Energy infrastructure

Fair enough. My efficientcy figure was off. But my point still stands - people harping on about EVs being 90% efficient as if they are the best thing since sliced bread. They are not. The efficiency is the product of all the efficiencies and inefficiencies in the whole energy chain from the primary energy source to the tyre of your car. From the very beginning to end, you're probably looking at 25-30%.

It depends what problem you are trying to solve.

the first thing this would do is drive up the fixed cost which would most effect small users. 10k is 500 euros a year over 20 years. That needs to be paid for somewhere.

it would not make much impact on our capacity requirement (the problem we have at the moment) though it would make some difference because of the battery if it was charged and discharged at appropriate times.

it would be cheaper as someone said to build a giant PV farm in the midlands say and distribute the power from there through the existing grid.

One of the less evident reasons which makes what you describe difficult is that on peak generation days you wouldn’t have enough distribution capacity in residential areas to export the 4kW of generation from hundreds of houses so it could be used in industry. (This problem wouldn’t arise for the giant PV farm in the midlands because it would be connected directly to transmission.)

Your comparison re public and private transport is very apt. Power generation seems to work best in an urban area when done on a large scale and shared, rather being done on a one-by-one basis.

i think there might be a strong case for what you propose in relation to batteries as the costs go down. I just don’t think it extends to solar panels.

True, but most people probably wouldn't "empty the EV tank" every day. So during the it's not inconceivable that PV would meet EV and household needs. Unfortunately it's the winter that we need to dimension for.

The number of places where 2000 or 3000 hectares of land could be blanketed in PV panels is tiny. Like I said, there would be pushback, look at pylons or turbines but they still allow for other land uses. Like I also said, there may be a couple of areas of cut away bog which has been depleted and has limited ecological potential. Whatever the theoretical benefits of grid scale solar, it is unlikely to happen in reality.

Apart from that, solar is a limited resource in this country and we have natural advantages in certain types of agriculture, where possible producing other things are likely to be a better us of any land than harvesting solar energy. Economically, there is also much more potential to add value, support jobs and export than with solar panels so it is unlikely to be a favourable land use.

I was saying rooftop solar could be done at scale and even collected and stored locally in large battery(s) for later deployment when needed. This gives scale in installation and with battery which is almost certainly to be more efficient than small batteries in every individual house (which is what you were arguing against).

Whole lot of them tottering away would put a bit of control back with the householder, Eirgrid paying for ads on the radio when they have a Monopoly, no wonder the prices are rising

I've seen solar farms and to my eye they are visually more acceptable in rural areas than the gigantic industrial wind machines that are currently in vogue. Solar would be quieter, can be installed at lower levels and not create massive eyesores that dominate the skyline during daytime and the night skies in the dark. And yes, we are flanked by the bloody things.

I would imagine that most installations would be quite small akin to what you see in the UK where there the biggest current operational PV farm is on order of 72MW (in Wales).

Stratkraft spent €10m buying 5 developments which all had completed the planning process and will deliver up to 275MW of solar generation

https://www.independent.ie/business/irish/norways-statkraft-pays-10m-to-acquire-solar-farms-as-it-expands-irish-footprint-39518512.html

Given the capital costs of €150m to get these up and running it's not really surprising we are seeing more and more cases of Irish firms getting a scheme through planning and then selling it to a bigger entity as basically shovel-ready.

Two of the larger PV schemes are underway (in Meath and Wexford), between them they'll use 650 acres of land and generate 282MWp

https://www.farmersjournal.ie/160m-secured-for-650ac-of-solar-farms-in-wexford-and-meath-634983

My power comes from hydroelectric Station in Ballyshannon, the 400 or so windturbines and the little hydro station in Crolly, not a gas bottle needed so why should I be paying for something I don't use, regionalise the grid, we've been renewable for decades ,charge the areas that are the actual consumers or maybe ease back on changing the vehicle fleet every 2 services

Eirgrid needs to be broken up and the areas with surplus power could attract more industry with cheaper power,

Nope I never said anything about finding 2000 hectares of suitable roof space, you introduced that figure. I did mention depleted bogland as a potential location for large scale solar, you seem to be running with that presumably because you accept that such a large area is unlikely to be available elsewhere, as I said. Not sure why you are going backto comparing to standard domestic installations when that is again not what I talked again.