Feed in Tariffs

The Feed In Tariff (also known as the Clean Energy Cashback Scheme) was introduced by the government in April 2010 to encourage the uptake of renewable energy, especially at a domestic level.

Anybody installing a qualifying renewable energy system is able to benefit in three ways:

• A guaranteed payment for every unit of electricity generated by the system (irrespective of whether or not that electricity is being used)
• A further payment for every unit of electricity that is not used, but exported back to the National Grid
• Reduced electricity bills

At a domestic level, an average 3kW system costing, say £9,000 to install, would generate in excess of 2575kWh (units of electricity) a year.

This would produce three cash benefits:

• Generation payment of £540*
• Export payment of £40
• Bill reductions of £150

That’s a total of £580 – minimum – a year – and carbon savings of some 850kg a year too. In practise, we haven’t yet installed a system that hasn’t outperformed our estimates by at least 10 percent (yes, even after last year’s summer).

In simple terms, that is a return on investment of 8 percent.

The payments are guaranteed for 25 years, and they will be index linked – so as energy bills soar, so will your income.

All solar photovoltaic systems installed since April 1st qualify – so long as they are installed by a MCS accredited installer (such as Ecocetera).

This means that solar PV is finally economically, as well as environmentally, viable.

* Based on the new Feed In Tariff In Tariff rates effective from 12/12/11.

The full rate table is as follows.