Following The House of Lords clash over cuts to the feed-in tariff, the Solar Trade Association (STA) has made great gains for the FiT scheme, with key recommendations being taken on board and implemented.
The STA got confirmation that the impact of its £1 plan had on the final decisions on the Feed-in Tariff. A spokesperson for The House of Lords, added: “We have listened carefully to the view of industry in the consultation – in particular, the Solar Trade Association’s £1 plan – and took account of its responses in redesigning our scheme. We revised tariffs upwards to reflect evidence that it provided, we allocated more budget to solar under the £100 million cap to reflect its asks and we are implementing a cap system which allows us to recycle under spend and consider the balance of caps between years.”
Recommendations made by the Solar Trade Association (STA) featured high in discussions on moving forward; the STA has been pushing DECC and Ofgem to ensure that deployment data is published as frequently as possible so that customers can get the best understanding of what rate they are likely to receive. This is likely to be resolved soon.
It has been agreed that there is still scope to make minor changes to the Feed-in tariff scheme, particularly if deployment levels are significantly lower than the caps. This is something the STA plan to review with the DECC in the early stages. One key recommendation from the STA is to reduce the 10 per cent contingent degression figure to five per cent to avoid hyperdegression; the House of Lords has agreed to re-address this, stating: “If it appears that deployment is adversely affected, we will look again at the 10 per cent degression and see whether another figure would be more appropriate.”
Ofgem has confirmed the tariff tables, for all applicable technologies, until 31st March 2016. For full list, click here. Guidance notes on the deployment caps for both MCS and ROOFiT scale generators but will also be finalised soon.
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