A report from the UK’s Office of the Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem) shows over 9,000 renewable energy systems installed in the country are now participating in the UK’s feed in tariff scheme.
Figures up to 9 September 2010 show that 9,350 units are now registered to participate, including systems installed since the feed in tariff scheme was rolled out in April and installations that were previously claiming payments under the Renewables Obligation.
Of those, 2,771 new installations were registered between 1 April 2010 and 30 June 2010; representing 15.2 MW of total installed capacity.
A total of just over AUD $300,000 (current exchange rates) has been paid out between 1 April – 30 June 2010 to generators.
The UK feed in tariff scheme not only covers solar panel based installations, but wind, hydro, and anaerobic digestion, up to a maximum capacity of 5MW, and micro-CHP up to 2kW.
To date, just under half of the total installed capacity under the scheme are domestic systems and most of the installations in the domestic sector were based on solar panels.
The scheme pays the AU equivalent (current exchange rates) of between 48c and 67c per kilowatt hour for electricity produced by photovoltaic based solar power systems. A major difference between the UK model and most schemes operating within Australia is that the program is based on a gross feed in tariff model rather than net, meaning that participants receive the premium payment for all electricity produced, rather than just the surplus exported to the mains grid.
