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THE REACTION TO THE FIT AND RHI CUTS

14th December 2015

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The long-awaited consultation document released by the Department of Energy & Climate Change DECC has industry crippling reductions for the renewable energy sector. From the 1st of January, ministers are proposing reducing the FIT (Feed-in Tariff) for smaller scale solar installations from 12.47p per kilowatt hour to 1.63p with large standalone units eligible for subsidies of 1.03p per kWh, compared with 4.28p today.

This seems like a short term solution to a much bigger problem, with one of the main reasons for the proposed cuts being a fear of going over the budget. The FIT and RHI (Renewable Heating Incentive) has helped over 700,000 homes generate their own power, with over 21% of UK’s power come from renewables in early 2015. These results are far more encouraging, and looking on at countries such as Uruguay who have shifted to make nearly 95% of their electricity from clean energy, we must not overlook the bigger picture.

What we are seeing again and again, particularly at events such as EMEX and Build Scotland, are stranded Solar PV engineers, looking for ways to expand from simply

selling and installing panels to something more industry defining and innovative. This ideology seems to be down to an expected loss of work as there is less incentive for the customer to work with greener energy.

From attending at EMEX and Build Scotland this year, we were given an opportunity to speak to a lot of the people who will be directly affected by the changes. We were keen to show them our NetThings solution, a low cost, low complexity solutions to help them deliver, not just energy saving through lower power equipment such as LED lighting and Voltage Optimisation, but also to help lower end use consumption. We believe our product puts the control back to the user, providing them the opportunity to directly monitor and impact their energy spend, saving money on current energy usage, while also impacting the unique offering of PV engineers who are bidding for work following the changes to the FIT and RHI. We would love to share our product with everyone who might be affected by these changes. You can see it herehttps://j-teq-energy.co.uk/ or get in touch for more information at info@netthings.co.uk or 0131 331 5445.