Solar News

Tuesday 21 July 2009

The Solar Trade Association claims that the role of potential of solar energy has been underestimated in the Renewable Energy Strategy and accompanying documents

Solar energy industry body the Solar Trade Association (STA) has hit out at the Renewable Energy Strategy's claims that solar heat may deliver less of a contribution to the UK's renewable heat deployment than was envisaged in last
year's consultation on the strategy.

In particular, the STA has claimed that the basis for the modelling of the UK's future supply of renewable heat, and the part that solar thermal can play in this, is a report that has been "totally discredited" by the solar thermal industry.

Modelling for how much renewable heat may be achievable in a range of scenarios, and at what cost, is outlined in a study accompanying the Strategy entitled 'The Supply Curve for Renewable Heat', which was commissioned by the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and carried out by NERA Economic Consulting and AEA Technology.

In the study, the consultants conclude that, while a mix of technologies is likely to be needed to increase the proportion of heat that comes from renewable sources to 12% by 2020 as envisaged in the Strategy, the cost of solar thermal means it is likely to have less of a part to play in the overall picture.

The study concludes that: "The per-unit cost of solar thermal is higher than was found in previous work, significantly exceeding that of other renewable heat technologies.

"The findings differ from previous research, which ascribed a smaller role to heat pumps, and a larger role to solar thermal and heat-only biogas because of constraints on other technologies," it added.

In the modelling, solar thermal is not included at all in scenarios the study believes would achieve both a 12% and 8.5% share for renewable heat at the lowest-cost, due to its cost per unit being deemed "considerably higher" than for technologies such as biomass and heat pumps.

Data

However, the STA has claimed that data in one of the sources used for the modelling, a study carried out in 2008 by consultants Energy Element on 'The Growth Potential of Microgeneration in England, Wales and Scotland', is "flawed", resulting in the downgrading for solar thermal.

"Unfortunately the basis for this report was a previous study that was totally discredited by the solar thermal industry," it said. "It is presumably this report and its fundamental errors and omissions that have resulted in this significant reduction in the aspiration for solar thermal."

It added: "This downgrading is a retrogressive step in thinking and a decision that has been taken without consultation from the solar thermal industry.

"So not only do we have to wait until 2011 until we have a renewable heat incentive in place to drive the uptake of this technology, but also the huge potential of solar technology is being undermined by questionable research and poor advice."

The STA has explained that its rejection of the Element Energy report is based on what it believes are inaccurate data estimates being used in the study. It explained that the report "was written with what we understand was baseline rather than upper and lower limit data."

It said that, due to this, "future estimates within the report for uptake of several renewable heat technologies are likely to be reached before 2012, rather than 2020 stated in the document. Basing further work on such flawed data will lead to further erroneous assumptions and create poor planning decisions."

Potential

As a result of the Strategy and modelling documents' prediction for the role solar thermal could play, the STA claimed that "this strategy has once again massively underestimated the potential of solar thermal technologies and completely missed a huge opportunity".

And, highlighted the difference between the target the strategy sets for the UK to have 5.4 thermal watts (TW) of solar installed by 2020 and the 145TW of capacity currently installed across Europe.

Element Energy

Responding to the STA's comments, Ben Madden, a director at Element Energy who was involved in compiling the growth potential report told newenergyfocus.com that "our report used a series of industry-reviewed numbers on the cost of a whole range of technologies and used a transparent methodology."

Revealing that Element Energy was aware of the STA's concerns in relation to the report, he added that: "If the STA or anyone else wants to challenge them they should come back with questions relative to the cost assumptions."

The Supply Curve for Renewable Heat findings are open for informal consultation until August 14 2009.