FITs

[snapdragon]

There's been some discussion recently on radio4 about feed in Tarriffs, if you have a lot of money and space to produce a lot of electricity you get paid to use your own electricity and then get paid even more to sell excess back to the grid.
However if you only produce from wind/water or small photovoltaic to battery you get nothing.
It appears to me that you'll need at least £20,000 spare - then you can make a lot of money, it's an investment not green living.
And if you can't make any (rented house/flat/caravan) you get to pay more eventually as the prices of grid electric will go up to pay those who are producing

[Millymollymandy]

Thanks for a proper explanation Snapdragon! Sounds a bit strange to pay you to use your own electricity - that sounds completely daft. Buying the excess, sure, that makes sense but the people producing their own are getting free leccy anyway so why would they need to get paid for it as well. Doesn't seem fair.

I grow my own veg but do the supermarkets/governments pay me to do so? NO!

[dave45]

Sorry folks - didn't realise I'd kicked off a debate on here.

FITs are Feed-in-Tariffs - special payments for generating your own green electricity. The UK has been ignoring them for years (unlike Germany which has inspired sh**loads of privately-owned solar PV and wind generators).

Then recently the government have announced a new deal (after their previous green schemes have been oversubscribed within days) of around 43p per kWh FIT for solar.

I have been messing with DIY solar for years (but with batteries rather than grid-connected) and I reckoned it was around 10x uneconomic in our cloudy (Lancashire) climate. but 43p is a heck of a jump from diddly-squat. It has persuaded an acquaintance of mine to have a go - he has a large south-facing roof.

It has also kicked off an unholy debate between greenies http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... -in-tariff... and has also pi$$ed off those who had invested before the announcement.. http://www.goodenergy.co.uk/?page_id=6286

Part of me feels that I'd really like this to work - I am employed and heavily taxed and seem to subsidise every idle layabout in the country - and this seems like a chance of some payback - to get subsidised to do something I believe in....

yet the other part of me thinks that this still aint enough, and maybe Monbiot is right... its a bad thing, and that at the big-picture level its a waste...

then again... I am forced to subsidise other wasters (bankers for instance) .. why not?

[Millymollymandy]

Cheers Dave, but I'm still really confused. Why does the government pay you for the electricity that you use, rather than the excess that you sell back to the energy companies? Isn't this just encouraging people to use electritiy willly nilly and leave the lights and electric heating on 24/7 so the more they use the more they get paid? And 43p a unit is a humungous amount!!! Why so much when it doesn't cost a 4th (OK approx) of that to buy it from an electricity company? And who is funding that (the Gov have to get the money from somewhere!)? It doesn't make any sense to me.

Confused from Brittany.

[dave45]

I guess they are subsidising green generation regardless of who consumes it. I'm not sure exactly how the cash flows work though... the ROC scheme worked/works through an indirect levy on electricity bills rather than direct subsidy.

What will happen after May 6th too?

The problem with my own solar generation is that I am often unable to use all the midday sun, and when the batteries are full any excess electricity is wasted. The real problem is not the panels or electronics, but in optimising and scheduling consumption to match the vagaries of the weather. When I am out in the garden in the sunshine I have to think of what appliances I can switch on to make use of all my solar elctricity. Grid-linked inverters avoid all this.

[contadino]

However if you only produce from wind/water or small photovoltaic to battery you get nothing.

I'm fairly sure that's not the case in the UK. FiTs are applicable to off-grid installations too, although it's a bit unclear as to how the metering will work.

Personally, I think it's a good scheme, and goes further than most other European countries. However, I'd have preferred it if the rate for PV-generated electricity was much lower than wind, hydro, & biomass. There is a global shortage of PV manufacturing capacity that is keeping prices high and it seems daft for people in northern climates to stick panels on their roofs that would produce much more energy in warmer climates.

As to whether it is actually a workable system, only time will tell. A renewables forum that I use has some scary stories about the quantity of paperwork needed just to apply for the grants. Also, the goals of the scheme are pretty clear to me:

1. Get people out spending on home generation equipment, be it from savings or from credit.
2. Subsidise the development of the RE sector in the UK.

The first one may happen. The second I suspect will not. Other European countries are well ahead of the UK now, and I believe that money will flow to them rather than stay in the UK. For instance, several PV companies from Germany are already in the MCS scheme, so you're likely to see a proliferation of German PV panels on UK roofs.