DECC proposes to slash solar, wind FiTs from as early as January

Wind turbine. Author: Susanne Nilsson. License: Creative Commons, Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic.

The feed-in tariffs (FiTs) for small-scale solar and wind projects in the UK could be cut significantly from as early as January 2016 under a new government proposal, which includes end of FiT support for 1.5-MW-plus wind systems.

Details on the proposed changes to the solar FiT scheme are available in the table, as announced by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). All rates are per kWh of produced power.

Size	Proposed FiTs for Jan 2016	Size	Ofgem FiTs from Oct 2015
0-10 kW	GBP 0.0163	0-4 kW	GBP 0.1247
10-50 kW	GBP 0.0369	4-50 kW	GBP 0.1130
50-250 kW	GBP 0.0264	50-150 kW	GBP 0.0963
50-250 kW	GBP 0.0264	150-250 kW	GBP 0.0921
250-1,000 kW	GBP 0.0228	250-5,000 kW	GBP 0.0594
Over 1,000 kW & standalone	GBP 0.0103	Standalone	GBP 0.0428

The proposed FiT rates for wind are in the second table. All rates are per kWh of produced power.

Size	Proposed FiTs for Jan 2016	Size	Ofgem FiTs from Oct 2015
0-50 kW	GBP 0.0861	0-100 kW	GBP 0.1373
50-1,500 kW	GBP 0.0452	100-500 kW	GBP 0.1085
50-1,500 kW	GBP 0.0452	500-1,500 kW	GBO 0.0589
Over 1,500 kW	NO FIT	Over 1,500 kW	GBP 0.0249

The cuts are part of measures “to place policy costs on bills on a sustainable footing”. The DECC is also proposing a FiT expenditure cap of between GBP 75 million (USD 116m/EUR 103m) and GBP 100 million by 2018/19. It plans to combine a quarterly default degression rate with contingent degression of 0%, 5% or 10% for all technologies depending on deployment rates.

The DECC said the FiT scheme has exceeded all deployment expectations for wind, hydro, solar photovoltaic (PV) and anaerobic digestion installations. As a result, the government expects to breach the limits of the Levy Control Framework (LCF). It says the proposed new generation tariffs are based on fresh evidence about costs, technology characteristics, and rates of return for new FIT participants.

(GBP 1 = USD 1.548/EUR 1.371)

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