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Leeds Solar summarise the decisions DECC announced today resulting from the Feed In Tariff consultation started in October 2011.

Feed In Tariff rates for solar PV

FIT rates from 3rd March-30th June will definitely be those proposed in the consultation, as set out below.

Energy Efficiency Requirements

• Energy efficiency requirements will apply from 1st April, but will now be set at a lower level of band D on the Energy Performance Certificates, instead of the original Band C proposals. 

• Exemptions from this requirement do apply for certain buildings, eg unheated buildings such as barns, warehouses, churches etc.

• Installations on buildings that don't meet the band D requirements will still be eligible for Feed In Tariff payments, but only at a lower rate of 9p per kWh.

• Contrary to the initial proposal in the consultation, there will now be no transition period, so the EPC certificate will need to be submitted at the same time as the Feed In Tariff application.

Multiple installation rate

• The FIT rate for owners of multiple installations will be reduced by 20% for installations registered after 1st April 2012.

• This reduced rate will only apply for owners of more than 25 installations.

• There are proposals in the new consultations for community organisations to be exempted from this reduction, but these are unconfirmed and would only apply from July 1st at the earliest if they are agreed upon.

Further proposed changes

• DECC have also released 2 new consultations relating to further proposed FIT reductions from 1st July 2012, and October 1st 2012, followed by regular scheduled FIT reductions every 6 months, or when certain set levels of solar PV installations have been reached - which ever is the earlier. 
• There are also several other changes proposed to be consulted upon.
• We will analyse these consultation documents in more detail shortly.

Leeds Solar's response to these changes

Leeds Solar welcomes the clarity that comes from these announcements, and are broadly in agreement with the final outcome of this consultation.

We thank DECC for listening to the industries concerns relating to the EPC band C proposal, and hope the additional changes being consulted upon will provide some long term certainty and clarity for the industry even if they involve challenging reductions in the FIT rates payable.

We're confident that we can continue to install solar PV at increasing rates under the FIT rates now scheduled to be in place until July, and look forward to the challenge of ensuring the houses we install on meet the band D energy efficiency requirements.

We need to fully analyse the new proposals for further scheduled Feed In Tariff reductions and other changes, but our initial analysis indicates that we should be able to cope with them without too many problems.

As a company we have never been in this business to make a fast buck, we're in it for the long haul and have always understood the over riding purpose of FITs was to drive down solar PV prices through economies of scale, and have been working towards that aim from day one.

We hope the industry and DECC can now draw a line under the recent problems and work together to continue to both increase the rate of PV installations and bring costs down to the point where solar PV is cost competitive with fossil fuel and nuclear based generation without subsidy.