kWh to CO2 for India

 I was asked recently in an email, what the conversion factor for kWh to CO2 was for India.

We publish and use the UK factor here https://www.rensmart.com/Calculators/KWH-to-CO2 but I'd never really thought about how that value is calculated.

You cannot just take the generation capacity of each energy source and its CO2 per kWh to calculate this value as each energy source may not be used for generation all of the time. This is obvious with solar, that only generates in sunlight, but is also the case for other generation sources that may only be used when the countries grid demand requires it. You therefore need to calculate this factor based on recorded previous use, preferably the previous year.

To perform my calculations, I used the data give on this page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_India in the table Yearly gross electricity generation by source (GWh) taking the data for the year 2021-2022 and combined it with the carbon emissions for each generation source from here https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/post/postpn268.pdf

By combining the data from these sources I generated a spread sheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HvZlGvFoV71ThrOp9WDkPSX7osnDYeVILBytQJY-u7E/edit?usp=sharing

This gives the co2eq per kWh as 0.67 kg CO2eq per kWh with 97% of those emissions coming from generation using coal. In comparrison, in the UK the figure is 0.23 kg CO2eq per kWh

Does Solar still make sense ?

This is piece I created for a local  Facebook group and is based on estimates for our location in St Mary Bourne, Hampshire. If you would like to generate estimates for your location, we have a solar estimation tool here.

In 2005 I installed photovoltaic solar panels on our roof,the kind that generate electricity rather than the ones that heat hot water. There was not much information available in the UK at the time on how long they would take to pay back and there were no financial incentives.

After some searching for information on the amount of solar available, I worked out that they would pay for themselves in a little over 300 years. This was definitely a hobby project.

For 5 years my long suffering family put up with half of our house running off grid from a bank of batteries charged by solar panels during the day, and if we were lucky, powering the lights during the night.

The batteries were housed in the long wooden box in this photo and charged from the rooftop solar panels.

In 2010 the government introduced the Feed in Tariff. In October of that year, we swapped our home made installation (it was retired to power a narrow boat) for a system installed under the Feed in Tariff scheme. We had most of our SSE facing roof covered with panels, giving us a 3kW installation of 10 panels. In that year, I also started a small company to provide estimates on the cost and returns of solar and wind microgeneration RenSMART to installers and the public.

System Specification

• 3kW peak output
• HIT Panels 20% efficiency
• Sunny Boy Inverter
• Roof Direction SSE
• Generated 23,800 Units (kWh) over 9 years

Financial Information

• Cost £10,500
• Pay back date - Two years ago
• System life - 25 years

The Feed in Tariff, from the outset, was intended to be an incentive to help reduce the cost of solar to a point where it no longer required an incentive to make it viable. In 2019, the Feed in Tariff ended. Any new installation after that point would not receive the Feed in Tariff. I have been asked many times recently if it still makes sense to install solar panels. This is the result of my investigation.

While the Feed in Tariff was in place, the government recorded the cost of installations, and this information is readily available and published up until 2019. Using information from 2019, you can work out the average cost of an installation for a particular size. A 3kW system like ours, would have cost £6000 in 2019, so quite a reduction, but would it be financially viable.

Financial Estimates if the same system was installed this year

• Estimated Cost - £6,000

• Generation Forecast 23,800 Units (kWh) over 9 years [1]

• 9 years - 50% of generation (deemed exported [3]) at 5.5p £650 feed in tariff [2]

• 9 years - 50% of generation (deemed used on site [3]) at 18p £2,140

• £2790 / 8 years = about £350 / year

• Pay back date just over 17 years

• £8750 over 25 year system life

• About 5% return per year

[1] Taken from our current installations performance

[2] Although the Feed In Tariff has ended, many electricity providers pay you for exported electricity. In this case we are basing the figure on the Octopus Energy Outgoing tariff

[3] As the measurement of exported electricity is rarely in place, the amount used in your house is taken to be 50% of generation

So it seems that the Feed in Tariff did achieve its target of reducing solar installation costs to make them financially viable without incentive.

What about the green house gas reduction ?

Having calculated the financial returns of installing solar, I’ve calculated the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions such an installation would achieve.

Our 3kW installation was generating an average 8 Units (kWh) per day.

Using data made available from the National Grid, we can calculate that if we had used grid electricity, 8 kWh would have caused the release of 2kg CO2 per day. That does not really mean much unless you know what reduction we as a population need to make.

The average UK household has an annual carbon footprint of 20,000 kg CO2. To keep global warming to below 1.5 deg C, we need to reduce this by 50% with further reduction to 30% within ten years.

• 50% reduction = 10,000 kg CO2

• 2kg x 365 days = 730 kg CO2 = 7% of the required reduction for the average household

A solar installation in 2020 could offer a reasonable return on investment both in financial and carbon footprint reduction. If you would like to calculate estimated returns for your property try the RenSMART Quick Solar Project tool. RenSMART is a not for profit company and the tool is free to use and not linked to any kind of sales.

COP26

Normally I would use this blog to highlight changes on the RenSMART site, however today I would like to concentrate on a very interesting TED interview with Nigel Topping, the UK high level climate action champion man tasked with organising COP26 Glasgow.

A link to the interview is here and my thoughts and a brief synopsis of the subjects covered follow.

TED Interview with Nigel Topping: We Need to Green The Economy While Restarting It

At COP21 2015 Paris countries agreed on their targets. The EU agreed a target of Net Zero emissions by 2050

In 2018 the IPPC released a report giving stark warnings of what will happen if global temperature rises above pre-industrial levels by 1.5C and 2C

COP27 Glasgow was to be where countries would report on their progress towards their agreed targets. It will now be held from 1-12 November 2021. Also in 2021 the IPPC  will release multiple reports.

"we are talking about the total re-engineering of the global social and economic system"

Risk

Nigel suggests that post pandemic the world needs to better understand the science of risk. Here is a start: BBC How to understand risk

Transition

Jobs need to be transitioned from carbon intensive industries such as coal mining. Coal is a dying industry propped up by governments due to the number of people who would be unemployed if it were to abruptly stop. Few investors want to put money into an industry that is causing global warming due to pressure from share holders (and their children). One of the key challenges in greening the economy is how to accomplish this without causing pain to those who rely on the industries that are carbon intensive.

Some companies have published plans of how they intend to transition to being carbon neutral, but it will take them time as a whole list of actions need to be taken to arrive at that point. For instance Maersk, the huge shipping company, have pledged to be a net zero company by 2050 and have hind cast their ship procurement to show how this can be done.

Transition and change can be faster than we, or forecasters, expect. Where there is a will, there is a way. We have just been through a pandemic (lets hope we are through) that has shown the whole world can change very fast.

What can we do as individuals ?

• Halve our carbon footprint
• Reduce flights
• Change our diet - reduce our consumption of red meat
• Make your next car an electric car
• Ask your company or university what they are doing to transition to Net Zero
• Ask your pension company what their investment policy is
• Show our children what we are doing - talk to them about the decisions you are making 
• Invest in renewable energy. Maybe take a look at Abundance Investment
• Move to a green energy supplier
• Check out RenSMART economyGREEN

What is RenSMART doing ?

• Providing renewable energy estimates - RenSMART Quick Solar Project
• Providing short term renewable energy forecasts - economyGREEN Clock
• Developing green energy solutions
• Developing green consumer products

30 Million Waving Trees

During the election several of the parties decided to proclaim their intention to plant millions of trees a year to mitigate our green house gas emissions. I thought I would do some back of the virtual envelope calculations to see what difference this would make.

As a country we voted in a Conservative government with a manifesto commitment to plant 30 million trees a year to help reach net zero emissions by 2050[1]. Based on this and a simple model for capture of carbon by growing trees I got the following results:

• Planting 30 million new trees a year, every year until 2050 will achieve about 9% of the reductions we would require to reach net zero emissions.
• That would be 930 million new trees.
• The same 30 million new trees a year, every year until 2030 would achieve about 1% of the reductions to reach net zero by 2030[2]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14cNqpivhaOF4csI3AXJS-reQNfXUOuM_5CBc6sV-viM/edit?usp=sharing



[1] Net zero by 2050 is a time frame that has a low probability of keeping warming  below a relatively safe 1.5C
[2] Net zero by 2030 a time frame that has a high probability of keeping warming  below a relatively safe 1.5C

EconomyGREEN and Solar Micro Generation

Having begun the development of economyGREEN, a service to help you use electricity when it is at its greenest, and having an interest in home solar installations, I thought I would do some investigation into applying the same forecasting RenSMART uses for the UK to micro solar pv installations. The kind thousands of people have had installed on their roofs throughout the UK.

The idea would be to provide people with forecasts specifically for their location and installation. For example on a day with a sunny afternoon forecast, but cloudy morning, the economyGREEN service would suggest you delay your washing machine load until later in the day.

As a starting point I wanted to see what levels of excess are produced by solar pv in an average setting, and at what times of year.

I took a reasonably central point in the UK, Leicester, as the location of the installation, the electricity use profile of the average house, and a 4kW peak solar installation [1]

Key Points

The key information I discovered was:

• 46% of generated electricity is excess to the average houses needs and is exported to the grid. This is close to the governments deemed value of 50% which was used to calculate the portion of the feed in tariff due for exporting to the grid.
• This is almost 2000 kWh per year with a value of about £350 to the home owner if they could make use of it instead of using electricity imported from the grid.
• This is saving of 1000kg of CO2 emissions per year. About the same as a return flight from the UK to New York.

The Data

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17USEzJkZ-X8nI8K7WJi_HRoSrey3pEeKW4OlZ0T7l8I/edit?usp=sharing

What to do ?

The next question is what to do with this excess as an alternative to exporting it to the grid. With the end of the feed in tariff and no reliable replacement payment mechanism, using it within the house would seem like a good idea.

One option is to delay the use of appliances until the points in the day when excess is being generated. This is what the economyGREEN tag and app do, telling you the delay required for an appliance to use the greenest electricity.

For the wider grid, this just as likely to be at night than in the day due to the large amount of wind energy we, as a country, generate. However micro generation is mostly solar, and most excess is generated at midday, when the sun is at its highest, as you would expect. If you are about to do a washing load at 6pm, it is not helpful to suggest you delay it 16 hours to use the next days excess.

Battery Storage is expensive

One solution would be to install a battery storage solution[2]. This would cost about £500 per kWh.

At peak generation in the summer months, there is an excess of 14kWh to store, the mean excess is 5.6kWh. That would require a £7,000 battery installation to store each days excess for use later or £3,000 to store the average days excess.

Based on the excess electricity value of £350, that would take 20 or 10 years respectively to recoup the cost of installation.

Heat Storage is cheaper

A second solution would be to store the excess as heat and then release it throughout the cold parts of the day to keep the house warm and offset central heating.

Heat storage has a much lower cost than battery storage coming in at an estimated £20 per kW stored[3], That is almost 17 times cheaper than battery storage.

Also in the spreadsheet you will see that I have included average outside temperatures[4].
This shows that the average house wishing to keep an internal temperature of 19C is likely to need heating for all days on the year, as the outside temperature drops below this level. 14kWh of heat storage would cost £280 and £112 would store the excess energy as heat for most days.

economyGREEN for home solar PV

Based on this, RenSMART will be creating a specific economyGREEN service to control storage heaters for anyone interested who has (or intends to have) solar PV installed.

For more information contact nikcross@rensmart.com

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[1] 4kW is the most popular installation size in the UK due to feed in tariff break points. The feed in tariff rate dropped significantly for larger installations.

[2] Based on price of a Lithium Ion battery backup installation

[3] Simple thermostatically controlled storage radiator storing for maximum of 12 hours

[4] Temperatures taken from the Metoffice weather station at Sutton Bonnington over the last 20 years.

10 Renewable Energy and Green Songs

So its that period between Christmas and New Year where you are not sure what day it is, the diet is mostly leftovers and you are getting ready for the year to come. I spent a car journey between relatives coming up with a top ten songs related to renewable energy and green issues.

This is the list we came up with. Number ten is left empty, please feel free to suggest one in the comments. An obvious start, without need for much of an introduction. This is what we are fighting for and what we have to lose:

 1. Wonderful World.

Louis Armstrong  You can read more about it here 

The Wombles have been on message since 1968. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. They were there and that is why they get number two spot in our list.

 2. The Wombling Song

The Wombles 

With solar panels on our roof (which have now paid for themselves in both money and carbon reduction), clear skies mean free electricity to us, so this one gets position three.

 3. I Can See Clearly Now 

 Hot House Flowers

 

However, as a country, our reduction in the use of fossil fuels can be put down to our building of wind farms, both on and off shore. As I write this, almost 30% of our electricity is being generated by wind turbines. I'll give the fire a miss, but I'll go with the wind :-)

 4. Fantasy 

Earth Wind and Fire

 

Now we get to the political ones. This gets into the list for the only Green Party MP, Caroline Lucas.
I won't go on about the fact the Green Party recieved 800,000 votes in the recent election and only have one MP. (Oh wait, I did)

 5. Sweet Caroline

Neil Daimond   

This one is really just dedicated by us to one American. The one who thinks wind turbines cause cancer and climate change is a conspiracy by the Chinese.

 6. American Idiot 

Green Day

 

And this is our message to him :-)

 7. Science Is Real 

They Must Be Giants

 

Now for probably our most tentative song. There is no real excuse for this except it came to mind and was part of my childhood.

8. Green Door 

Shaking Stevens 

 

John Lennon only gets a look in because I think if he was still alive, he would have written a good song for this list. As it is, this is the most appropriate I could find.

 9. Cleanup Time 

John Lennon 

 

I don't think I'll give up my day job and become a musicologist (A real job. I've worked with some before). The number ten slot is empty for you to suggest the final track. Please feel free to leave suggestions in the comments along with the reason for your choice if it is not obvious. Thanks.
Happy Christmas and a Green New Year to you all.

 10 ?

Threat to Solar

The current government have removed most of the incentives for installing your own renewable electricity generators and in addition have increased the tax on new installations. This goes against all of their talk of tackling climate change. Under their watch micro wind generation has all but stopped and there is a risk solar will go the same way. Each roof top solar installation saves an average of 26 tons of CO2 emissions over its lifetime and if installed on the roofs of all new homes, would make a significant impact on our countries carbon footprint.

The tax rate on domestic coal is 5% The tax rate on domestic solar has been raised to 20%

The then environment secretary, Michael Gove, agreed that there was a climate emergency, but said he did not like the idea of declaring one. Telegraph

In April this year the MCS feed in tariff ended. The feed in tariff was intended as a reducing payment that would encourage solar installations while reducing year-on-year as the price of installation dropped due to economies of scale.

Payments were set by OFGEN each year with the payment having two elements, one payment was based on generation (the total electricity produced weather used or exported to the national grid) and a second payment for the amount exported.

Due to the lack of smart metering at the time the scheme started, the amount exported was deemed to be half of that generated. The amount paid was an index linked rate set yearly by OFGEN.

You could argue that it had done its job. Solar installation prices had come down to such an extent that they could payback their initial investment within a reasonable period of time without the need for incentives.

However, solar installations of a size suitable for most homes will produce more than they require at certain times of the year. At this point, the excess generated electricity is fed into the grid.

The government failed to provide a replacement for the feed in tariff, so it is currently up to your electricity provider to set a value on the electricity you supply them.

It is planned to set a minimum rate in January, but smaller electricity providers are exempt and the rate is likely to be considerably lower than the amount we pay to receive electricity into our homes.

https://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/renewable-energy/electricity/solar-panels/smart-export-guarantee-and-feed-tariffs

https://www.solar-trade.org.uk/resource-centre/advice-tips-for-households/smart-export-guarantee/

Secondly, until October this year, solar panels had a VAT rate of 5%. The same rate as domestic fuel like gas, oil or coal. This has now been raised to 20%. This one piece of legislation will probably put an end to solar installations in the UK

This legislation was passed on 25 June 2019, the same day the UK House of Commons passed legislation to commit the UK to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The rate increase was claimed to bring us in to line with EU rule, however this does not seem to be the case. The lower rate of VAT on solar had been discussed in 2016 and was deemed to meet EU tax rules at that point. Nothing has changed and yet here we are.

https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/news/solar_and_storage_vat_legislation_moves_forward_despite_strong_opposition

https://www.power-technology.com/news/hmrc-vat-solar/

Quick ! Solar !

I have been asked a few times recently, is it still worth getting Solar installed at home on your roof. I have gathered the data and completed the calculations, The answer still seems to be yes.

Despite the current governments lack-lustre support of micro renewable generation and the almost complete decimation of the micro wind generation market, a micro solar installation still looks like it will pay the initial outlay back within a reasonable time.

The following link will take you to a simple calculator for returns from solar installations based on average prices recorded as part of the official MCS certification process.
https://www.rensmart.com/Calculators/QuickSolarProject

Based on our estimates, a 4kW installation (the average size) would cost about £7264 and pay for itself in about 10 years. The total value of savings over 25 years is an estimated £35,385 and over 26 tons of CO2.

The PACA

Personal Annual Carbon Allowance

At RenSMART, we have been working to offer a set of applications to enable individuals or households to calculate, track and reduce their carbon footprint, but this is not much use if you do not know what your carbon footprint, ideally, should be.

As part of this process, we have developed the concept of a personal carbon allowance. An annual carbon allowance based on traceable scientific sources.

A personal annual carbon allowance (PACA) is the amount of carbon dioxide or equivalent gasses (CO2e) a person should aim to reduce themselves to generating in a given year.

In the case of a RenSMART PACA, we propose a voluntary allowance that people sign up to and track.
There are four steps to realising this:

1. Calculating a baseline level. The amount you generate now.
2. Calculating the maximum you could generate to stay within a target. We are aiming at maximum 1.5C rise in temperature by 2030.
3. Finding changes in behaviour that would meet that target.
4. Measuring the CO2 generated or mitigated to show whether you are on target.

Old idea, new format.

Personal carbon allowances are not a new idea. They have been floated many times before, but have not been implemented. The reasons are no doubt many, complex and varied [2].

One implementation suggestion from 2013 [1] was to take all of the CO2 generated in the UK and share it out with children taking half of an adult share. The calculations showed that sharing the CO2 emissions, generated at that time by the UK, would set each adults allowance at  4336 kgCO2 / year and each child's to 2168 kgCO2 / year. The suggestion was that the allowance would be reduced each year to meet an agreed target, with those over producing paying to offset and those under producing getting a payment.

We have chosen to go with the simplest methodology we can for calculating a PACA. Take the target global carbon emissions to attain the goal of keeping the global temperature at a safe level. Divide this by the number of humans on the planet.

Calculation of the PACA

• 2020 target = 38.4 GtCO₂e / year
• 2020 World Population estimate 7.87 billion
• Suggested PACA for 2020 38.4 billion / 8.87 billion = 4.892 t = 4892 kg CO2 per year = 1 PACA

You will find our sources and calculations on the PACA page.

Nudge psychology

Rather than an enforced PACA that has been suggested in the past, we would like to introduce a PACA that people can sign up to. Rather that wave a statutory stick, threatening taxation on using more than your allowance, we would like to offer a voluntary nudge.

As an example of an energy saving nudge, we have created a service called economyGREEN. It provides a 24 hour renewable energy forecast and a companion app provides advice on when to use your washing machine etc. when renewable energy generation is at its highest. You can find further details on the economyGREEN web page.

Calculating a Base Level

We intend to take the best methodologies and calculations available to calculate an individuals current CO2e footprint. We will make the methodology publicly available for scrutiny and reuse, with an agile update process taken from the software industry to constantly improve its accuracy.
This we intend to develop as an open source project, freely available for anyone to use and include in their own projects.

Making Changes

We will make a set of tools available to individuals and organisations. We will offer applications to help people to keep track of their progress towards the goals they have chosen.

Our first, very modest tool, is called economyGREEN [5] and helps people to use electricity when its carbon intensity is at its lowest (when the largest amount of it is from renewable sources)

Keeping Score

RenSMART will offer an online service to keep track, like a fitness tracker but for carbon emissions.
Again, we propose to make this software open source. Free for anyone to use or contribute to.

Changing the PACA

Our methodology will be evidence based and list the sources used. We will openly discuss the decisions made, justify them and where improvements are found, apply them.
We will update the suggested PACA every six months to keep to a target CO2 level and maximum temperature rise.

Sources:

[1] https://www.cse.org.uk/downloads/file/project_paper_3_personal_carbon_allowances.pdf

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/personal-carbon-allowances-budgets

[3] https://www.rensmart.com/PACA

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paca :-)

[5] https://www.rensmart.com/EconomyGREEN

economyGREEN app demo available

We now have a demo version of the economyGREEN web app available for you to try. Click on the image to load it in your browser. It is restricted to only one model of washing machine and only has a small selection of devices.

economyGREEN app demo

Alternatively use this QR code to open it on your phone:

If you like it, please pledge your support through our Kickstarter page and tell your friends and family. We don't have long until the Kickstarter campaign ends.

And I could drive 12,000 more

Just a quick update on my electric car.

My 12,000 mile service for my Nissan Leaf has arrived.

Since getting it in February, the only problem I have had was a puncture. It is a dream to drive.
The service cost about £160 and was completed in half a day. Nissan gave it a clean and sent me a video of the service inspection.
My electricity bill has gone up a lot, but is a big saving on my old deisel bill and carbon footprint.
One other change I have made is working from home a couple of days a week. A small change that will make a big impact on my carbon footprint.

The EconomyGREEN Tag

Having developed the economyGREEN 24 hour clock, I wanted to develop a simpler way to make use of the information it provides.

I felt that if I made the information available in as simple a form as possible and available at the time when I need it, I would be able to act on it more easily and would therefore be more likely to use it in my daily life.

The economyGREEN clock gives you a 24 hour forecast of carbon intensity of electricity throughout the current day. If at 10am you plan to put on a washing load and 20% of the UKs electricity is from renewable generation, but at 11am that will rise to 30%, running your washing at 11am will be the greener choice.

Most washing machines, dishwashers and tumble dryers have an option to delay starting for a period of time. If I looked at the economyGREEN clock before I set off a washing load and set it to start when the UK grid electricity is at its greenest, I could reduce my carbon footprint.

 However, opening the economyGREEN clock web page every time I want to do some washing, use the tumble dryer or set off the dishwasher and find the greenest time to run the load is not something I am going to sustainably add to my daily routines.

Thinking about this problem reminded me of nudge psychology. The idea that you add small queues at the place where you take an action can nudge you to make a better one. To implement this, I would need to display the best time to run a washing load on the washing machine, tumble drier or dishwasher. That would be expensive and, with all the technology required, not very green.

Then I thought, how about using people's phones. Most of us carry them around with us at all times, and here is a ready made screen that could display the greenest delay time.

I experimented with bar codes, location tracking and QR codes, but the process it required me to follow was far too complicated for me to use regularly.

Then I rememberd some work I had done with NFC tags. These are small tags that you can tap your phone on and will then transfer some data that they hold to your phone. One thing they can transfer is a link to a web page.

Using a programmable NFC tag, I created a link to my web site that contains a unique identifier. 

I have created a web app that can link the identifier to your make and model of device.

When you receive a tag, you stick it on, or near your device. Tap your phone on it for the first time, and you are prompted to select your appliances make and model. You tag is now ready.

The next time you tap your phone on the tag, the device name and model is displayed, and the delay reqired for the greenest electricity given.

Using the economyGREEN forecast, information about your device make and model and the washing program you intend to run, the web app calculates the delay needed to run your load at the greenest time.

Now I want to make these tags and devices available to anyone else who wants to use economyGREEN.

I have started a Kickstarter campaign to fund the production of 1000 tags. This requires several thousand pounds in funding, but reduces the cost of the programmed tags to a reasonable amount.

Our Kickstarter page

In the future, I would like to expand economyGREEN to include other countries and to support more devices and get it included as an automated option in smart appliances.

Please do follow my progress in Kickstarter and maybe buy a few tags to try. (For yourself, friends and family)

economyGREEN

For some time I have been investigating the idea that we could decrease the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere due to electricity generation by changing the time we use electricity.
To make this possible, we would need a forecast of our electricity's carbon intensity* throughout the day.

With this information, we could decide to change our behaviour and run washing machines, tumble driers or storage heaters when the carbon intensity is at its lowest.

The name economyGREEN is inspired by economy7. It was introduced in the late 70s to incentivize people to use off peak electricity (during the night). economyGREEN does not offer a monetary incentive, but does enable you to use as green electricity as is possible from the UK grid.

My first step was to find a source of forecast information and after some searching, I found that a forecast of generation required, solar generation and wind generation is produced by the Balancing Mechanism Reporting Service (BMRS) RenSMART now provides a view of this forecast https://www.rensmart.com/UKGenerationForecast we also have a live view of current carbon emissions from electricity generation https://www.rensmart.com/UKGeneration

The second step was to make this information easy to act on. To achieve this I have designed a 24 hour clock web app that gives a days forecast view.

The EconomyGREEN Forecast Clock

Please take a look and feel free to offer constructive feedback. The idea it that you can scan around the clock and choose a time when the most of your electricity is from renewable sources. Then you can choose to run washing loads, dry clothes or switch on a slow cooker at that time.

Future enhancements that are underway are to add an automation element that will integrate with smart sockets, appliances and electric cars so the technology can take the action for you.

Another element that is nearly ready for publication, is a personal forecast for those with micro solar or wind installations. We have been trialling it for a year with good results.

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* Carbon Intensity - The amount of CO2 and other green house gasses released per unit of electricity often given and grams per kilowatt hour g/kWh

Daily Renewable Forecast

https://www.rensmart.com/UKGenerationForecast

We have a released a new data page, The UK Generation Forecast. The page combines data from several sources to give a forecast of how much of the UK's electricity will be produced from wind and solar during the current day.
Using this data, it will be possible to choose the best time during the day to perform tasks like running the washing machine or tumble drier while producing the minimum CO2 emissions.

By choosing the time with the maximum percentage renewable generation, your action will have the lowest carbon intensity.

Live UK Carbon intensity

We have just published a new service from RenSMART. You can now see a live * estimate of the carbon intensity of UK electricity generation.

https://www.rensmart.com/UKGeneration


* Data  is delayed by 30 minutes.

My Electric Car - The Maths

I've now sat down and done a few back-of-the-envelope calculations. I've not had anyone check them so let me know if you see any errors and I will happily discuss my assumptions and methodology.

I have tried to be conservative in my calculations and have used the latest grid electricity CO2 emissions figures for calculating the amount of CO2 emissions my driving will generate.

Headline figures:

• My electric car is over 400% more energy efficient than my diesel car was.
• I will have reduced my CO2 emissions from driving by over 25% per year
• I have reduced my fuel cost by over 70% or £2,800 per year
• If all private cars in the UK were to go electric by 2040 we would need 2 new large nuclear facilities or 16 new large wind farms at a cost of £20 - 30 billion to power them all.
• I drive over three times further than the average UK driver in a year.

We could all start driving electric cars, but we better get some new power stations under way and quick. £20 - 30 billion is only 2.5 - 3.5 % of the annual budget.

All the calculations used can be found in my Google Docs Spreadsheet

And I Could Drive One Thousand Miles

Two weeks into owning an electric car (Nissan Leaf 2018) and I've driven over 1000 miles. This is not unexpected as I have an 85 mile a day commute. On the first day of owning the car, I had definite range anxiety, but now I am relaxed and enjoying the experience.

I have not had to change my driving style too much, just reducing my speed a little on the motorway to about 70 mph :-) I'm not keen on driving and always see it as a waste of my time, but the Leaf has a nice feature called Pro Pilot that keeps me a safe distance from the car in front, at a maximum speed set by me and helps to keep you within the current lane. I make use of my time listening to audio books from Audible which makes the time spent driving feel more productive.

As expected, I have seen our home electricity use rise considerably. A daily charge takes about 5 hours at 7kWh. At a cost of 14p/kWh thats a cost of about £4.90 per day or about £25 for a weekly commute. Previously I was spending about £60 per week in diesel. As a way to keep the price of the electricity as low as possible, I have signed up with Ecotricity's EV tariff. This gives a reduced overnight tariff for owners of electric vehicles similar to economy 7.

For my next step I am going to perform a more in depth analysis of the cost differences between an EV and its diesel equivalent both in cost and emissions. I just need to capture a bit more data and find some time in my busy life.

The road ahead

RenSMART has a plan. Not a small plan, a big plan, you might even call it an adventure, and its open for the whole world to join us in.

We started out with a plan to create a Renewable Energy Market Place (Rens Mart), the world was not quite ready for this, but as part of the process of building our business we started providing information to help people make decisions on whether to install a renewable energy system, and what specification to choose.

This has proved to be a popular service over the last couple of years. Now it is time for step 2.

Step 1 has provided a model to help estimate future energy use based on estimates and models.
Step 2 is to refine this service.

Firstly, rather than model existing energy use, we plan to help you capture the actual energy use at your location before installation.

Secondly, we will help you continue to capture this information once you have a renewable energy generation system installed and combine this information to give a real time energy use and export balance.

Thirdly we will provide you with a renewable energy forecast for the day and week ahead.

All of this will be made possible through an improved version of the RenSMART model, a software product we have been refining for some time and that will be made available as open source for wider scrutiny.

As we move forward, we will blog our progress.

Gone Electric

Background
In October 2010 I had solar panels fitted to my roof at home. Just a small installation of about 3kW peak under the Feed In Tariff, then called Clean Energy Cash Back.

At the beginning of November last year, according to my calculations, they had paid for themselves through Feed In Tariff payments, export tariff payments and the value of the electricity generated that we use ourselves.

Time for a new project. I've been looking at electric cars for a couple of years. I had several requirements that needed to be met before I could take the leap:

• The car had to be able to complete my commute of 85 miles a day on a single charge.
• The price had to be comparable with a mid range fossil fuel car.

The Tesla Model 3 seemed like the first car that was going to meet the requirements, so I put down a deposit and joined the queue. After six months, it seemed apparent that this car was not going to be available for some time (if ever) so I started looking at the new Nissan Leaf. In august of last year I canceled my Tesla and ordered a new Nissan Leaf. I was told it would probably take until January to arrive, and yesterday I picked it up.

My First Journey
Driving it of the forecourt of the Nissan dealership, it had almost a full charge and said about 180 miles range available. Unfortunately, I had a meeting to be at, so had to drive at motorway speeds. It appears the 180 miles range does not hold for my normal driving style. By the time I had arrived (a distance of about 40 miles) the available range had dropped to 90 miles.

In the Leaf's defence, I had had the heating on at the start of the journey, it was a cold day and I had not switched on all of the energy saving features in the car, however, without a charging point at work, I now had range anxiety. With a home journey of 45 miles and that rate of discharge, I was not sure I could make it home.

Unluckily the day I had chosen to pick up the car was also the coldest day of the year so far and the first day of snow, however, as I knew that I was on the edge of the range that the car seemed likely to make, I decided to go without heating. Still, as I made my way home the range was reducing at about double the miles I was doing.

Part of my journey home takes me on to the M4, and looking at the map of charging point, I saw that there were several provided at a service station I would be passing. I thought if I made a short stop I could top up the battery enough to get home.
I had already ready installed the Ecotricity Electric Highway app and thought this would be a painless process but no. I found the charging points easily enough, pulled in and opened the app on my phone. It hung. Just the initial splash screen. I closed it and tried again, same result. I rebooted the phone, no luck. So in the end I gave up and decided to take the chance I may run out of charge before home.

Once off the M4, I turned on all of the eco options in the car. At the lower speeds and with these options switched on, the miles started to match the range and it looked like I may make it.
By the time I was 10 miles from home with 25 miles range left, I finally felt confident enough to turn on the heating. I made it home with about 20% battery remaining.

Now a day later, how do I feel ?
I think driving is going to be different. This is not a like for like swap with my old diesel Volvo.
I will have to take more notice of my driving style and I will reserve judgement on whether the move to an EV was a good idea until I have made a few more trips and compare my electricity bill increase with the decrease in my car fuel bill.

A New Blog For RenSMART

I have been using my personal blog to make comments on RenSMART's progress until now, but have decided that it is time RenSMART had it's own blog so here it is.
We are in the process of creating a plan for the year ahead, there are several projects in the pipeline, and  some of those will go live soon.
If you have any ideas of projects you would like us to consider, please let us know at information@rensmart.com.

May your year be fruitful and your carbon footprint reduced.
Nik Cross and the RenSMART team.