Great Britain PV: feed-in tariff reduction in August

The British government plans to make a further reduction to PV feed-in tariffs from August 2012. The tariffs will be reduced from £0.21/kWh to £0.16/kWh for smaller installations.

Planned PV feed-in tariffs

 

Class	High tariff	Middle tariff	Low tariff
≤ 4 kW	16.00	14.40	7.10
> 4 kW ≤ 10 kW	14.50	13.05	7.10
> 10 kW ≤ 50 kW	13.50	12.15	7.10
> 50 kW ≤ 150 kW	11.50	10.35	7.10
> 150 kW ≤ 250 kW	11.00	9.90	7.10
> 250 kW ≤ 5000 kW	7.10	7.10	7.10

The necessity to reduce the tariffs carried out between February and March during a public enquiry in which has highlighted the need for a further reduction for new PV installations in the second half of the year, says an answer from the government to the latest tariff review (phase 2A attached).

According to the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) the tariffs will be adapted flexibly, the reductions will be made quarterly and will add up to a half-yearly degression of 3,5% with the possibility to have also two reductions in a row if the support is only being taken up at low rate.

The Solar Trade Association (STA) welcomes many aspects of DECC’s new FIT cost control framework for solar PV even if the solar English market is in recession. Paul Barwell, STA Chief Executive, commented that “this report provides the security of guaranteed tariffs to 2015 allowing it to build for the future, this is a good answer to our requests”. The new framework shows how tariffs will be reduced in line with reductions in technology cost and in order to keep the scheme with DECC’s budget and how, industry and consumers, can have better visibility once tariffs will be defined.
At the same time, the Association disagrees the methodology for the calculation of long-term returns on investment.

The tariff reduction consists in three different categories:
- house rooftop installations (higher tariff);
- small commercial plants (middle tariff);
- large commercial plants (low tariff).