I've just got back from the
FIT for Purpose Feed-in Tariff conference held today in Llandissilio in Pembrokeshire, hosted by West Wales ECO Centre and The Environmental Network for Pembrokeshire and supported by the Welsh Assembly Government.
The day got underway with a great presentation from Dr Josef Pesch, of juwi Holdings AG, about how the renewables system works in Germany. This left everyone feeling more than a little envious. They have a presumption for development - if no substantive objections are raised to a planning application within 3 months then you just go ahead. Connection to the grid is paid for by the suppliers, with penalty fees kicking in in the event of delays. FITs are fixed and guaranteed for twenty years from signing-up.
Unfortunately John Moriarty, the DECC Assistant Director for Feed-in Tariffs Policy and responsible for introducing FITs in the UK, failed to show up! Peter Davies (meeting chairman and the Sustainable Development Commissioner for Wales) gave the presentation in his place from a script provided. He had to admit that it was mostly unintelligible to him, which was also clearly a view shared by the audience!
The other major presentation was from Hugo House (Generation Marketing at Good Energy) who looked at the various mechanisms by which a FIT system could be operated. There are several potential mechanisms being discussed but the top two contenders seem to be
'Supplier Purchase', which sounds very similar to the current model but a
'Central Fund' option is also a distinct possibility - although Josef Pesch considered that this one might run into EU 'subsidy' problems.
There are some more details about these options on the Good Energy website :
http://www.goodenergy.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/090323_good-energy_feed-in-tariff-models.pdf but note that this is written very much from the supplier's perspective rather than the generator/consumer.
Currently the best guess is that the FIT will be 30p/kWh for wind and 40p/kWh for PV - no mention of any others - and based on total generation and would apply to all systems up to 5MW capacity. These prices would be guaranteed for a set number of years. It is quite likely that there will be a stepped tariff structure based on capacity - so a 5MW turbine isn't going to be paid at the top 30p rate. It isn't yet clear if ROCs would still apply in addition to these figures or if anyone signing up to FITs would have to fore go the notional ROC element.
There is still a big unanswered question about whether FITs would even be available for existing installations of if they might only be open for newly (post April 2010) installed systems.
No word on whether any of the existing grant schemes (e.g. LCBP) would continue or not, and, if they do, what impact they would have on FIT prices.
DECC will be running a consultation process this summer (expected to be July to September) with government response due by Christmas and with the FIT due to be introduced from April 2010.
A video was made of the main presentations (but not the Q&A sessions) and it is expected that extracts will be published on the web fairly soon.
I'll keep everyone posted on any developments I hear about.
But please make sure you get involved in the consultation process - it will be pretty important (small understatement!) for the future of small renewables in the UK.
