From the BBC:
The government has pledged it will act if commercial operators rush to exploit a subsidy aimed at encouraging homeowners to generate their own solar electricity.Setting aside the fact that solar is a gigantic waste of money right now in the UK, what is the problem with commercial operators running all the subsidised solar production, rather than households? If the purpose of the scheme is to get solar energy then whether it's done by Sid and Doris Bonkers or Evil Capitalists Inc makes little difference, because with a limited budget and defined subsidies, you're going to get the same amount of solar energy.
The feed-in tariff scheme was launched last April.
It promised a typical household earnings of £800 a year and savings on their bills of £120.
Energy Minister Greg Barker said he was worried industrial scale projects could eat into the scheme's budget.
What occurs to me is that it's simply a way (along with the dozens of ways that Mark has pointed out) of the government doing absolutely anything possible to prop up the housing market. Because the effect of offering people 9% on sticking some solar on their roof is that they spend £10K more on their house rather than £10K into a company building something that makes life even better.
8 comments:
These solar subsidies are hours of fun.
A commercial user gets the lovely feed in tarrifs, which halve* the cost of installation, but the rental value of the panels (i.e. cost x 5%) is added to the rateable value of the building and liable to business rates, thus clawing back half* the subsidy.
Any net subsidy of course merely adds to the value of the land - you can't install panels without owning lots of space to put them.
* In round figures, don't quote me on that.
As with everything to do with warble gloaming, there is a certain amount of (deliberate?) confusion here. To most people, "solar panels" means solar hot water heating, which is a cost-effective way of cutting your household energy bills, as evidenced by the number of people who installed them before Labour came up with the Rip-off (sorry Feed-in) tariff scheme. However, it appears from the article that what we are talking about here is photovoltaics, a method of generating electricity with such a stupendously long payback period that it has to be heavily subsidised to make it viable.
I am surprised that no mention is made of the hundreds of companies that have started up that will "rent" you the panels. They pay for the cost of installation and get the lovely feed-in tariffs, you get free electricity up to the power of the panels (and presumably more, if you install a battery bank).
B, if you install a 'battery bank' (is that like a 'bottle bank'?) then you lose the income tax exemption.
This sounds to me like Mao make your own steel (solar energy) campaign.
Such small scale installations is not the most efficient way of doing things (about £5k per KwP, think very large scale can take this down to 2k per KWp). Used to think this sort of activities is exclusive to communist countries..
It is also interesting to note that it will be other energy users who will pay for the subsidy. And when all households go for this, then industrial users will have to pay 41.3p + 13p ish = 50p/kwh for their electricity..
Crazy... (though good for holdhold)
Check out the eco-nutters from oxford here.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00y4xgc/Who_Does_What_Halifax_and_Oxford/
chopping wood all day for the boiler and solar panels, but alas 13 degrees and no hot water..nice house though.
"B, if you install a 'battery bank' (is that like a 'bottle bank'?) then you lose the income tax exemption."
Wow, I didn't know it was tax-free, too.
B, the income tax exemption is in ITTOIA somewhere and only applies to small domestic installations (as defined). Otherwise, the income is liable to VAT and income tax or corporation tax as normal.
More political pet projects nonsense that ends up costing us all money. Like all things popular to politicians, they want a benefit to their reputation now, and want the next generation (of taxpayers and politicians) to pay.
Solar photovoltaic subsidies has blown up in the Czech Republic who were early adopters. The problem is that the government gets 'someone else to pay' by forcing the electricity companies to buy the trickle fed stuff at a vast price. So many people responded to the overgenerous subsidy that the electricity companies had to increase the normal fees to all other power consumers as "environmental surcharges". The present government then did a retroactive conjuring trick and is imposing a 26% windfall tax on solar companies (commercial operators), the revenue from which will be used to hold down general electricity price rises to 5% a year.
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