Feed-in tariff delivers £180,000 for generators over first three months

Ofgem has attempted to clear up the confusion surrounding the number of households and businesses taking advantage of the government's feed-in tariff renewable energy incentive scheme, yesterday releasing detailed figures revealing 6,850 new installations have registered for the scheme since its launch in April.

The update confirms that in total 9,350 installations have registered to receive payments through the feed-in tariff scheme, but of these about 2,500 were pre-existing installations that have simply transferred from the Renewable Obligation subsidy scheme into the feed-in tariff.

Industry insiders have been concerned that Ofgem's failure to publicly distinguish between pre-existing and new installations has allowed critics of the scheme to overstate its success and accuse the incentives available of being overly generous.

The figures were made available in the first quarterly newsletter from Ofgem E-Serve, the agency set up to administer the feed-in tariff.

They also reveal that under the scheme total payments worth £182,059 were made to renewable energy generators between the start of April and the end of June. As anticipated, the solar sector has dominated the early months of the scheme, with solar photovoltaic installations accounting for 44 per cent of all installed capacity, compared to 35 per cent wind capacity and 21 per cent hydro.

However, there has been more interest in the incentives from the business sector than was originally anticipated, with 41 per cent of feed-in tariff-registered capacity coming from installations on commercial properties.

The update will also fuel concerns that not enough is being done to notify households and businesses that already operate renewable energy installations that they are able to register for the feed-in tariff.

An estimated 6,000 pre-existing installations accredited under the Renewable Obligation are able to be migrated to the feed-in tariff scheme, but to date only 2,500 have done so.

Ofgem said in the newsletter that "a large majority of the remaining installations are still to provide the required information to allow them to be migrated", meaning that many early adopters have only a few weeks left to submit the necessary documents and enter into the feed-in tariff scheme before the 1 October deadline.

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