It's now a waiting game as the bureaucrats deal with my application for funds for the solar installation. In the meantime, I can start to think about how I'll go about buying and selling electricity.
There seems to be an arrangement that current generators have whereby some companies will buy green power at very good rates because they can sell that power at a premium to people who want use only green power. The owner of the system I've seen buys and sells with a company called Green Energy who give him 28 pence for every unit he exports. I don't know what he buys his power for. However, on 1 April, everything changes when the Feed in Tariff (FiT) system begins.
FiT is a government system where microgenerators are guaranteed a fixed payment from the power company not just for every unit of power they export, but for every unit they generate. In my case, it will be 41.3 pence. It is the concept that makes a solar PV installation worthwhile. However, if I understand it correctly, it has interesting consequences. It no longer matters which company I go with because I will get 41.3 pence with all of them. However, I will still have to buy a large portion of my power and it is obviously in my favour to find a supplier who is as cheap as possible. This might be to the detriment of the smaller companies as I can imagine that Scottish Power, my current supplier, or Scottish Hydro will clean up this market.
Perhaps, as the FiT system beds in, we'll find that companies will try to offer an extra few pennies per unit over the 41.3 p offered for power from the microgenerators. So far, it's not been easy to see what companies' policies are on FiT.
Time to start looking again.
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