Tag: fits

Update on the legal challenge to the Government’s change to the FIT rate

The BBC reports that “…the government has failed in an appeal against a decision which blocked its attempts to reduce solar subsidies… However, the government has said it will seek leave to take the case to the UK’s Supreme Court”.

What this appears to mean is that those who have or had solar panels fitted between 12th December 2011 and 3rd March 2012 will have to wait until either the bid to take it to the Supreme Court is rejected, or the case is heard there and a decision made, before they will know what rate they are going to be paid.  Recent legislation does however mean that after the 3rd March the feed-in tariff rate for new installs will be 21p per kWh.

Further news about the reduction of the FIT rate

There’s been a few stories relating to the Government’s reduction of the feed-in tariff from the 12th December:

 

“Jobs warning over solar energy changes”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-16132726

– more details about the impact of the reduction.

 

“Church and charity warn on solar”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16304817

“The Church of England and the National Trust have written to the government saying recent policy changes put community solar power schemes at risk…”

 

But in the last few days:

“Solar tariff cut plan ruled legally flawed”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16291768

“Government plans to cut subsidies for solar panels on homes have been ruled legally flawed by the High Court…”

 

The impact of this is yet to become clear, or if it will actually make any difference to anyone, but it may result in interesting news early next year.

Government announces changes to FIT for new installs from December 12th

The Government has announced that the feed-in-tariff rate will be reduced for newly registered installations from the 12th December to 21p/kWh:

http://www.clickgreen.org.uk/news/national-news/122745-government-confirms-plans-for-december-cut-off-for-feed-in-tariff-solar-rates.html

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.

FIT Paperwork

Today we got the email from our energy supplier, after having sent off the original paperwork last week.  It said:

“We are pleased to inform you that your Feed in Tariff (FIT) application has been received.
The registration of your installation will take approximately 6-8 weeks to process. If there are any documents missing that prevent us from continuing with the registration, the application pack will be returned to you with a full explanation of any additional information that is required.
Once your application has been fully processed, your FIT contract will be sent out for you to sign and return.”

 

I hadn’t realised it would take so long to get the paperwork sorted, and I’m not sure if they will pay for the power generated and/or returned to the grid from the very beginning or not.  I’ll advise on this blog once I know.