tell me why this won't work - community generation

Yes, could be done and makes a lot more engineering sense than rooftop panels.

The customers wouldn’t all need to be in the one building.

There is a structure provided for under the renewable energy directive to allow for this.

There are some serious bureaucratic issues, in particular tax and metering.

The batteries would literally cost as much as the apartments they're powering.

Get electricity from the grid?

They are selling to the grid and buying back from the grid at a much higher price so compared to installing your own panels it's a bit like filling your car with petrol but holding the nozzle a good bit back from the car so nearly half of it spills on the ground below. Except that what you spill on the ground automatically falls into the tank of some billionaire's superyacht.

A better system would be if the whole block of flats was directly connected to said solar farm & battery and the entire building only drew from the grid when its batteries are depleted. They will prevent that system arising through bureaucracy because it would require 100% participation and everything that's registered as a house is entitled to have its own grid connection and MPRN. At the very least you'd have to have the wiring for both systems available in each apartment

1st off, any clean energy creation if a good thing in my mind. But can't break the bank or money is better elsewhere. So 1 doesn't need to compete with the other. More types are better. Solar for when sun is shining (based on light levels not temp), wind is good in winter when solar is low and at night.... hydro for 'burstable' peak times...

The largest wind turbines in the world (as in newest ones) generate power for 1 house for a day in one turn (7 seconds). But the cost of those is massive and they are offshore with tens of them setup. It’s ~5 years from planning to the turbine spinning connected to the grid. UK impoverished housing estate has formed a co-op to setup their own on the land within the estate (large complex of flats afaik). And they got funding for it and being built.

Our house solar (which 1 love) takes hours in summer to do that. Not seconds. But...the roof space is available and free and doesn’t take up farm land. Cost under 10k per house roughly. Could the State roll out solar to all houses it owns and it then gets paid for what they create? Solar can be live much faster that turbines (but it’s micro energy creation with a small m). Though is you have tens of thousands of micros….

In terms of competing with usual space like farm land, some countries are adding floating solar ‘farms’ on lakes so doesn’t use the land. Costs more (as they need to be on a floating surface and maintenance costs would be higher), but land is free as the state owns it. Other countries are trying strips of solar panels in the middle of farm land - so doesn’t impact the growing. Farmer then gets 2 incomes. 

UK has less farm solar space used than the land used by golf clubs. Do we ban golf clubs as they take up farm land? I'm being a bit ridiculous of course.

Capacity factor, in terms of solar panels, is the ratio of actual annual energy output to the theoretical maximum, which is defined in the panels rating.

And that theoretical maximum is the total hours in a year, not the total daylight hours.

Here's the capacity factors for some solar installations in Scotland:

The feed in tariff helps a lot there. As does an EV battery or a battery as part of your PV setup.

Combine PV, EV, batteries and night rate electricity and you are really onto something sweet.

Panels are useful, I don't have them, yet, you seem to be on your own claming they are"utterly useless" in Ireland.

But sure you are right and we are all wrong.

Why are you benchmarking against something which is irrelevant, like including hours of darkness, early and late in the day etc., which everybody discounts as unproductive time anyway.

Somebody posted their bill the other day, it had something about units consumed versus the same period 12 months ago.

I suggest you go look for it, clearly PV is far from "utterly useless" which is your claim.

Right now they are subsidising gas-generated grid power to the tune of 600e per user. Good few people here put in solar with no grant and it's paying off for them

You don't just put down solar panels and leave them be. They will require constant security, maintenance, insurance. So now you're looking at running costs. You will charge them to the residents, right? And from time to time that won't cover it, say 5 years from now you can reasonably expect to add some panels, replace existing ones and that will be a big spend. No way in hell will any of these residents agree to pay when you come over with one big bill, they can just switch to a regular provider. So you should charge them over time in advance, a little rainy day fund on top of the running costs you're incurring.

You just invented bills. And you're running a regular company. Back to square one.

All that said, I understand where the idea is coming from. It makes no sense to me at all that currently I see regular people putting up tiny solar panels on their rooftops. They will often face the wrong way (because the person doesn't have a south facing roof) or be shaded, the panels would be substantialy better and cheaper if they were bought in bulk. It makes no sense they pay for individual batteries, installation and wiring up their house to produce utilities. It's so uncoordinated.