There are concerns that the coalition government’s decision to review the green ‘feed in tariff scheme’ may jeopardise the growth of solar power in the UK.
On 1st April 2010 the government started the feed in tariff (FiT) scheme that rewarded people for generating green electricity by guaranteeing payments of up to 12 times the market price for it. With the money actually coming from the utility companies. Climate Change Secretary Greg Barker has proposed cutting the scheme by 10% next year due to concerns that the money will end up in the hands of big investors not ordinary people.
The FiT would pay you for generating the electricity, even though you are using it yourself. Excess energy that you ploughed back into the grid would attract a higher level of payment.
The idea behind this was to encourage the use of all sorts of ecologically friendly domestic electricity generating systems. So it covered biomass, wind turbines and hydroelectricity as well as solar power and was limited to 5 mW projects.
People can fit these systems, get paid for generating the energy and end up with greatly reduced energy bills in the bargain. They do of course need to shell out for the systems in the first place meaning that ‘pay-back’ may not occur for many years. However many firms have sprung up that will fit solar panels for free giving you cheap energy but they keep the FiT money for themselves.
But with projects up to 5 mW being eligible it makes solar panel farms a very attractive business proposition. Many investors saw it as potentially a nice little earner and it looked like a solar power gold rush was on the cards.
In Cornwall alone 150 planning applications were received from 50 companies looking to site solar farms, the placing of rows of panels on open fields. There are also six planned on the Isle of Wight.
The FiT, says the government, was never intended for this industrial scale purpose so is looking at ways of cutting it back to ensure the people the scheme was aimed at would be the people who got the money, not investors just looking for a return. They are therefore looking at ways of discouraging these larger projects.
Solar Panel Farm
Andrew Turner, MP for the Isle of Wight said “Nationally, there has been significant concern about larger-scale commercial ventures, which could potentially use up all the money set aside for domestic and other small-scale producers. That was never the intention of this scheme, which was inherited from the previous government. This review will look at all aspects of the scheme but it will protect the smaller solar schemes (below 50kW), such as village halls, schools and home-owners“.
So it looks like the UK solar power revolution may be slowed down significantly.
Last year the UK solar power generating capacity rose to 66 mW, which could power about 9,000 homes. That is a drop in the ocean compared to Germany’s 16,800 mW, Spain’s 3,700 mW and the USA’s 2,500 mW.
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Tags: environment, feed in tariff, green energy, News, solar power
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