The engineer's principles

Recently I was preparing my very first solar PV system. Since, I, myself is a qualify person, so most of the item I will DIY to reduce my cost. My recently renovation had put my into very tight financial situation.

I had asked my piping sub-cond to do the framework for me since I have knew him for more than 10 years. At first I was thinking to galvanise my c-channel, but after checking the price, I had decided to paint the channel myself. Each length of C-channel is about RM127, but the galvanise cost for each length is RM88, which mean I need to pay about extra 1k for 12 lengths of c-channel. But to paint the channel, I only need around a hundred of good quality paint.

You can said I'm stingy, but I called it thrifty. I willing to pay for extra steel thickness, but I not willing to pay for the galvanisation. 1k is lot of money, it's more than my monthly salary when I get my first job. My principle on spending money, pay for something I need and not something I want. I willing to pay for extract strength cause that is the most important item in the project. I want something that is safe, last longer, and I don't need to worry after I had built it. But for galvanise the channel, if the price is ok, says around RM300, the I will galvanise it. But 1k is way too far from my budget. So I choose to paint it myself.

It's not an easy job to paint the channel under the hot sun, anyway I manage to finish it. Now the frame is up, and I going to do the electrical wiring myself. By 1 more week, my system will be online and hopefully the summer will give me some extra income to cover my investment.

So, if you interested to install solar PV for your house and become one of the FiT holder to sell generated power to TNB with a premium price, please just drop me an email and I will get to you. You can download the following brochure for your reference.

Is green energy a new business?

FiT has just kick started in Bolehland, Seda has opened its counter for FiT application. We saw a tremendous excellence response from Bolehland citizen, within half day, the quota for PV has been fully taken up. According to the news, 50MW has been allocated for PV (2011/2012), however, from Seda webpage, the total allocated PV quota is 69.89MW (2011/2012). If you check again, now the total available quota for PV until 2014 left 5.76MW at the time of this writing and I believe it will go zero by end of the day.

Source: Seda Portal 7/12/2011 9am

According to the news, there are total of 229 applications for FiT and 201 of it are applied for PV. Let’s do a simple calculation. Total of 201 applications for 69.89MW, which mean average of 348kW for each application. You may say this might not be the case cause for solar farm, one application may reach up to 5MW. Ok, let’s re-do it again. Now assume that 201 applications are all individuals that want to install PV at their house, so 201 applications for 7.14MW, which come to 35.5kW per application. Does it look normal?

For those who don’t understand PV, let me explain something on the PV installation.

PV is one of the simplest RE, it does not require heavy maintenance and it is clean and safe to install at any place. But one of the major constrains of PV is that it require spaces. From current technology, it can only generate around 140-150Wp per m2. Now, let’s us calculate the space required for 35.5kW PV by assume that the PV module can generate 145Wp per m2, so for 35.5kW you need 244.8m2 (2635sq.ft). It’s almost double of my house’s land area.

Something is not correct here, something fishy.

I have talked to one of the PV manufacturer, and he was shocked seeing this situation. It means they can’t sell any more PV for the next 3 years cause no one want to install PV anymore, since the quota has been taken up. There is no way to sell this technology to household that really want to contribute to the environment by hoping that they can at least recover their investment through FiT. Only those really rich people can afford to install without consider the rebate. For your information, PV is still talking about RM15k++ per kWp of installation.

I personally do not agree on PV farm, it is not green technology; it's destroying our environment, our mother nature. Imaging a 1MW solar farm needs to take up at least 7000m2++ or near to 2 acres of land. How cans a technology is called green but it needs to chop the trees and destroy a huge jungle area in order to install the so call green energy? It’s just bullshit to me.

Bolehland authority is killing this wonderful technology of PV, a green technology that really available to us for us to share our effort to help to improve the environment. But someone just kill it for the sick of their wealthiness .