The Government has announced that the feed-in-tariff rate will be reduced for newly registered installations from the 12th December to 21p/kWh:
This will not affect me, or others who are already registered on the FIT scheme, but I think that such a significant cut (currently it is 43.3p/kWh) will be a real disincentive for those looking to invest in solar power. I am primarily talking about householders – I have not been happy about the companies who have jumped on the bandwagon of offering free panels to profit from the feed-in-tariff. I think the Government should encourage companies who are not being paid to fit them by householders to invest in the larger megawatt-sized schemes instead, and if necessary the “rent-a-roof” scheme should be banned for the under 4/8/12kW schemes. Unfortunately the Government’s cut earlier in the year to installations larger than 50kW has already resulted in most companies that were planning to invest in the larger schemes dropping out or cancelling their projects.
This is also going to impact on the ability of the solar panel fitting industry, which was still in its fledgling stage. Already they are laying off staff or leaving the scheme, where it wasn’t their primary business. After being burnt once, I suspect it will take a long time before some of them would want to go back into this area. Also it will take a while before it becomes a worthwhile investment on a reasonable time-scale for households – doing a quick estimate, the payback time for an installation the same as ours would change from 10 to 15 years, which would have definitely made me think again about going ahead.