Re: Massive changes to G83 rules for solar PV installations needing advance permissio
Some brief feedback on the teleconference yesterday...
Generally constructive, with Ofgem open to our concerns, and pretty much all the installers saying the same things as far as I could tell.
Key points raised were
1 - Timescales for DNO's turning around stage 2 applications should be reduced from their current 45 day maximum, otherwise apart from anything else, it will result in a situation where installers are better off just waiting 28 days and doing it anyway.
2 - Geographic area definition is still far too wide, and the guidance note about it referring to an area served by 1 substation currently just confuses the situation and leaves the entire thing open to interpretation by the DNO / OFgem at a later date that could result in a customers installation being cut off. Ofgem were saying that the new guidance note was intended to clarify the situation so that it would only apply to systems that are actually installed on the same transformer - in which case this would be much much better as it would mean that we as installers could use our own judgement - eg if there's a transformer in the field then there's not point worrying about an installation carried out 20 miles away that just happened to be in the same postcode district.
3 - Suggestions made about alternative lower limits of systems size eg 2.2kW below which there would never be a need to prenotify the DNO - unlikely to make it into the current version, but could be looked at in future.
4 - Suggestions made about a database being made available to installers showing areas where there were known problems already, so installers could avoid them, and potentially this could be a better solution than the current proposal - OFgem were interested in spreading the idea as a voluntary best practice idea, but it's not going to replace the current proposals.
5 - Suggestions made about investigating / adopting the German solution of inverters that reduce their output to limit localised voltage spikes or overall high frequency issues, instead of the inverters being either 100% on, or 100% off. As virtually all inverters have this capability built in anyway it should be relatively simple to adopt this approach, which would then fully solve most of the concerns the DNOs have around localised over voltage issues. Ofgem seemed interested in this, but it's too late for it to make it into G83/2.
G83/2 is scheduled for publication at the end of this month, so it seems unlikely that anything other than minor tweaks are going to happen between now and then.
haven't got an email response 
(yet) others may not know that a response has been sent out becasue of that.
