The Solar Trade Association has given a cautious welcome to the Department of Energy and Climate Change decision today on solar feed-in tariff rates for 2016 and beyond.
But, the STA said “serious concerns” remain about whether or not the cost-control mechanism will work for the market.
The government will cut domestic tariffs by 64% to 4.39p/kWh instead of the original proposal of cuts of up to 87% to 1.63p/kWh, compared with a rate of 12p/kWh today.
STA chief executive officer Paul Barwell said: “Government has partially listened. It’s not what we needed, but it’s better than the original proposals, and we will continue to push for a better deal for what will inevitably be a more consolidated industry with fewer companies.”
The new FiT will come into force from 8 February, and the deadline for projects to receive the current tariffs is now 15 January.
The government has also put maximum caps on the total amount of solar it wants to see installed in every quarter.
“This could be very damaging, although they do appear to have taken on board requests for unused capacity to be recycled from one quarter to another and a queuing system for projects that don’t get in on time,” STA said.
It also welcomed the fact that there is no increase to the energy efficiency requirements to be eligible for the solar FiT, as well as no changes to how the tariffs are indexed over time or export tariff when electricity is sold back to the grid.
Image: sxc1
