Are FITs going to work for the general public?

[rt29781]

Hi Ted,

We have an in roof PV rated at about 2.9kW.  The installation costs 22K euros plus about 500 euros for the meters to be fitted..  We got 8K euros back from the tax man in France, we got nearly 6K euros back from the region.  The installation cost therefore about 8K euros.  We expect to get 3600 kWh per year so that equates to (3600*.55=1980 euros) a payback of slightly over 4 years.  Since our install the incentives have reduced but for us it was an absolute no brainer.  Since February 9th we have already produced 3064kWh.

[Kombi]

I have sent back my response to the document. In essence I said that the tariff proposal was too low and it needed to be combined with fiscal incentives if it is to work. Nearly all countries have a combination of a high FIT and fiscal incentives; the same is required here.

[Simon]

My calculations for a 1.7kW installation show a return of 7.9% but this does include the £2500 grant. Without the grant it falls to just below 6%. The consultation document indicates they were working on a return of between 5-8%.

Also any income generated is tax free so strictly speaking one should take this into account when doing your sums. If you are one of the lucky(!!!!) ones who will be paying 50% next year then it looks like a good investment. Of course maybe you should be comparing the investment with a tax-free ISA but it starts to  get a bit boring ......

The comparisons that have been made to other EU countries is a bit of a red herring in my opinion. You need to look at the cost of many other things and you can't just pick the cheapest/best from each country.

Simon

[Kombi]

As the responses from the various organisations are coming out it rather nice to see that many share the same point of view as me, ie current proposals for tariffs are too low to work well. Let the DECC listen to them and that the final scheme will really boost the take up in green energy.