Solar energy - Feed-in Tariff payment delays - your experiences?

ggmf

I'm with OVO and signed up for their SEG payments. After waiting months for my 'account' details to be sent to me, I raised a complaint, today I received this response - "Please accept my apologies for the delay in your SEG application being completed. We have a massive backlog currently which has led to delays. Please provide an export reading in September and we will add this to your account for payment. Your welcome letter should be with you within the next couple of weeks."

EricMears

EricMears said:

A useful tip for escalating any complaint about any organisation is to check out  coeemail   (dot com)   

Whoops !  That should be ceo  email (followed by dot com)

Chris_Type_R

I recently submitted my May, June, July readings to SSE & was pleasantly surprised to have the cheque turn up earlier this week. 

Unfortunately today I received an email to say SSE FIT is moving over to OVO, and one of the differences will be:

OVO Energy makes payments after Ofgem has finished its review. Once OVO receives all quarterly meter readings, they send the information to Ofgem through a process called levelisation. Ofgem calculates credits and sends them to OVO, who can then make payments. This takes a little while, so you'll get your payment about eight weeks after the end of the reading month.

Progress, eh. Does anyone have any experience of Shell Energy and FIT payments in terms of turnaround time & ease of submitting ?

jcontest

Chris_Type_R said:

I recently submitted my May, June, July readings to SSE & was pleasantly surprised to have the cheque turn up earlier this week. 

Unfortunately today I received an email to say SSE FIT is moving over to OVO, and one of the differences will be:

OVO Energy makes payments after Ofgem has finished its review. Once OVO receives all quarterly meter readings, they send the information to Ofgem through a process called levelisation. Ofgem calculates credits and sends them to OVO, who can then make payments. This takes a little while, so you'll get your payment about eight weeks after the end of the reading month.

Progress, eh. Does anyone have any experience of Shell Energy and FIT payments in terms of turnaround time & ease of submitting ?

How recent was recent?

The levelisation thing is just a way for them to delay things by 8 weeks, they are obviously charging users for consumption, so it seems odd they can get paid for green energy within 30 days but take up to 4 months to pay it back to the generator. 

Does anyone know what happens if, say SSE/Ovo goes insolvent, is our generation payment protected?  I am thinking if moving from SSE - any suggestions?  How easy/difficult is the move?

gefnew

If they go bust you have to move to another fit provider and you have to do it, you are not transferred to any other fit provider.

bluesjunior

I had SSE as my energy supplier in 2016 when I had our 3KW solar array installed and therefore opened my FIT account with them and had no problems with them at all. They would send me an email asking for a reading every three months and it would be paid into my bank account within a week or so.

                                                                            That was until last January when I replied to the reminder email with my meter reading and heard no more. When it got to April and I still hadn't been paid for the January reading I phoned SSE and after a long long wait I eventually got to talk to a nice lady who blamed it all on Covid and no meter readers etc etc and that I should send a photographic reading of my meter and gave me an email address to send it to. I did this but still hadn't been paid by the time I was due send in the latest meter reading in July. Three weeks later I still hadn't been paid and decided to phone again. After a 45 minute wait I eventually got through to a gent who when he realised what it was about hung up on me.

                                                                                                                                                                                 That was the end of my patience. I had already thought about cutting my losses and signing up with another supplier, British Gas in my case having been moved over to them after the collapse of Bristol Energy. I phoned up their FIT department and they sent me an application email to fill in and was told that as soon as they received the information they would instigate the change over process with SSE. That was around the beginning of August and while checking my bank account a week or so later found a payment of £168 from SSE and the next day got the usual payment letter.

                                                                                                                    I may be wrong but I think that the request to change over to British Gas has made them look at my account and pay it out up to date. The changeover process is quite straightforward as long as you have kept copies of your initial info. Hopefully it will go back to normal pay outs with BG but if there are problems then I will also be considering changing my gas and electricity supplies as well which should give a smidgeon of leverage.

Fred2022

Payments must be made every three months.

If payments are delayed or slow     switch to another FIT licencee.

Eon pay me within 10 days of me giving them a meter reading.

I have heard of recent problems with Licencees refusing payment because they

have not read the meter.

Licencees, under the Electricity Act are obliged to read the generation meter every two years,

it is a shame they have no right of entry into your property, I appears under the Electricity Act they have no right

to refuse payment because of their falure to read the meter.

I had a problem with Eon and was not able to resolve it, I put in a claim online to the county court.

EoN had to pay me plus court costs and my expenses.

KevinG

I notice that the Bulb website no longer has the option to submit FiT readings when I log in. I know that customers are all being transferred to Octopus (my supply is not with Bulb, only my FiT). I just hope that they have taken into account FiT transfers and that it all goes smoothly in time for my 31 December reading.

Update 27-Dec: Thankfully the button to submit a FiT reading to Bulb has returned. Octopus says it sent an email to all Bulb customers on 21-Dec - I didn't get one so it looks like FiT-only customers have been forgotten.

KevinG

Following my last post, my FiT account has now been migrated to Octopus and the Bulb account closed down. However, there is no way of entering a reading and no history has been migrated, apart from my Bulb electricity bills from when I was with them two suppliers ago! I have given them a reading on Twitter and they have been reasonably helpful but say that payment will take around six weeks, way longer than it did with Bulb. Also, I just might get the ability to enter a reading before the next one is due, if not contact them on Twitter again!

paul991

when your transfer works octopus will send you a email for readings then give you a statement within hours and payment usually within a day or two