Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 25 – Part 2 – The process and benefits of installing solar on buildings with Nic Cory, Absolar
38 Plays1 year ago
In this week’s episode, we speak with Nic Cory from Absolar.
Across the three parts of this episode, we are discussing how AI is changing how properties can be surveyed and the role of solar and heat pumps in the future of the built environment.
Nic is an entrepreneurial Finance Director with a diverse background in Big 4 audit, deals, private equity and property fund management. His journey has led him to Absolar, where they are using technology and data to drive Net Zero opportunities and decarbonise property portfolios whilst ensuring financial returns for clients.
Absolar exists to help people and businesses reduce their energy costs whilst adopting renewable energy sources. Using unique AI-based remote sensing and GIS technology, Absolar can carry out remote solar surveys for any building, portfolio, and city, wherever you are in the UK.
In Part 2 of this episode, we discuss:
🎨 The design and installation process for solar PV systems
🪫 Issues with the UK’s grid infrastructure and handling the increased power generated by solar PV systems
🌞 The challenges of taking a property off the grid, particularly in the residential sector
🔋 The increasing use of batteries in residential installations
📊 How many residential and commercial properties are suited to solar installations
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Solar Panel Installation
00:00:00
Speaker
So for part two, we're going to look at the process and benefits of installing solar on different buildings. So I suppose should we start with what a good process looks like around solar installation or identification and all that type of stuff? Yeah, of course. And I'm thinking sort of particularly on commercial property here, if I kind of tackle that first. The very first stage is to identify the opportunity.
00:00:24
Speaker
as we talked about in part one. Actually, when you're looking at one building, it's quite obvious. You look at a building and it's got a big south face and clear roof, great, I know it's going to be suitable to bother looking at a design process. Where you've actually got tens or through to thousands of properties, you've got to start whittling down which are the ones I want to look at and which ones am I going to worry about
Design and Planning for Solar Systems
00:00:47
Speaker
later. That identification phase for one property is very easy for a portfolio, becomes a little bit trickier.
00:00:54
Speaker
you then have to move into the design process and actually say what type of system, what size of system can the building sustain and also then what does the occupant need and solar PV is still very much reliant on
00:01:09
Speaker
clearly being able to save the energy that you otherwise would have consumed. So it depends on your energy profile and sizing it correctly is what determines a good installation versus one that actually has just been thrown on the roof and might not be the best financial or carbon payback.
Regulatory Challenges in the UK
00:01:26
Speaker
It's that design process and that specification process that goes along with it is quite bespoke. We've got a bit of our technology that looks at that, but that's where the manual review comes in and the specialism where you need to go through that design.
00:01:41
Speaker
In the UK, we then have to go through the permissions process. So you're probably familiar with planning permission. Actually, planning permissions for Solar PV is quite easy. They're within permitted development for the majority of sites, so long as you stick within certain design rules. We have to get permission from the grid, from the local grid, to connect to the electricity system in the area.
00:02:06
Speaker
That is the process at the moment that is kind of holding everyone up. And there's sort of lots of media reports about how much is sort of sat in backlog. And that's just down to the state of our grid and the fact some of it's quite a hold and needing upgrade. But that permission process can take three months and that's quite a while. So out of interest then, what about the grid being out of date is stopping people connecting into it? Is it just its ability to hold the capacity or is it something else?
00:02:34
Speaker
It's the fact that if you're putting PV on the roof, even if you as a consumer say, I'm going to be using all the power I'm generating. What if you're close? What are the weekends? You're going to be pushing that power back into the grid and the grid has to be able to take that power coming back in. Our systems were very much designed to allow you to take out the power.
00:02:54
Speaker
not to push it back in so the level of faults that the PV can have on the system needs to be tolerated within that local grid and that is the overriding restricting factor on rolling out PV across the country really. Interesting and I suppose the National Grid are working towards that or were there roadblocks? Did you know about that side
Economic Viability of Solar Projects
00:03:17
Speaker
of it?
00:03:17
Speaker
They certainly are. So in the UK, we've got a slightly devolved system with DNOs in different areas. Different DNOs are going at different speeds and have different priorities. So some areas are kind of really pressing ahead and some areas are frustratingly poor. I'll leave it at that.
00:03:36
Speaker
I completely understand that. I suppose beyond that then, what are the realities about how much electricity from solar and so on can be achieved? Do many buildings cover all of their usage and push back into the grid potentially, or do they cover half of it? What does that generally look like?
00:04:00
Speaker
Yeah, I guess if I talk in terms of payback, that's the easiest way to see how should you proceed with a project or not. In terms of, before I touch on that, taking a property off-grid, it's very hard to take a property off-grid, mainly because of the peaks that you use as power. If you put it on a residential scale, you boil your kettle, you suddenly need to put a load of power for that instant that you turn the kettle on and then it dies down.
00:04:24
Speaker
And actually PV is not very good. Solar PV is not very good at providing those spikes. And neither are batteries. Generators are what provide those spikes. Move that to commercial sphere. You turn on your air compressors. You're going to need to pull from the grid for that moment. So hence why taking property off grid is actually remarkably difficult. Not least in the winter, you're obviously going to generate less power with PV.
00:04:48
Speaker
In terms of payback, a commercial project, a good commercial property project, you'd expect to pay back within three and five years, and we see that being delivered on a daily basis. That's fairly normal. I ran through the stats this morning. The last 400 properties we surveyed that are reflective of the current rates, paying back in four and a half years on average. So that's what you'd expect on a commercial scale.
00:05:15
Speaker
Residential is entirely different and it's actually a very good residential projects you'd expect to pay back in nine years through to 12 years. And you start to get in trouble with the business case there because outside of London, the average house, people keep it for 15 years.
Technological Improvements and Future Trends
00:05:33
Speaker
So you're getting very tight to kind of the lifespan that people are thinking about a system. So if it's purely for financial gain, that's why residential just starts to become a bit trickier.
00:05:44
Speaker
That's interesting. Do you think that will change as the potential efficiency of solar changes or is it to do with the usage and sort of you say the surges in demand? It's very much to do with the usage and you know we're at home in evenings you know that's when you're using the power. So what will change that is batteries and we've seen that in the residential market you know you talk to some installers nine out of ten of all their installs are now with batteries
00:06:09
Speaker
And that shows they're starting to become far more far more reliable for the householder to try and shift some of that usage. They still shift a remarkably small amount of power and they still have quite a small short shelf life plus are expensive. So they don't
00:06:27
Speaker
they don't quite stack up economically for a lot of projects and in commercial in commercially um they you know it still has to the stars have to align for bachelors to work on a commercial project it does for some makes perfect sense but but for majority it doesn't so bachelors will bring down that uh payback period for for residential for sure uh we're just not there yet interesting okay
00:06:51
Speaker
And then I think I've got a couple of more questions around this. So, in terms of all the buildings that you look at, whether commercial or resi, I imagine there's more on the commercial side, but what percentage are typically suited to switching to, well not switching, but adding on PV? Is it, they're quite a lot that aren't, or is it majority can be?
00:07:11
Speaker
Yeah, so majority can be and give some numbers on both residential and commercial so we carried out a study beginning of this year on the residential property portfolio across the UK so it's extrapolated out after about surveying about 6,000 properties we could extrapolate out because it is a homogenous population.
00:07:33
Speaker
67% of houses were suitable for solar, which was higher than we expected. And that's actually broken down. 50% are sort of highly suitable with those south-facing roofs. And then 17% have east-west facing roofs that actually are exposed to enough radiation that would justify putting solar PV panels on there.
00:07:58
Speaker
And just because of the sake of nature, they're generally towards the south draw line from Cardiff to Cambridge, and east-west roofs work down from there. So a relatively high proportion of residential roofs, in our view, should have solar PV put on. There's no reason why not, apart from occupancy and paying to put it on.
00:08:22
Speaker
In terms of the commercial stock for all of those where people come to us and request a survey it's 90 percent suitable for solar which is I think an artificially high number because actually people are asking us about properties they sort of already think are suitable. I think there's a lot of sort of pre sifting before we get to get to see that.
00:08:43
Speaker
So I'd take that 90% with a pinch of salt. When we study in particular cities, and I spoke earlier about Basingstoke, the town of Basingstoke on particular, there it's 70% are suitable for solar of commercial property.
00:09:00
Speaker
And that's broken down. 52% are good. That's sort of quite interesting for solar. And so again, it's going to depend on the least length occupancy as to whether you go ahead. And it was 18% or sort of no brainers. I think that adds up to 70. Yeah, it does. So that 18% were
00:09:17
Speaker
you know you're going to get a payback in less than three years regardless it's so suitable for PV. So less of that commercial stock is suited to it and generally that's because commercial roofs are far more complex you know we stick all our plant on top of the building so there isn't space to put it.
00:09:34
Speaker
That's true. Do you think people or architects, whoever, will design buildings slightly differently in future to allow for that? Or is it quite restricted in terms of it has to almost go there in terms of not restricting the outside use around the building?
00:09:49
Speaker
So we're seeing a high amount of architects now coming to us early in the stage and saying, here's my design, here's my CAD drawings, what can I do to make this more efficient for solar PV? And the building I'm sitting in today is an example of that at the University of Southampton.
00:10:05
Speaker
started building, building, came to us with the designs and said, could we tweak the rooftop design, move some plant to the north of the roof instead of the south? And we were able to triple the size of the system as a result of making a few tweaks. So increasingly, we're doing that at the early stage of getting there just before it goes in for planning so that they're putting in for planning with a sensible size system rather than either bare minimums or over promising, which is going to be even worse when it comes to delivery.
00:10:34
Speaker
Yeah, that's fascinating actually. I hadn't thought about the, yeah, that type of aspect as to what's restricting it. I suppose one thing more from an end consumer side, and I imagine people may take this mentality into obviously a commercial building, is, you know, technology is changing so quickly, even phones that last six months before they're, you know, the old model.
00:10:58
Speaker
Is that something that's an issue with things like solar and heat pumps and so on, or is the technology not moving on at such a rate that you have to worry about investing in something that then is not efficient? Certainly. In solar PV, there are some sort of
00:11:14
Speaker
you know there are leaps that you can see in the future that could could be around but they're 10 years before they're going to hit hit the market in terms of actually being cost effective. So in solar PV there isn't we've been through that leap and we've been through that mass cost reduction as China came on board as the main provider. Actually we've kind of been through that progression air source heat pumps for sure. You know there are there are some some big leaps in efficiencies and cost.
00:11:40
Speaker
You may have seen Octopus last, I think it was last month, sort of released their style of heat pump. Suddenly that is actually going to change the market with people like that getting involved. So PV is established technology, we're kind of there. Heat pumps for sure, it is something that's getting more efficient year by year.
00:12:03
Speaker
I'd come back to what I said on batteries, that's the leap forward that we're beginning to experience, certainly residential, that leap is happening and in commercial we're beginning to see it, we're beginning to see the sort of containerized battery solutions for individual buildings getting interesting for our clients.