Is solar PV still viable with Government cutting the feed in tariff?

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Is solar PV still viable with Government cutting the feed in tariff?

Posted by guest author on Thu, Feb 23, 2012

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Sustainability covers a wide variety of issues. Sustainable Homes manages an award winning best practice programme called the Sustainable Homes Index For Tomorrow (SHIFT) for housing providers and their supply chains. We have a number of leading organizations as corporate partners to this initiative. Our corporate partners are assisting to drive forward the sustainability agenda in a number of ways. Here SolarTech si providing their perspective on the Governments' proposed cuts to FITs.

Q: Are solar P.V. systems still a viable investment for the affordable housing sector with the Government now cutting the feed in tariff after 3^rd March 2012?

A: "Yes".

Even though the opportunity to install “retrofit P.V.” on affordable housing and public sector solar pv buildings to make the 13-15% financial return may now have ended with the Governments' “fast track review” of feed in tariffs, there has been a very positive reaction from the renewable industry to counter act this by radically reducing the cost of P.V installations from the previous levels of 2011 now making retrofitting P.V systems still a very good overall investment for 2012.

For P.V. systems up to 50kw the enhanced payment tariffs are still available and will typically give a 10-12% return index linked for 25 years. A 50kw system will generate around £14,500 / annum and could easily pay for itself in around 10 years.

A recent survey found that over 80% of local authorities and housing associations were still considering retrofitting P.V renewables in preparation for the 2020 deadline to reduce carbon emissions by 20%.

So fitting a solar P.V. system is a long term investment but if you are looking for a solution that will remain at maximum efficiency for a minimum of 25 years then SolarTech can offer the best brands of P.V. to best fit your individual project needs. All of our products enjoy a full 25 year performance guarantee and are Government approved under the M.C.S. scheme. This approach ensures that you can install a system with the confidence that it will be fully operational over the Feed in Tariff scheme.

Finance

We are also able to offer a lease solution where appropriate enabling clients to spread the cost of the installation over a period between 2 and 10 years. This enables our Clients to spread the cost of the installation over a number of years whilst benefiting from the full income of the Feed-in tariff. This solution compares favourably with “free P.V.” schemes where the installer / S.P.V. will take all of the income from the feed-in tariff.

Maintenance

SolarTech are also able to offer remote monitoring with condition based maintenance capability ensuring maximum system performance over its life time and a fail safe way of recording all the individual quarterly fits payments without a need to access multiple tenants’ properties to read the meters.

SolarTech is a Corporate Partner of the award winning SHIFT programme. For more information on SHIFT please see here.

Tags: Sustainable Homes, Sustainable Homes Index For Tomorrow, Feed in Tariffs, retrofitting homes

Comments

Well you would say that wouldn't you? This is just a thinly-disguised advert for PV panels in general and SolarTech in particular

The figures quoted only work with massive Government subsidies that people like me are paying for. As I will never tire of saying, sticking expensive Chinese PV panels on top of leaky and largely uninsulated buildings is bonkers and should be stopped now. Spend the money on insulation, air-tightness, triple glazed windows and MVHR before you even think about any eco-bling

We need to use less energy, not generate more. We will look back on this time as a period of wandering through the renewable wilderness before we woke up and adopted a fabric first approach to energy conservation in buildings

Posted @ Friday, February 24, 2012 2:44 AM by Philip Newbold

Phil's comment saying P.V is Eco bling? Then I would ask Phil what has P.V ever done for fuel poverty? Has it lowered tenant’s electricity bills? Does it give a good financial return? Has it helped HA's and local authorities achieve targets on emissions? Is it cheap to maintain? Has it helped keep people in renewable industry stay employed? I think the answer is yes to all of the above.

Last report I read regarding investing money into double and triple glazing and MVHR on the average UK household was that it would take between 35-40 years to get any financial return in fuel bill savings compared to an average 7-9 years for a P.V investment. Of course a sensible balance is required in every situation. An example of this is if a house requires replacement windows and the driver is to lower emissions then It is not money best spent as illustrated with 35-40 years payback and again if we over insulate a house to the point that you actually need to introduce MVHR on a large scale to the affordable homes market it would be a step way to far and impossible to implement and not therefore a real alternative to retrofitting renewables on a mass scale.

Posted @ Friday, February 24, 2012 5:06 AM by

I am sorry, I know you have a living to make but your logic only works in the face of massive, misguided Government subsidies that a chosen few benefit from at the expense of everyone else.

PV would do nothing for fuel poverty without these subsidies and while it keeps you and your employees in a job, it does virtually nothing to reduce energy consumption if the building fabric is not upgraded. A handful of tenants are probably happy with their heavily subsidised fuel bills. Using renewables to help HAs and LAs with their emissions targets is just a tick-box approach to con us all into thinking we are doing something about climate change. It puts smiles on the faces of Government Ministers but it does virtually nothing to address the real problem of our feckless energy consumption

If we look at payback periods without any subsidies, we would just replace our boilers, insulate our lofts and fit double glazing

Posted @ Friday, February 24, 2012 3:01 PM by Philip Newbold

Hi phil
Have you remembered what the original question was? Yes is the answer retrofitting PV is still a good investment for the affordable housing sector the fact that FITs is in place for the next 25 years should be embraced now and acepted and used to help fuel poverty ,just complaing that it cost the taxpayers is not quite correct anyway the FIT's is funded out from the profits of the uk energy companies. You say I'm just promoting renewables through solarTech but are you not just doing the same through your own Passivhaus house company ?
I have enjoyed your comments and understand your logic but are we not both wright? A good combination of both ideals should prevail

Posted @ Wednesday, February 29, 2012 7:16 PM by john Adorno

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