Dave Benson-Phillips

• Comment on: Landlord agrees 1,000-home PV scheme

  Dave Benson-Phillips's comment | 02/02/2012 9:46 am

  1) We'll just have to agree to disagree - I think this is good value. The £1.40 has helped to form the industry. You can tell me as much rubbish as you like about BP in the 70s. If there was no FIT, they would not be selling the product at a reasonable price. The FIT has formed a competitive market, thus forcing down prices.
  
  2) Most procurement procedures I've been involved in insist that you quote output figures based on PV-GIS or the Climate SAF update. This is an EU backed website giving output figures based on recorded data. In addition, most of the panels carry an output warranty. If it doesn't produce the figures it says, there will be some comeback. Not sure where the room is here for creative accounting.

• Comment on: Landlord agrees 1,000-home PV scheme

  Dave Benson-Phillips's comment | 01/02/2012 5:16 pm

  Ok Gavin - Two questions:
  
  1 - The FIT scheme will cost the bill payer £1.40 each this year - do you call this a rip off?
  
  2 - Where is the "creative accounting" on these schemes?
  
  Cheers

• Comment on: Landlord agrees 1,000-home PV scheme

  Dave Benson-Phillips's comment | 31/01/2012 3:41 pm

  Gavin - distraction tactics? As opposed to your scatter gun approach of covering a page in comments, hoping that a - people get totally lost or b - you have written so much, that surely some of it must be right! I'll quote you now:
  "other energy users have to pay the landlord 43 pence per unit generated on top of their own bills to pay for this? This is to replace conventionally-generated electricity that retails for 10p a unit. Sounds like a bargain."
  
  You can't make that direct comparison, due to the way it is paid and the service it is paying for.
  
  Yes it does allow companies to make money out of the scheme - you've told us that nobody is interested in the green agenda, so surely the only way to get people to get involved in this stuff is to allow them to make money out of it? I don't believe that any government would have the balls to invest the amount of money required in green technologies to get us where we need to be, so other ways around it have to be devised. This is one such way.
  
  As for your comments about banks...where would the capital come from otherwise? Do you like getting paid interest on your deposits? Do you think its a good thing that pensions CAN get bigger by pension funds investing them? Please explain how this would happen if they didn't make money out of such projects

• Comment on: Landlord agrees 1,000-home PV scheme

  Dave Benson-Phillips's comment | 31/01/2012 10:04 am

  Gavin - you can't say that the individual pays 10p for conventional energy and 43p for solar - this clearly isn't true, as the 43p is funded by everyone, whereas the 10p is just paid for by one person, not funded by the rest of the country - you have drawn an unfair comparison here.
  
  In addition, you have completely written off the cost of financing the deal in your maths, which I would expect to be considerable.
  
  It is generally accepted the FIT is currently too high, which is why it is being lowered. It shouldn't be lowered as much as the government wants to, but it should be lowered. However, it is subsidised so that an industry forms - you are correct, there wouldnt be an industry without these subsidies. Doesn't mean they're a bad thing. It doesn't really matter whether the companies involved buy in for the green agenda or for profit. As a country, do we want to be on the hook when oil heads permanently north of $120 a barrell? Ernst and Young predict price rises between 7% and 10%. Don't think the price of the sun, wind or sea is going to go - that's where we need a significant amount of our energy to come from. A little expense now will be worth it in the long run

• Comment on: Landlord agrees 1,000-home PV scheme

  Dave Benson-Phillips's comment | 30/01/2012 2:35 pm

  "turn out the lights" - very good!
  
  I find it incredible that given the combination of dwindling supplies and the instability in the areas of the world that fossil fuel sources tend to come from, that we do not place higher importance on renewables. The price of oil and gas will only go up - everyone should know this by now. Think of the advantage we could have over the rest of the world if we significantly cut our reliance on fossil fuels! Whilst technology improves, I'm happy for a degree of nuclear energy to fill the rest of the gap.

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