‘I turned into a solar nerd’

[AE-NMidlands]

"Now my house is run entirely on fossil-free energy, since all the electricity that comes from grid to my home is supplied by a company that sources all its power from renewables."
And thats a bit of greenwashing too.

Why? If it's from Octopus, they say

We’re supplying 100% green electricity to customers now,

(https://octopus.energy/blog/what-makes-us-green/)

[nowty]

"Now my house is run entirely on fossil-free energy, since all the electricity that comes from grid to my home is supplied by a company that sources all its power from renewables."
And thats a bit of greenwashing too.

Why? If it's from Octopus, they say

We’re supplying 100% green electricity to customers now,

(https://octopus.energy/blog/what-makes-us-green/)

They don't they buy REGO certificates for quite a significant proportion of their supply with the real green leccy being sold elsewhere. If your a wind / solar farm generator you can sell your green leccy to supplier A and sell the REGO certificates to supplier B. Thats why I like Ripple projects as the REGOs stay with your chosen suppler, its in your customer agreement with the associated Coop. So if your oversupplied with Ripple projects (100%+) its the nearest of being suppled with renewable energy without the greenwash.

Look at the figure below, dark blue is like getting your energy from Octopus with 100%+ Ripple projects.

Light blue, well thats Octopus (and other large suppliers like British Gas, EDF, EON, Scottish Power) without Ripple projects. Its cheaper for the supplier to buy REGOs and power on the open market instead of having PPA's from a renewable generator.

Brown, typically business customers but they are still receiving significant amounts of renewables, but their supplier has already sold on the REGOs to make domestic supply look greener.




If you don't believe me, you can read about the REGO greenwashing in these links including the official government line.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/gove ... ty-tariffs

https://www.ecotricity.co.uk/our-green- ... eenwashing

https://www.goodenergy.co.uk/wp-content ... r-2020.pdf

https://company.ovo.com/ovo-calls-for-e ... enwashing/


Now read the bottom bit of this from Octopus,
https://octopus.energy/green/

"We buy enough of these [REGOs) alongside energy on the open market to cover all our customers' electricity, which pumps even more investment into UK renewable electricity generation."

[AE-NMidlands]

Well, I wouldn't dream of contradicting you... thanks for that, so 8pus aren't quite so squeaky clean after all!
A

[Mart]

I know you can add to a FITS system but one cannot replace, can one.

Hi Ken, that's exactly what I've done recently, by replacing the 5x 235Wp 2011 FiT panels on my lower ESE roof with 5x 440Wp panels (and also +2.12kWp new ground mount).

I can confirm that I've had confirmation (many times) over the years that this is absolutely fine, but due to final commissioning issues with the batteries that were also part of the change, I haven't yet completed the notification/change with EDF (my FiT provider). But once complete I'll update the issue on Camelot, and send you a PM (if you want), just to confirm it's all OK.

Going forward, for FiT purposes, EDF will apportion generation based on the original FiT system size v's the new revised system size.
EG, it was 3,580kWp, and now it will be 6,725Wp, so payments will be based on generation x (3,580/6,725).

Edit - Bear in mind that you may want to move the export part away from FiT's and to a payment based on actual export, since you would get nothing under the FiT scheme for any extra export, as it will still be 50% deemed based on the apportioned figure.

[Ken]

Thanks Mart,
I will follow your progress.
Ken