Sun Switch blog

Huhne takes action on solar farm threat

Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, has moved to ensure that homeowners benefitting from the Feed-in Tariff scheme aren’t impacted by large-scale solar farms.

DECC, the Government department responsible for FITs, have announced a comprehensive review into the scheme. Huhne said:

“The renewables industry is a vital piece in the green growth jigsaw and this review will provide long term certainty while making sure homes, communities and small firms are encouraged to produce their own green electricity.

“Large scale solar installations weren’t anticipated under the FITs scheme we inherited and I’m concerned this could mean that money meant for people who want to produce their own green electricity has the potential to be directed towards large scale commercial solar projects.”

DECC have made it very clear that any decisions that come out of this review will not affect people who are already benefitting from FITs:

The Government will not act retrospectively and any changes to generation tariffs implemented as a result of the review will only affect new entrants into the FITs scheme. Installations which are already accredited for FITs at the time will not be affected.

So if you’ve already had a PV installation, and are making money, there will be no change. If you’re considering PV, this could be an opportune moment to do more research into potential suppliers. Why not read our questions to ask PV suppliers?