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Jason Ford
Jason Ford
News Editor
Good day, sunshine
New Feed-in Tariff levels for large-scale solar energy installations come into effect today, with the tariffs being reduced in favour of smaller scale projects.
Critics have argued that the new levels will make all solar installations with over 50kW of capacity financially unviable.
New tariffs for large scale solar and anaerobic digestion under the government’s green electricity scheme were announced in June this year.
The announcement from government followed a public consultation on large scale solar and anaerobic digestion, which closed on May 6 2011.
According to DECC, the review looked at reducing the tariffs for large scale solar to protect the money available for small scale projects. The review was launched following initial evidence showing the number of large scale solar projects in the planning system to be much higher than anticipated.
Last week Toyota started generating solar powered energy at its Burnaston plant in Derbyshire and a community-funded solar power station opened in Lewes at the weekend, just in time to qualify for the feed-in tariff rate of 34p per kilowatt hour.
Non-profit energy services company Ovesco managed to raise the £307,000 installation cost from locals and investors to fund the Lewes Community Power Station.
The solar PV panels have been installed and connected to the grid via the warehouse roof of local business Harveys Brewery, which will use the electricity to power the brewery while surplus energy will be sold back to the grid.
Southern Solar, co-founders of Ovesco installed 544 solar PV panels to generate an estimated 92,000KWh per year.
According to Ovesco, the new FITs regime will reduce tariffs for community projects such as the one in Lewes 42 per cent.
‘Ovesco has developed the only community initiative to go live in time for the changes in government policy on solar,’ said Howard Johns, chair of Solar Trade Association and MD of Southern Solar. ‘This is devastating and frustrating for nearly 1,000 community projects across the UK.
‘Solar in the UK has the potential to become a major source of power generation and is the most accessible technology for community-owned energy solution companies.’
The 25-year subsidies are paid by energy suppliers for each unit of electricity generated.
From today new entrants into the FIT scheme will receive these amended tariffs for solar PV:
>50 kW – ≤ 150 kW Total Installed Capacity (TIC) - 19.0p/kWh
>150 kW – ≤ 250 kW TIC - 15.0p/ kWh
250 kW – 5 MW TIC and stand-alone installations - 8.5p/kWh
Winchester University’s Stripe Theatre is the venue for the first Student Conference on Complexity Science this week.
The conference has been designed to showcase the global challenges that the discipline tackles and the current work of complexity science PhD students.
According to the event’s publicity material, Lord Robert May will present his latest work with Andy Haldane, the Bank of England’s executive director for financial stability, on how techniques pioneered to model complex biological ecosystems can be used to deal with systemic risk in financial “ecosystems” in order to avoid financial disasters.
In other news, tomorrow marks the deadline for entries in this year’s James Dyson Awards.
The brief is simply to “Design something that solves a problem” and is open to product design, industrial design, university level engineering students, or graduates who graduated with within the last four years.
Click here for full details.
Readers' comments (9)
S. Martin | 1 Aug 2011 12:55 pm
The main issue is the failure to deliver promised results from solar schemes due to misinformation. This in turn led to people installing PV systems based on misinformation, and basically people feel ripped off.
Figures provided were used to calculate returns and many organisations and individuals took these at face value. Many now find, after installation, that they were not worth the investment due to this failure to deliver.
PV systems can be improved, but they work best with battery storage systems and low voltage systems such as LED lighting, for example. How many will, or can afford to update to such systems, more expense.
Many figures have been quoted, but experts claim only 7% of the quoted figures are the actual returns, interesting.
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Brian Pollard | 1 Aug 2011 1:21 pm
So “Solar in the UK has the potential to become a major source of power generation”.
This is just empty hype.
We could cover every South-facing roof in the UK in solar PV and it would still only give us 4% of the energy we use now (see “Without Hot Air” for details).
When are these proponents of expensive subsidised solar PV going to get real? And when is tax-payers’ money going to stop being wasted on these boondoggles?
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simon | 1 Aug 2011 3:37 pm
@S.martin -
I hope you speak from actual experience not from the garbage recycled by most tabloid journalists - most of whom don't' know the difference between solar PV and Solar hot water systems.
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Mike | 1 Aug 2011 6:13 pm
It is not the amount of money given as a feed in tariff, but the application of the grant by companies that needs to be limited.
For the most part. the actual cost of Solar PV for a home owner is cost prohibitive, which needs to be redressed first and foremost. It is all very well giving money to companies to generate power, but it is the end user as in the small consumer that ends up paying for these larger installations. Its about time the tariff was changed, and the money saved would be better off used to aid the micro generation of power, rather than giving money to larger companies that do nothing for the consumer.
I would personally stop paying larger organisations altogether for generating power, and use the money saved for end point consumer generation, but then again we all know this is just a political fudge use by Government so they can say they are doing something.
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Ton F | 1 Aug 2011 6:41 pm
We have solar heating. With our system, we do not use any oil between April and September, (And even on some days in winter). As for PV, until panels achieve something like 33% efficiency, then we oop north, as it were, will be better keeping our pennies in our pockets. In the long term, nuclear energy would be favourite for the UK, unless someone wants to cover the Sahara with PV?
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S. Martin | 2 Aug 2011 10:27 am
Simon:
Of course i do not speak from personal experience, read my post again.
Figures quoted by many sellers of such systems are the theoretical maximum output, which requires 14 hours of sunlight a day. In the UK we do not get this, very few countries do.
Experts within the industry all conclude around 7% of this is the average for the UK, so a major disparity.
Many reports have been commissioned into actual working sites and confirmed these figures.
Quite what journalists have to do with this, i do not quite understand.
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Richard Cooper | 2 Aug 2011 3:49 pm
Put in 1.1Kw system this Jan, so far 750kwH produced from 2400 hrs of inverter activity, if the sun is shining i can get upto 900-1050watts but in cloudy conditions it drops to 100watts or less. ( sunny day =7.5 kwh, cloudy days 1.5kwh)
The key for a domestic system to to minimise the upfront installation cost. I had quotes from 5.5k to 18k (guess which one i used - a local one man band who did the full work on my garage roof in two days in Jan no problems & now waiting for my second rebate cheque) I in Cornwall calculate a 10% return on the money; I was earning nil interest on it in the building society. So far so good.
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simon | 2 Aug 2011 4:26 pm
Thank you Richard Cooper for some actual real information, rather than secondhand hearsay.
sadly lacking from most debates here unfortunately Ed.
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Peter Field | 3 Aug 2011 11:59 am
Richard Cooper could easily get a similar return from the building society. Simply get the poor taxpayer to subsidise his investment with them to the same extent as the renewables subsidies. His actual rate of return on his solar PV is probably 2% with the rest coming from us; the innocent taxpayers and energy users!
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