Bought a house with owned solar panels

[Deleted User]

jeffy22 said:

Thank you everyone...  We've not moved in yet,  but i have seen a copy of one of those certificates ( although not had a really good look at it)

The panels are quite old and the previous owner told us that we could do the scheme where the electricity company pays us back as that had finished now. 

I know there is a box on the hallway wall that tells us how much solar power we are generating..

 Once you own the property, contact this email address and you can check whether the array has been registered for FIT payments:

FITRegister@Ofgem.gov.uk

It is also important to find out which company is paying the FITs as export contracts are separate from import contracts. For example, EDF paid my FIT payments when it wasn’t my energy supplier. If the array has not been registered then it is not possible to register it retrospectively under the FIT Scheme. Personally, I would be instructing my solicitor to get this information from the seller. The answers given so far suggest that the cost of the panels may have been recovered via a Green Scheme. 

Reed_Richards

jeffy22 said:

The panels are quite old and the previous owner told us that we could do the scheme where the electricity company pays us back as that had finished now. 

My guess is that the previous owner knows that the Feed-in Tariff scheme was closed to new applications in 2019 but does not realise that this has no bearing on transfers.

[Deleted User] said:

As part of the buying process, your solicitor/conveyancer should have requested the seller to provide details of the system on your roof. When I sold a property 3 years ago, I had to provide the MCS Certificate; receipt showing payment in full; roof strength survey; the electrical compliance certificate; DNO Notification; details of the FIT payer and a signed FIT Transfer Form.

I'm not sure if you need quite as comprehensive a set of information as this but you certainly do need a signed FIT Transfer Form.
  

MWT

Reed_Richards said:

I'm not sure if you need quite as comprehensive a set of information as this but you certainly do need a signed FIT Transfer Form.
  

I do hope this isn't a situation where the previous owners were intending to keep receiving the FiT, so I would certainly make sure that this matter is cleared up before completion.

Petriix

MWT said:

Reed_Richards said:

I'm not sure if you need quite as comprehensive a set of information as this but you certainly do need a signed FIT Transfer Form.
  

I do hope this isn't a situation where the previous owners were intending to keep receiving the FiT, so I would certainly make sure that this matter is cleared up before completion.

Absolutely this. You need to find out the exact details of the installation and ensure that the FIT payments are transferred to you as part of the sale. If it's an old installation then it should have qualified for a lucrative FIT rate which someone is likely still receiving.