Governments, particularly central government. But who out there thinks that governments deliver big projects well - that is the issue that’s difficult to overcome. So Governments generally step back and offer subsidies to get new technologies off the ground, like solar panels, wind turbines, EVs, Heat Pumps and the like, encouraging companies to deliver the services that consumers want , although it takes time to deliver the economies of scale that mean the subsidies are no longer necessary. Often that point never arrives.

Financing these projects via local government is very difficult because many authorities have serious problems, and housing accounts are ring fenced and have to be self financing entirely separate from other aspects financed by council tax and grants.

[wizzo227]

Well I agree that Hackney borough council wouldn't help to finance proper rollout at scale. UK government are £25-50BN short this year, depending on what next years' interest is going to cost, so finance has to come from somewhere else. What I propose isn't so huge a project; optimize the job sheet and parts list for one five storey Peabody building and issue the sort of dull-but-sensible bonds backed by a proportion of future electricity bills getting paid, battery jiggling in London, and electric vehicle "charge me faster" payments. Then do many similar buildings and keep going.

[meldrewreborn]

@wizzo227

Apparently the Estate was built by The London County Council, starting in mid 1950's. Maybe the design is similar to a block designed by the Peabody Trust. I'd guess that when the successor bodies to the LCC were stripped of their housing role, the properties transferred to Hackney Council.

[wizzo227]

What worries me more than who built or presently owns the block is that the roof is too small for enough renewables.

"small modular nukes" probably aren't a great idea in Hackney, in case someone tries to nick the core for spare parts to go selling 2nd hand, so some other primary energy source is needed in order to house people at that density. I don't see how to make London function at all in winter without mostly relying on use of the existing substantial electricity transmission lines to bring in power from somewhere else. At present they seem to prefer to depend on foreign and long undersea 'import' lines so that nobody knows where electricity really came from; probably overflow from a coal burning country and nuclear from a very nuclear country, in preference to getting on with building Sizewell C.

So the dream of an islanded independent Hackneystan neighbourhood electricity grid won't happen at present housing density. At times they'll still be buying in from large power stations. Being able to switch buildings to 'islanded' could be possible. That can be done with an (optional) 50.0 Hz local oscillator in the battery. They'd need to switch it back to national grid for busy times, night-time and winter; most of the time. I'd also seek that 'priority loads only' 'fan heaters kettles and hot water Must be prompt interruptible'. I don't know how to translate instructions to use that into Hackneystani, so bilingual neighbours should be given a community noticeboard where they can sell locally translation services to those neighbours who'd either pay or cook them a meal for it.

Bad news for Londoners is that there is no place to install enough fast chargers for millions of long range 2-ton cars; they all should get constrained with a permit system by which ambulances police cars and delivery vans do get enough charge points for a long term plan, but stockbrokers who want to drive in an impressive looking electric motorwaycar don't. The congestion charge as a % of gross incl.bonuses pay last year would level the playing field; the present system looks like giving priority of road use to the richest, irrespective of the public utility of their driving, which I don't like at all. It is calculable how many kW of vehicle charging capacity could ever be put inside the M25, and I bet that isn't enough for a two ton motorwaycar for everyone. The parking places won't fit them either.

Similarly on electricity use, I'd favour a renewables dependent pricing variation within the IDNO within the building, with lowest price for first kWh of use then pay extra to use extra. By that, every flat gets use of a fridge a light and a radio inside their rent, plus some minimal heating, plus their flat's remaining share from rooftop solar, then pay extra (meaning usual London price) for "imported" electricity meaning most electricity unless their habits change to heed the availability indicator. To bondholders, that presents a minimum payment guaranteed from within rent, which makes the bond a safer investment so lowers the interest rate (whatever the bond people call that). I don't think there would be much surplus generation from that building, which decreases the preferred size and cost of batteries.

[meldrewreborn]

@wizzo227

Let’s face it, this is a small scale project on Council owned blocks with sloping roofs in the correct orientation. So even if successful applying it elsewhere is likely to be really slow.

Running a car in Hackney, which borders the Congestion zone, is already problematic, and new build properties have very limited or zero parking facilities. Provision for EVs is very limited and people will not change to them if charging is going to be at all tricky.

there are very few easy options here!