There have been many questions regarding this governments commitment to ‘green energy’ since the last cabinet reshuffle with the new energy minister having a reputation for being less than keen on renewables and investing in sustainable technologies. Are we still pursuing the goals we’ve set out or will things change direction somewhat? The UK population remains convinced that the sustainable, green, renewable…call it what you like, is here to stay and a reasonable proportion are happy to invest in it either on a domestic or commercial basis. Perhaps the uptake may be slower than hoped and having taken the odd beating here and there [especially with Feed In Tariff cuts] – but it is not going to be stopped.

PV Popularity

Ofgem reports that 248,010 installations incorporating, mostly, PV tech have been registered under the Feed In Tariff (FITs) scheme since it was introduced in April 2010. More than the 40% (100,000 installations) were registered between January and March this year, representing the largest quarterly increase in numbers since the Fits were introduced by the Labour administration Ofgem has said. In total, £46,869,264.23 FIT payments were paid to people in the scheme during the first quarter of this year. This is no insignificant figure.

The figures break down to domestic (69%), commercial (26%), industrial (4%) and communitarian installations (1%). Solar PV represented the 99% of total installations. In the first four months of the FITs scheme being announced 2,741 solar PV installations were requested and this number has increase more than 20 times 99,629 solar PV installations during the first quarter of this year.

How Does FITs Work?

The Feed-in Tariffs (FITs) scheme was introduced to encourage the deployment of additional small-scale (less than 5MW) low-carbon electricity generation, particularly by organisations, businesses, communities and individuals that have not traditionally engaged in the electricity market the DECC has said.

This system allows many people who have invest in small-scale low-carbon electricity, get a guaranteed payment from an electricity supplier for the electricity that they have generated and used as well as a guaranteed payment for unused surplus electricity they export back to the grid. The technologies included in this scheme are hydro, solar PV, wind, micro CHP and anaerobic digestion.

• HYDRO – potential energy from water flow is turned into kinetic energy in a turbine
• SOLAR PV – sun’s energy is captured using photovoltaic cells
• WIND – kinetic wind energy is used to drive a turbine
• ANAEROBIC DIGESTION – gas produced by the natural breakdown of biomass is captured