Should solar users in receipt of FIT be encouraged onto Green Tarrifs?

nobby1963

Hi All,
So we have just had our 4th anniversary of our solar panels being installed and I thought I would post our totals so far.
We paid £11000 back then for our system and we added the Immersun to it the following year. This was driven by us having oil fired central heating as there is no mains gas here and we found that we were having to fire the boiler up to get hot water in the summer.
16370 kWh total as per FIT meter
£7320 total revenue- working out from last quarterly payment and adding generation to anniversary date.
Not bad at all me thinks ....
Cheers
Nobby.

warrenb

As I have said earlier in the thread, I think subsidies are wrong, but incentives are not. Make it economically viable to install without subsidy (eg. write off against tax for a year), then a smart meter and proper sell back at a viable price, the same as you buy.
The unit price you pay includes transmission costs and upkeep, but the PV'er also has costs, such as Inverter replacement etc.

So my proposal would be

Total cost of of installation written off against tax (at basic rate)
No FiT
Sell back at purchase price per unit

MFW_ASAP

warrenb wrote: »

As I have said earlier in the thread, I think subsidies are wrong, but incentives are not. Make it economically viable to install without subsidy (eg. write off against tax for a year), then a smart meter and proper sell back at a viable price, the same as you buy.
The unit price you pay includes transmission costs and upkeep, but the PV'er also has costs, such as Inverter replacement etc.

So my proposal would be

Total cost of of installation written off against tax (at basic rate)
No FiT
Sell back at purchase price per unit

Why write-off the cost of installation against tax? If the sell back is at purchase price then the installation would have a relatively short payback period, with the rest being profit. Is it not enough that the homeowner makes a saving on their energy bills and a small profit on their export, that they also have to have their solar kit paid for by the poor old taxpayers?

warrenb

They are not having the installation paid for by the tax payer, they are being able to write off an infrastructure investment, the same as any company in this country can. As with sell back it is not only the PVer gaining from the production, it is a viable way forward.

This should also go for battery investment also.

silverwhistle

The problem is, my income isn't big enough to make any tax write-off of value to me.

I'd also point out that MFW-ASAP only approves of subsidies for big companies so infrastructure by individuals or the less well-off isn't good for the country...

MFW_ASAP

silverwhistle wrote: »

The problem is, my income isn't big enough to make any tax write-off of value to me.

I'd also point out that MFW-ASAP only approves of subsidies for big companies so infrastructure by individuals or the less well-off isn't good for the country...

I just don't think that small scale implementation of renewables is the best use of public funds. They're inefficient and benefit a very small number of people, mostly the people who install the renewables yet are paid for by everyone.

Much better for large scale projects that produce large scale energy that benefits a large number of people. We're a nation of 64 million people, we don't have time to waste putting a few solar panels on a few roofs, we have a planet to save.

EricMears

MFW_ASAP wrote: »

we don't have time to waste putting a few solar panels on a few roofs, we have a planet to save.

"A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step." (Mao)

warrenb

Also writing off to tax is not using public funds, it is using your own funds that would otherwise be used by the government.

The more we can encourage people to put up PV, the less we would need to spend on large scale. Let the individual take responsibility. What better way to make people more efficient, than to make them responsible for their own generation and consumption.

By this time next year, the government will be spending more on renewables in the third world than in their own country, surely something not right there.

EricMears

warrenb wrote: »

By this time next year, the government will be spending more on renewables in the third world than in their own country, surely something not right there.

If that's accurate, it is indeed a bit strange !

However, if the object of the exercise is to reduce global warming, then it shouldn't really matter whereabouts you put solar panels as long as they really do displace an equivalent amount of fossil fuel burning. Indeed, there's probably a good case for putting panels somewhere where they'll generate as much as possible.

MFW_ASAP

EricMears wrote: »

"A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step." (Mao)

Not much good to the planet if the journey takes a thousand years.