A step further towards energy autonomy

Yesterday I took delivery of a energy storage system from Columbus Energy, the next step up from photovoltaic panels. This has two benefits for me and one for the grid. The first is that the huge battery liberates me from power cuts such as the one that occurred for four hours on Saturday; a topped-up battery gives me 48 hours of electricity before it runs down. Given that the longest I've ever experienced was 36 hours, that's plenty. [Even the three-day week caused by the miners' strike in the UK in 1974 didn't result in power outages that long.] The second benefit is lower energy bills in winter. Now, whereas my panels cover between two-thirds and three-quarters of my electricity use across the year, there's still a disparity in the price I pay for power from the grid and the price the energy company, PGE Obrót, pays for power from my panels. 

How it works: once the installers had hooked up the battery and the inverter (both about the size of a small fridge, left) in my garage, electricity from my panels began to flow into the battery until its full. The surplus goes to the grid. Should there be a power outage, my house draws electricity from the battery until the grid is repaired. In winter, when I use 20 times more electricity than my panels generate, the battery draws power from the grid at night at the night-time tariff, and during the day, the house is heated and lit by battery power.

The tipping point occurs in late October, when I have to start heating the house and the panels no longer generate enough power to cover that difference. This state of affairs continues into early April, by which time the sun is shining strongly and I no longer need to heat the house. This means that for seven and half months of the year I'm a net producer of electrical power and for five and half months, I'm a net consumer. [It's worth pointing here out that 61% of Poland's energy is generated by burning coal and a further 10% from gas.]

Then there's the benefit to the grid. Poland currently (as of July 2024) produces 17% of its energy from solar power. On sunny weekends and public holidays, when factories aren't using electricity, the outdated and creaking grid is overloaded. In such situations, the self-sufficient are no longer a burden to the system.

I have paid 32,400 złotys (£6,480)for the system, of which I will receive 50% (16,200 złotys or around £3,240) cashback from the Polish state. Yes, I could be poring over the numbers and trying to work out the return on investment – but I won't. I don't care. I have the cash; what matters to me is reducing my carbon footprint in a country that still generates too much power from fossil fuels, and having greater autonomy from the grid.

One thing I don't like about the set-up is that it all comes from China; hardware and software. I looked carefully at the permissions I'm granting to the system supplier, to handle my personal data (the terms and conditions say the data stays in the EU). However, I'm mindful of what Western security analysts have to say about this; the idea that the Chinese Communist Party ultimately has the wherewithal to spy on my energy use is not really an issue, but that it could – theoretically – cut me off from electricity is a small worry. I would have happily paid more to buy a Made in the EU set-up, but do these even exist?

This time last year:
Plenitude in the Year's Fruition

This time two years ago:
Behold the wonder of the commonplace

This time three years ago
The force-field of fate

This time four years ago:
Hot in the city

This time four years ago:
Resting with the heroes

This time seven years ago:
Polish employers' demographic challenge
[Since then, it's got worse. And it will be worse still.]

This time 12 years ago:
The rich, the poor, the entrepreneur

This time 12 years ago:
Food: where's the best place to shop in Poland? 
[BOYCOTT THE BASTARDS AUCHAN FOR NOT QUITTING ruZZia!]

This time 13 years ago:
Bittersweet

This time 14 years ago:
Commuting made easy

This time 15 years ago:
Work starts on the S79/S2 'Elka'

This time 16 years ago:
Warsaw's accident-filled streets

Two years with solar panels

Two years ago today, my eight photovoltaic panels were connected to the grid, and I could benefit from electricity generated in my own garden. How has it worked over two years? (Incidentally, yesterday evening's deluge gave the panels a thorough cleansing.)

Well, experience now shows that I should have installed more capacity, as the eight panels only managed to generate 78% of the electrical power that I have used over the past 12 months. Having said that, through better management of my electricity use, that's gone up from 72% over the previous 12 month period (12 July 2022 to 11 July 2023). 

The output of my panels – something entirely out of my control – was  up by 3% over the same period a year earlier, and my energy-saving efforts mean I used 16% less power. (Hurrah! Three percent more sunlight over the past year!)

But could I squeeze any more savings? Not without discomfort. In winter, the house is kept heated to 21C when I'm in and 17C when I'm out (to keep mildew and damp at bay). I confess to having inadvertently left the immersion heater switched on a few times overnight, and not defrosting the fridge often enough. Otherwise, I struggle to see how I could use less prąd – a nice, short Polish word, proving that not all Polish word are longer than the English equivalent. (Indeed, why not take 'prond' as a loan-work for electricity – one syllable for five?)

My energy bills (paid every six months) are low; in February I paid 385 złotys (£77) for all the electricity consumed from 12 July to 12 January. This works out at around 65 złotys (£13) a month averaged out across the year. Without the panels, I would have paid 1,136 złotys for six months (£227) or 189 złotys (£38) a month. Connection charges and other fees in this incredibly opaque bill push up the ratio, but in general, the bills are two-thirds lower than they would have been without the panels.

So – was it worth it? I have the spare cash, so yes it was. The payback period for the panels – which the salesman worked out to be eight years – turns out to be nearer to 14 years (at current prices). This is not the really the point. Poland still generates 61% of its electrical power through the burning of coal (both bituminous coal and lignite – that horrible low-grade brown stuff). This is down from 70% in 2020. Much of the rest comes from natural gas, no longer from Russia. The less of those fossil fuels I use the better. Of course, what I generate and sell to the grid in summer from my panels I draw back from the grid in winter, generated by fossil fuels, but while the sun shines – make hay.

This time last year:
Michalczew, south of Krężel

This time three years ago:
High summer in Chynów: storms, fruit and exercise

This time four years ago:
Summer wet and dry

This time six years ago:

Rainy summer Warsaw moods

This time eight years ago:
Marathon stroll along the Vistula

This time ten years ago:
Complaining about the lack of a river crossing between Siekierki and Góra Kalwaria! 

This time 11 years ago:
S2 update 

This time 12 years ago:
Progress on S2 bypass – photos from the air

This time 14 years ago:
Up Śnieżnica

This time 16 years ago:
July continues glum (16 years on and a week of 30+C heat)

First month with solar panels on the działka

At first sight, it looks really good - but then mid-July to mid-August is a sunny time of year...  According to the Solis app on my phone, my eight panels generated 304 złotys-worth of electricity in their first month of operation. I would estimate that during the six-month period between equinoxes, I could be looking at an average of 250zł/month on average (1,500zł), and maybe one-third of that during the dark months (500zł), so 2,000zł revenue in a year? Don't know yet - will find out.

What goes wrong? Two days ago, I had five alerts on my app ('Grid over voltage') between noon and 3pm; the sun is shining - but it's a public holiday, and the local grid is unable to consume the power that all the local solar panel arrays in the neighbourhood is generating. This is second day it happened (first time it happened - just the once - was on a sunny Saturday evening in late July).

Since 12 July, when the meter was switched to one that reads both power taken from grid and power fed into grid, I have used 69.0 kWh of electricity and sent to the grid 449.5 kWh. That's six and half times as much generated as used; my guess - to be confirmed over the winter - is that this ratio will be reversed when the heating is on (needed to keep the house warm, dry and damp- and mould-free). At the moment, I'm using less than 2 kWh of electricity a day (mainly laptop, lighting in the evening, hot-water heater for showers and washing up, fridge, kettle and oven). With six 750W heaters, I'll be using 3 kWh an hour if they are set to full, plus all of the above, so 74kWh a day - though I doubt I'll need all that power to heat all the time to keep the house at a just-about-comfortable 19C.

So it's too early to tell, but winter no longer holds no terrors on the działka - my solar panels are like a huge stockpile of wood built up over the summer.

People might question the rate of return, but I am satisfied that I have made an investment that above all is good for the planet; I feel that I am no longer dependent on fossil-fuel (although the electricity I will have pull down from the grid come the autumn and winter will be generated by coal, at least I am paying for it with solar-generated power).

Total cost of investment: 27,500 złotys; I'm expecting a couple of thousand back from the government at some stage (a nice-to-have rather than an expectation). So payback period could be up to 10 to 12 years. Will keep you updated as more data accumulates!

UPDATE March 2023: Since the installation of panels, I have received two tranches of 2,000 zł from the Polish government, reducing my capital investment outlay to 23,500 zł.

This time last year:
Qualia meditations

This time eight years ago:
Public and private land in Poland

This time nine year:
Two Warsaw sunsets over water

This time 12 years ago:
Farewell to the old footbridge over Puławska

This time 13 years ago:
Let's ban cars with engines over 2.0 litres

This time 15 years ago:
Ul. Kórnicka gets paved over

A better tomorrow - science and technology

I have on my bookshelves comics from the 1950s and '60s in which from time to time, there'd be fascinating articles about the future. How, for example, by the year 1985, it will be possible to fly from London to Sydney in two hours thanks to nuclear-powered space tugs. We would all be flying to work in personal heli-jets.

Futures are all too often predicted on the basis on the present; if over the past three decades leading up to 1957 have witnessed amazing progress in aerospace technology (from biplanes to space rockets), surely that tendency can only be upward? Few paused to ask whether we need to be in the office (Arthur C. Clarke famously did, in 1964, quite accurately predicting remote work by 2014. ). 

The history of human technological progress is full of cases where an individual or handful of individuals could bring about a departure from the established arc of development. One sudden discovery or invention dramatically changes human progress. Some you can see coming, others you can't until they've happened. Who could have predicted the impact the smartphone would have on our daily lives when Steve Jobs launched the iPhone in 2007?

Black-swan events - entirely unpredicted, with a high impact - are also lurking in our predestined future. One I've been considering for a while has been disclosure by governments that our planet is being visited by advanced non-human intelligence, ushering in new paradigms in physics, cosmology and spirituality.

Healthcare

Let's look at healthcare; the technology that's just around the corner is gene therapy; having unravelled the human genome, the ability to fix faulty genes will make the treatment of rare genetic conditions easier, but it will also give a more targeted response to common ones such as cancer. The need for proper clinical trials, which can last upwards of eight years, is the main reason why advances in medical science are not swiftly turned into commonplace medical interventions. Fixing what's gone wrong is the main goal of medicine - one that will become far more important in future will be fixing what's natural - the ageing process. Genetic technology extending the human lifespan will, I believe, be well advanced by 2050. A bit more science-fiction would be a pill or process that can raise IQ. The benefit for humanity to raise the IQ of the lowest quintile by ten points would be massive.

The built environment

The construction industry has been slow to adopt new technology. I see three major developments - the first being digitalisation of the whole process, from design to use, based on building information modelling (BIM) or at least an easy-and-cheap-to-use version of it, perhaps augmented by artificial intelligence. Developer, architect, contractor and end-user should all have access (via the cloud) to all relevant files pertaining to a given building including 3D models, energy-use forecasts, instructions, guarantees and maintenance schedules. The second is modular construction, with prefabricated units being mass-produced in factories and delivered to site for assembly. The third is carbon-neutral construction. The CO₂ emissions the come from making concrete is critical; if we can manage to turn methane into four atoms of pure hydrogen and one atom of pure carbon (as graphene) and mix the graphene (in tiny amounts) with cement, the resulting concrete becomes much stronger and therefore not as much as needed for the same structure. The 5bn tonnes of cement produced each year thus account for some 8% of the world’s anthropogenic CO₂. Yet if less than 0.1% by weight of graphene is added to the mixture, concrete ends up 30% stronger. And stronger concrete means less of it is needed, with a consequent reduction in CO₂.

Energy

Fossil fuels are on the way out, natural gas being the last to be extinguished. Renewables will - in time - take over completely. Hydrogen may yet take over, but there's a long way to go; nuclear fusion is always 30 years away. In the meanwhile, I have high hopes in perovskite - a translucent crystal with photovoltaic properties. A Polish company, Saule Technologies, has developed the technology to inkjet print perovskite onto thin plastic film, which can then be applied to any surface turning it into a solar panel. Imagine sticking this to existing buildings - the demand is potentially huge. Speaking to the firm yesterday, they say that there's already demand that would justify building 50 factories to make the stuff. Just one property developer has five million square metres of space onto which to put perovskite film - there's a need for square kilometres of perovskite film every year. Far lighter than silicon panels, perovskite film can be cut to shape, wrapped around objects, tinted different colours. Once the money gets behind it, perovskite will go mainstream very quickly.

IT

The cloud will advance, gobbling up petabytes of data as it goes, sucking in government services, personal data and corporate computing. It will become cheaper, more secure and more effective all the while. AI is set to work on the data and AGI (artificial general intelligence) will emerge into the mainstream. One threat to cloud security will be quantum computing, in particular its predicted ability to crack open any encryption. The battle for quantum supremacy (one of the last things my father wrote down before he died in October 2019) will shape up between the US and China; the outcome could be geopolitically decisive. Will we get from artificial intelligence to artificial consciousness? This to me is an existentially crucial question. Either consciousness is merely something that emerges from complexity, and once there's enough computing power to get close to the number of neuronal connections in the human brain, computers will become sentient. Or - consciousness is a property of living things - computers are not living things, so no matter how powerful, they will never achieve true sentience. 

Computers will, I believe, increasingly interact with human biology. Goggles will be coming soon; once we accept how they will change the way we look, our workspace will no longer be the keyboard and screen, but a virtual keyboard and virtual screen, mapped out with our gestures. The concept of 'transhumanism' - using technology to augment human performance - is nothing new. The invention of the shoe, for example, several millennia ago, allowed Homo sapiens to move faster over rougher terrain in pursuit of prey. Glasses came into common use in 14th century Italy. If you wear shoes and glasses, you are already 'transhuman' in the strict sense. Elon Musk's Neuralink Corporation is developing a brain-computer interface. Yet we are already interfacing with data; our smartphones augment our memory (who remembers phone numbers any more?), and instant access to Wikipedia settles many a pub argument over, for instance, how many machineguns a Hawker Hurricane Mk IIb had. Whether we end up having computer memory plugged into our brain remains to be seen!

Human geodiversity - more predictions here.

This time six years ago:
Memory, place and experience

This time seven years ago:
UK Number One in world Soft Power rankings

This time ten years ago:
First flight from Modlin

This time 11 years ago:
Another cycle route to work

This time 14 years ago:
PZL M-28 and Piaggio Avanti - Okęcie regulars

The Earth, and All that is Upon It

I glance up into the garden from my laptop on the kitchen table to watch the silver birches, oaks and pines sway in the breeze. As I grow older and wiser, I am increasingly convinced that they are all conscious - conscious in the manner that trees are conscious. Without powers of observation (other than sensing the soil that holds their roots, or the sensation of movement in the wind), lacking powers of deduction, or ability to focus with intent - just (just!) the awareness of being Alive.

I glance across from the keyboard at a housefly that's examining the kitchen table. In years gone by, I'd have squashed it - slowly moving my hand behind its blind spot, then when I feel the moment for the kill is right - BAM! But not any more. Live and let live; it's not hurting me - it's calm, not buzzing - there's only one fly, not a swarm - so I just let it be. [Paul McCartney finds his way in the beginning and end of that sentence.] Walking around, unhurriedly, the fly disappears behind the laptop, I return to focusing on my work. The fly, just as the tree, is aware of its existence. What it makes of the white veneer surface of the table, what qualia impressions it subjectively experiences - is something I can only intuit.

Left: sentient, observant, alert - a study in attention and intention. Also viewed from the kitchen table, a kestrel surveys the land for signs of voles or field mice.

My garden, home to about a million plants if you include every blade of grass, every weed, surrounds me. It grows. I shall not take a lawn mower to it, nor spray weed-killer or pesticide on it. We symbiose. Neighbours down the road are forever mowing and taking chainsaws to their trees; OK, their gardens look neat, but I have a different aesthetic - more in keeping with the future. I am a steward of my acre; on my watch it shall live and breathe and photosynthesise. 

Yet grass should not be allowed to grow too high around the building - I use a scythe; physical effort is needed to keep the immediate lawn adjacent to the house reasonably trim. Ants, I see, are returning to the doorstep, where they were nesting two years ago - rather than kill them with boiling water, I discourage them with used coffee grounds from the cafetière.

And my solar panels have finally been plugged into the grid by the electricity company, four weeks and a day since they were installed (the electricity company legally has 30 days to do this - they did it on Day 29). It was sunny today from around 10am to 3:30pm, the app in my phone tells me that the panels have generated 18.6kWh, earning me 16.08 złotys so far today (it's 7pm as I write). This is way more than the electricity I'm currently using, but the idea is to balance out with the grid across the year, so I sell the surplus in summer which is then offset against winter usage, allowing me to keep the house warm and dry and mildew-free right through the cold dark months.

We must fight the temptation to endlessly consume in a cycle of waste. The Earth can sustain us all, indefinitely, but only if the affluent part of the global population stops burning through resources at the current rate. 

"Well maybe it's just the time of year

Or maybe it's the time of man

I don't know who I am

But you know life is for learning.

We are stardust

Billion year old carbon

We are golden

Caught in the devil's bargain

And we've got to get ourselves

back to the garden"

- Woodstock, Joni Mitchell (1969)

The devil's bargain? Mindless consumption. Greed and the disillusionment it brings.

Ah yes - the James Webb Space Telescope has started sending images from 13.1 billion light years away - the earliest images of galactic formation. Misfortune has been precluded - but let's not get complacent!

This time last year:
First steps in meditation
[More on this soon]

This time three years ago:
Poetry in the search for eternal truths

This time four years ago:
Koszyki

This time five years ago year:
It's just an Ilyushin (Warsaw's long-gone plane-restaurant)

This time six years ago:
Marathon stroll (31.5km) along the Vistula 

This time eight years ago:
Complaining about the lack of a river crossing between Siekierki and Góra Kalwaria! 

This time nine years ago:
S2 update (nearly ready)

This time ten years ago:
Progress on S2 bypass - photos from the air

This time 14 years ago:
Up Śnieżnica

This time 15 years ago:
July continues glum (2007 - a rainy summer)

Powered by the Sun

My działka will soon be plugged into the sun - as soon as an electrician from PGE Obrót reprograms my new electricity meter to current in (from the grid) and current out (generated by my new panels). Apart from my new smugness that I'll not be burning any fossil fuels downstream to heat the house, I will have an extended dwelling season in the country, where solar-powered heating can ensure the interior stays warm and dry all winter long. No more entering the house to find it's +4.5C inside, the heating can be left on day and night at a low level to keep damp at bay.

The downside is having to adjust to a new view. The panels had to go on the ground, as the roof of my house could not be aligned more badly to catch the sun. As it is, on the ground, it is optimal (I just need to prune back the trees and shrubs to the south-east of the array - see bottom picture). Tilted just slightly west of due south, the panels will catch the sun at its most energetic, around 1pm. With the drive now located to the east, the panels do not interfere with access.

There's more energy than I currently use; an electric vehicle charging point may come in handy one day.

Below: how shall I optimise the space behind the panel array? Small, metal tool-shed? (nothing flammable, just in case) Or a conifer screen, kept neatly trimmed?

As I wrote, these eight panels cost 25% more than the ten panels on the house in Jeziorki (installed November 2020), reflecting supply-chain difficulties from China and the inflationary spiral - dearer electricity means more people ordering solar panels. Still - it's done, it won't be any cheaper in the near future. In the more distant future, perovskite film will be available to stick onto any south-facing facades (in theory, because perovskite is translucent, you will also be able to stick it onto existing silicon-based panels to increase their effectiveness. Also better than the Jeziorki set-up is the user interface on the junction box, complete with phone app (which will start to give data once the meter has been seen to). Much more legible. The new system is from Columbus Energy, by the way.

Will there be money from the government for this? I've discounted it. Last time round it was broken promises (5,000zł became 3,000zł, with over a year's wait); I'm not doing it for any subsidy but for the planet.

This time two years ago:
Poland's town/country divide explored

This time six years ago:

A long walk to Czachówek

This time eight years ago:
Half a mile under central Warsaw, on foot

This time nine years ago:
Dzienniki Kołymskie reviewed

This time ten years ago
Russia-Poland in Warsaw: the worst day of Euro 2012

This time 12 years ago:
Thirty-one and sixty-three - a short story

This time 13 years ago:
Warsaw rail circumnavigation

This time 14 years ago:
Classic Polish vehicles

This time 15 years ago:
South Warsaw sunsets

Solar promises dashed

"If you can count, count on yourself" - old Polish proverb. The man from Innogy Stoen Operator came today, Saturday 12 December, to change the electricity meter to a two-way one that measures energy produced from our new solar panels balanced against the energy drawn down from the grid on cloudy days (and nights). Once Innogy emails an aneks do umowy to sign, the formalities will be complete, and the solar panels will start to earn a living...

But there will be no 5,000 złotys (£1,000) forthcoming, as promised by the Polish government. I had intended that as a Christmas bonus. The Mój Prąd programme, which originally had the deadline for applications set for 18 December, suddenly had it moved forward to Sunday 7 December. The announcement came on the afternoon of Thursday 3 December, leaving one working day to finalise the paperwork. Reason given: the money has ran out. [You can still offset the capital investment against income tax - this remains helpful.]

Applications for subsidies were arriving at the rate of 2,000 a day, and those due to arrive over the last 11 days of the programme (such as ours) are now too late. The original plan was: get the chitty from the meter man, dash with it to the nearest BOK (customer service centre, at Galeria Mokotow), get them to print out the annex to the contract, sign it - and by Monday, 14 December, four days before the deadline, we're sorted, and over the finish line. 

Why did we leave it so late? 

Why did it take energy company Innogy Stoen Operator 13 working days between receiving the registered mail with our application (it arrived on 18 November) to authorising a change of meter (4 December), and another eight days for the chap to actually come round and do it?

* * * * *

The ill-will and mistrust generated by having the rug pulled from under one's feet affects not only the 22,000 or so households who won't receive the promised refund, but also the numerous solar-energy companies set up on the back of Mój Prąd to install and connect the panels and sort out the paperwork. And the grid companies, whose call-centre representatives are no doubt getting an earful from disgruntled customers across Poland. A lack of decent forecasting is no doubt to blame - there were ten per cent more applications than planned, and those ten per cent were cut off; the possibility of a premature termination of the programme was not properly communicated, neither to consumers, nor to the industry.

This is one of several instances where poor communication and unpredictability and lack of established rules have held back renewable energy in Poland - biogas, waste-to-energy and onshore wind turbines being the previous ones. I've seen British investors come and leave with their tails between their legs as all of a sudden the rules change mid-project. 

Things like this do nothing to boost investor sentiment in Poland's renewable energy sector.

Climate change is accelerating (this year's Covid-driven drop in CO₂ emissions notwithstanding); moving away from fossil fuels is crucial if we are to avoid environmental disasters in coming decades. Poland still generates more than three-quarters of its electricity by burning coal. Yet fossil fuels are currently cheaper than renewables by a factor of between 1:1.3 to 1:1.5. To make up the difference, any top-down initiative to wean consumers away from coal must be kick-started by subsidies.

With the 5,000 złotys subsidy, the panels on our roof would have paid for themselves in full after seven years. Without, the payback period will be nearer 10 and half years. 

Would I have taken the decision without the incentive offered by Mój Prąd? Probably not. I would have waited until the renewables-to-fossil-fuels cost-ratio had fallen to 1:1, driven by ever-cheaper, ever-more effective solar panels. (A perovskite/crystalline silicon sandwich panel, or even better, a perovskite/perovskite sandwich panel could be getting 80%+ extra solar energy from the same surface, but that's maybe three to four years off.) But by then - sod the government and its whims. Renewables will be cheaper than coal. Switching to solar will be a no-brainer.

Having said that, as soon as the aneks do umowy is signed, our electricity bills will tumble. Average monthly consumption of electricity for the past 12 months was 190 złotys (around £38) for 360 kWh usage. This should now fall to 41 złotys (around £8) a month, which is the connection charge. 

The difference is 150 złotys (£30). How many months will it take to pay off an investment of 21,500 złotys (£4,300)? Nearly 12 years. But then there is the income tax relief...

Do I feel bitter about having that 5,000 złotys snatched away from me two weeks before the original deadline? Yes, I do right now, but I'll get over it.  

Unlike Brexit.

This time three years ago:
Meditations on West Ealing and Change.

This time five years ago:
Warwick University alumni meet in Warsaw

This time six years ago:
Pluses and minuses of PKP InterCity

This time seven years ago:
When transportation breaks down

This time 12 years ago:
Full moon closest to Earth

Solar-powered home

Well, here they are - the solar panels. In place, just waiting for electricity supplier Innogy to hook up the inverter to the grid. In the meantime, sunny days (like today) come and go and the panels lay there, idle. One day, Innogy will give a date when an installer will come and switch meters, and make the final connection. From then on, electricity bills will become a thing of the past - there will only be a nominal charge (around 40 zlotys/£8 incl. VAT a month) for grid connection.

How does it work? The key thing is to know how many kilowatt hours of energy your house consumes. Polish law on renewable energy sources prevents the selling of power that's surplus to a home's requirements, so if you put too many panels on the roof and over a year you end up producing more electricity than you use, you lose. You give electricity to the grid for free. And if you put up too few panels, you pay the difference between what they produce from the sun and what you have to pull down from the grid, again over a period of a year.

Other than the panels, your house needs two additional bits of kit. One is the inverter, which sits by the junction box, between the grid and all your household appliances. The second is a WiFi-connected smart meter, which gathers data from the panels and informs you (and your electricity supplier) how much power the panels are generating, or if they are not generating, how much power you're pulling down from the grid, so as to work out the balance.

If your installer has done the sums correctly, you will have exactly as many panels as you need. Too many, and you end up sending surplus back to the grid, having paid for the panels and their installation. Too few, and the sum doesn't balance the other way, and you pay for the kilowatt hours that have to be drawn down from the grid to make up the difference.

Here, it's ten panels, facing south-west. Alignment (azimuth) and zenith angle are crucial. On my działka, the roof could not be aligned worse - it's exactly east-west. Optimal is a roof with a south-facing slope. A flat roof is useless too, as the panels need to be angled up towards the sun so that the rays can fall as close as possible to the perpendicular. 

The cost of the installation was around 21,500 złotys; half paid upfront, the other half after grid connection. And then comes the magic bit - once hooked up, your energy supplier applies for a 5,000 złotys government grant, which will be paid back directly to me. Plus, you can offset the investment against your tax bill. All in all, we worked out with the installation company, Stilo Energy, that in the case of our house, the investment will be fully paid off in just over six years - assuming the price of electricity doesn't go up over that time - which it will.

The government incentive is a package called Mój Prąd ('My Current') announced in July 2019; the bad news is that it the scheme coming to an end this month. It has been very popular. On my motorbike rides around southern Mazowsze and into Świętokrzyskie and Lubelskie provinces this summer, I could see plenty of rural households that have taken it up. All households consuming between 2kW and 10kW are eligible. In some cases, the panels were installed on rickety old barns that happened to have optimally aligned and angled roofs. Others, having poor roof alignment, have build car ports or other structures that exist primarily so as to have a roof in which panels can be optimally mounded.

Installing photovoltaic panels on an existing roof is called BAPV - Building-Applied Photovoltaics. This is today. The future will be BIPV - Building-Integrated Photovoltaics. Architects designing new houses should already be doing so around solar panels, planning roofs so that the zenith and azimuth angles are optimal for a given latitude, and that the panels fit flush with the roof for aesthetic purposes.

A huge breakthrough will be the eventual replacement - or conjunction of conventional silicon-based panels with perovskite film. The process, invented by Polish scientist Olga Malinkiewicz, takes perovskite - a transparent crystal, which generates electricity when light shines on it, and ink-jet prints it onto rolls of plastic film, many times thinner than a human hair. As you can imagine, this can be stuck onto office windows to turn office buildings into power stations. The Polish company that is commercialising this process is called Saule Technologies, and I hope you will be hearing about it in the future.

If you work in the construction sector (architect, civil engineer, developer, contractor/subcontractor) or in real estate (investor, consultant, agent), pop into this  free webinar this Thursday (3 December) to learn more about how BAPV and BIPV will revolutionise our buildings.

This time last year:

Jeziorki's ponds are drying up
[Happy to report the water level's slightly higher today]

This time four years ago:
Jeziorki - second track, second platform

This time five years ago:
Pitshanger Lane wins London's High Street of the Year award

This time seven years ago:
Trouble ahead in Ukraine.

This time ten years ago:
Jeziorki, dawn, winter

This time 13 years ago:
Tuwim's Lokomotywa in English

Another attack on the car industry - from Forbes

Three days after my post on why the world's car industry needs to re-think its entire business model, this piece from that bastion of American free-market capitalism, Forbes, essentially arguing a very similar case. If you can't be bothered to read the whole thing, here's the intro...

Young people are losing interest in driver’s licenses. Cars have climbed to near-record prices. Increasingly, Americans are looking at alternatives to cars, like public transportation, bike sharing and rides from Uber.

So it's not just in western Europe that peak car is happening. The US auto industry is also facing a serious demographic threat from young consumers.

Another factor I didn't mention in my previous post related to the car is air pollution. Not yet an issue out in the open in Warsaw as it is in London, Paris, Athens or Beijing - but it will be.

See this survey by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe about how many lives could be saved if the same number of people across Europe travelled by bicycle as they do in Copenhagen (where 26% of the population cycles to work). The UNECE report suggests that in London alone, raising the number of journeys undertaken by bicycle from 3% to 25% would cut the number of premature deaths caused by air pollution by over 540 a year. In Warsaw, where 5% of journeys are by bike, the number of deaths prevented would be over 190 a year.

London was hit by some serious air pollution at the beginning of this month, with warnings on TV not to conduct strenuous exercise outdoors, and to keep vulnerable groups of people inside.

This article on Politics.co.uk suggests that 4,000 Londoners a year die from air pollution, and yet politicians are afraid to tackle the issue. Again, here's a highlight...

Across the UK, more than one in twenty deaths each year are now caused in part by air pollution. That's almost 30,000 people whose deaths could be avoided. But while politicians queue up to warn about the dangers of sugar and passive smoking to children, very few are willing to say anything about the deaths our addiction to cars has caused.

In London, no doubt here in Warsaw air quality will get worse before it gets better. In the meantime, don't drive if you really don't have to.

This time last year:
Bicycle shake-down day

This time two years ago:
40 years on - Roxy Music's first two albums

This time four years ago:
Twenty years, ten months, six days
[Spooky coincidence]

This time six years ago:
Swans still in Jeziorki

Challenges for the car industry

From 1970 to 2010, the aviation industry has managed to decrease the amount of fuel consumed per passenger by 73%, the car industry managed a meagre 17% decrease. Why? Cars have been getting bigger and heavier, needing ever more powerful engines to propel them, which all but mitigate the efforts to make those engines more efficient. Why? Because the motor industry tells us that's what we want.

Since its launch in 1974, the Volkswagen Golf, now in its seventh generation, has become progressively longer and wider. Although the latest Golf has shed some weight and a little height, it's still over 50% heavier than the original Mk I. Indeed, the VW Polo, one segment smaller than the Golf, outgrew its original bigger brother after just three generations. Since the Polo grew so big, VW launched the Up! as a car for the smallest 'A' segment - and yet the Up! is longer, wider, taller and heavier than the original Mk I Polo. The current Golf, meanwhile, is now bigger than a 1970s Ford Cortina Mk III, which at the time was classed as a large family car. And, at over 1.2 tonnes, the Golf is as weighty as a 1970s Ford Zephyr Mk IV - a full-size luxury car.

VW Golf	Launch year	Length (m)	Width (m)	Height (m)	Weight* (kg)
Mk 1	1974	3.705	1.610	1.395	790
Mk 2	1982	3.985	1.665	1.415	910
Mk 3	1992	4.074	1.694	1.422	960
Mk 4	1997	4.148	1.735	1.440	1050
Mk 5	2003	4.205	1.759	1.479	1155
Mk 6	2009	4.199	1.779	1.479	1217
Mk 7	2013	4.255	1.799	1.452	1205

* Unladen weight of base model in range.      Data source: de.wikipedia.org.  

The main reason that cars have nearly doubled in weight over the past half-century has been because they are being engineered to be safer in the event of a high-speed impact, a side effect of the fact that the car industry has been making the cars ever more powerful, with faster acceleration and higher top speeds.

It's a vicious circle from which the car industry needs to snap free, especially in view of the industrialisation of China, India and behind them, Africa.

On Thursday, I went to BP's Energy Outlook to 2035, a fascinating presentation about how the oil company sees the world energy supply and demand shaping up over the next two decades. Today, there are 1.1 billion cars on our planet, serving 7 billion people. By 2035, BP forecasts that 8.7 billion people will be driving around in 2.3 billion cars. The energy demand for these vehicles, the equivalent of 2 billion tonnes of oil, is around half of all of mankind's energy needs in 1965.

The biggest growth in energy demand for transportation is expected to come from China (up by 120% to 2035). In Europe, 'peak car' has been reached, along with a demographic peak. Young Europeans are less eager to spend their hard-earned money on a car. As I pointed out two months ago, western Europe has ceased to be a growth market for the car makers; the average age of a new car buyer in German is over 52 years and only 27% of all new car buyers in Germany were under 45.

Will China and India catch up with the West in terms of car ownership? For the sake of the planet - let's hope not - at least if we're talking about fossil-fuel powered cars. There are signs of hope - in China at least. The current smogs plaguing Beijing and other Chinese cities will no doubt cause the monolithic Communist Party to quickly pass laws to reduce emissions. And China's leaders are keeping their cities from sprawling outward into endless exurbs, as well as investing heavily in public transport.

But all the same, the car industry must show signs that it is moving in a more sustainable way. Lighter materials such as aluminium (which costs more to smelt, but which is more resistant to corrosion than steel) is one solution. But in general, the car industry must start to built cars that are smaller, less powerful, use less energy to build and to propel.

We really don't need to drive as much as we do. Certainly in cities, public transport, walking and cycling are better and healthier than commuting by car. Inter-urban transport is best served by coach, rail or air, with hire cars at the destination for those who really need them. IT solutions, collaborative consumption models (car sharing, car pooling) assisted by accelerating urbanisation will all help slow down the growth of demand for car ownership. IT can also make cars much safer; linking the car via a black box and GPS to an insurance provider, safe, energy-efficient driving can be rewarded with lower premiums. And lower taxes?

BP's forecasts suggest that despite global GDP rising by around 30% between now and 2035, CO2 emissions will rise by 10%. Still way too much from the point of climate change, but at least we can see a decoupling of economic activity from fossil-fuel usage. BP also sees production of conventional petrol, diesel or LNG-powered cars falling to some 25% of the total by 2035, with LNG taking a rising share of that; hybrids and pure battery-powered cars are expected to account for three-quarters of the cars manufactured in 20 years time.

Dumb-ass design for dumb-ass drivers. The original Mini was smart.

But at the heart of it, car design must change. To date, it's been focused on building something to impress. Grand image-statements that project power, authority and prestige. By playing on mankind's inherent insecurity, the car industry has been able to sell people something bigger, more powerful and ultimately more wasteful than is necessary. (Unlike the aviation industry. Airlines will always chose the most cost-effective product.) This wastefulness cannot continue. From time to time something rare happens and the industry comes up with something classless and stylish - like the original Mini or the new Fiat 500 - small, frugal cars that trendy people can appear fashionable in. (Can you think of any others?)

Cars should be made as small and as light as practicable, built for fuel efficiency and reliability rather than for speed and ego-boosting appeal. If not, the developed markets of North America, the EU and Japan will see declining car sales over the forthcoming decades.

This time two years ago:
Painting the Novotel Orange

This time five years ago:
That's what I like about the North

Burn less gas - do Ukraine a favour

At an event I was at this evening, I learnt from an energy specialist working for a well-known oil and gas company that unlike Poland (where less than 50% of households are connected to the gas mains), in Ukraine, nearly all houses and flats are heated by gas. Cheap, subsidised gas that's generally unmetered, where few buildings use thermostats, and where vastly more gas is used to heat homes than is the case in Poland.

So Putin has the Ukrainians by the short and curlies. (And most of Belarus's electricity is generated by burning gas.) Any wayward activities that are contrary to the interests of Greater Russia, and off goes the gas mid-winter. But this winter...?

We shall see what happens this mid-winter in the run-up to the Sochi Winter Olympics, Putin's personal pet propaganda project. The sight of Ukrainians freezing as cuddly Olympic mascots frolic about Sochi's ski-jumps and ice-rinks is not one that Putin would wish to see on TV screens around the world.

In the meantime, while Poland waits to see whether there is any commercially viable shale gas under its territory, and as we wait for the Świnioujście LPG port to open, it behoves us to remember where the gas we burn comes from. And act accordingly.

If every Pole turned down the central heating by just two degrees centigrade this winter, it would make a noticeable difference to Poland's balance of trade deficit with Russia. And would show that we are not indifferent to the actions of a bully. So instead of walking around an over-heated house in shirtsleeves this winter, put on a pullover and turn down the thermostat a notch or two.

Czester says: "Oi! Human! Turn down the heating - alright?"

Energy saving is the 'fifth fuel' (the first four being fossil fuels, nuclear, renewables and er... what's the fourth one again?). Saving energy is a lot more efficient than any of the others because you don't have to generate, transmit or distribute the fifth fuel. And in the case of Poland, which is highly dependent on a less-than-friendly neighbour for nearly all of its gas, saving energy is a matter of national security too.

This time three years ago:
Early evening atmosphere

This time five years ago:
Toponyms - how many names has Jeziorki?

This time six years ago:
On the road to Białystok