As an industry, we have been expecting the Feed-in Tariff rates to be changing from 1 August in line with the automatic degression model, which sees quarterly reviews of the FiT rate. However the Department of Energy and Climate Change have moved the reference date forward one month to 1st July.
Therefore the Feed-in Tariff rate for solar PV is changing from 1st July; however this time round, the tariffs are only taking a small cut. Rates for larger scale installations are largely unaffected; therefore anything over 50 kWp will remain at the current rate. However rates for installations under 50 kWp will see reductions of around 3.5% across the board. The new tariffs will run until 30th September; when a new change could be bought in.
You can see below how the new Feed-in Tariffs will affect the payback of a solar PV system. Luckily as it’s such a small cut, there is only a minor drop in ROI and savings are still healthy.
Size | Cost | Energy saving per year | Feed-in Tariff payments per year | Payback time | ROI | |
Current rate | 3.84 kWp | £7,074 | 3,752 kWh | £666 | 7.5 years | 13.24% |
After 1st July | 3.84 kWp | £7,074 | 3,753 kWh | £645 | 7.7 years | 12.94% |