Announcement "later today!"

[SRE]

Barker tweets

Looking forward to sharing ambitious new plans for #FiTs with both Industry, & Parliament later today. Bigger scheme, better value!

 

[TedM]

Barker now says he will announce in Parliament at 11:30am.

 

[TedM]

DECC press release here Improvements to the Feed-in Tariffs scheme - Department of Energy and Climate Change

 

[TedM]

21p and EPC 'D' from April 1st.

 

[SibertSolar]

lol, beat me to it Ted....

 

[SRE]

Between 13.5 and 16.5p proposed from July

 

[trevor79]

Where did you see that?

 

[TedM]

There is a little wrinkle in the EPC 'D' part. The original proposal was that a building must be able to get a 'C' within 12 months of a PV installation. Now it will have to have achieved a 'D' at the point when the owner applies for a FiT contract. Owners will have to submit an up-to-date EPC as part of the application process.

 

[TedM]

The July tariffs are a new DECC proposal here http://www.decc.gov.uk/assets/decc/...ariffs-scheme-phase-2a-consultation-paper.pdf

This is open to consultation until 3rd April.

 

[Markc]

D is better than a C but still high. Think we now need to look into this aspect more than the rate.

Also think a 6 monthly rate reduction will have the same effect every six months with workloads. Rush to meet the next deadline.

Results are better but not as good as I was hoping for.

 

[sambotc]

• Proposes review of export tariffs, possible
reduction in tariff lifetimes for PV, and
consideration of future of index-linking

?

 

[mdovey]

In summary the proposals are a further reduction to the FIT from the 1 July to 13.6p, 15.7p or 16.5p (three possibilities are considered). The another cut of 5% to the whichever of these rates is chosen on the 1 Oct.

Thereafter the FIT will automatically drop by 10% every 6 months (although the consultation "welcomes" views on whether a slower rate e.g. 5% might be more appropriate).

In addition, if the number of installations exceeds 125% of the expected number of installations this will automatically trigger a further reduction in the FIT with two months notice. DECC will publish the expected number of installation figures in advance (although it isn't clear to me how far in advance or how these figures will be calculated).

If you need to get planning permission, DNO approval for >16amp installations, or bring your property up to EPC D, you could very easily find yourself getting a lower FIT than expected if such a two month notice period is triggered whilst you are waiting for permissions or other insulation work to be completed!

 

[sambotc]

We therefore propose that we should consider reducing the tariff lifetime for new
PV entrants to the FITs scheme, from the date of implementation of Phase 2A,
from 25 to 20 years. At any given tariff rate, a shorter tariff lifetime would reduce
implicit rates of return, though not to a great extent. For example, we calculate
that, other things being equal, the rate of return on a • 4kW installation attracting
a tariff of 15.7p would reduce from around 5.8% to around 5.2%.

 

[sambotc]

Recognising that the conclusion may be that maintaining some form of
index-linking remains appropriate, we are also interested in views (as an
alternative) about whether some kind of modification might be made to the way in
which that index-linking is done. For instance, in view of recent moves in other
schemes (e.g. pensions) from using the Retail Price Index (RPI) to using the
Consumer Price Index (CPI) as a basis for calculations, one option might be to

make the same change in FITs. We may also wish to consider whether tariffs
should be index-linked only for a certain number of years after accreditation

 

[TedM]

DECC's proposals for this are mind-boggling. Tariffs could be changing almost constantly i.e. the two-month notice periods can overlap.

 

[mdovey]

Here's a paragraph I originally missed about the export tariff (currently 3.1p)

"At the start of the scheme it was foreshadowed that changes to export tariffs would apply to all generators. However, existing tariffs are based on the assumption of the current level of the export tariff. An increase to the export tariff could therefore potentially provide a windfall gain to existing generators, who would continue to receive the benefit of a high generation tariff. We therefore propose that any change to the level of export tariffs would apply only to new entrants to the FITs scheme."

 

[mdovey]

DECC's proposals for this are mind-boggling. Tariffs could be changing almost constantly i.e. the two-month notice periods can overlap.

Just to translate Barker's tweet ("Looking forward to sharing ambitious new plans for #FiTs with both Industry, & Parliament later today. Bigger scheme, better value!")

ambitious - complex and unworkable
bigger scheme - we ran out of money so had to fudge the budget by moving money from the RO budget to the FIT budget to compensate but this is "purely a technical adjustment and makes no difference to the actual amount of subsidy available"
better value - swinging cuts

 

[FIT-PV]

Just to translate Barker's tweet ("Looking forward to sharing ambitious new plans for #FiTs with both Industry, & Parliament later today. Bigger scheme, better value!")

ambitious - complex and unworkable
bigger scheme - we ran out of money so had to fudge the budget by moving money from the RO budget to the FIT budget to compensate but this is "purely a technical adjustment and makes no difference to the actual amount of subsidy available"
better value - swinging cuts

I'm So gonna retweet this!

 

[pjcomp]

Typical government/civil service snafu - overcomplicated system which will confuse everyone. They try to please all sides and end up making it unworkable. How are we supposed to give a customer a returns forescast when DECC can change the rules apparently on a whim?

PJ

 

[mdovey]

THow are we supposed to give a customer a returns forescast when DECC can change the rules apparently on a whim?

Well, you'll just have to tell them that the forecast is only valid for a very short period, and that really if they want to be assured of that forecast, then they should sign the contract right now or they might lose out. Sorry, what was that about pressure selling...