Renewable Energy Installer February 2014 | Page 16

Opinion
By guest columnist
Bill Wright,
head of energy
solutions, Electrical
Contractors’
Association
Market forces
With demand set to rise, the outlook for
the UK PV market throughout 2014 looks
bright, says Steve Pester, BRE
ith the jumps in
energy prices
that we seem
to routinely
experience
these days, many people are
at last starting to feel that
the connection between
renewables and long term
energy affordability is real
(although not all politicians
appear to have made that
connection). This is good
news for the industry as
it means that there is an
increasingly important
driver to buy systems for
reasons of independence from the energy companies, rather than merely
for FIT/RHI income (some people will also buy because they actually care
about the planet too!).
The much-awaited domestic RHI will certainly boost the renewable
heat market, but there are some interesting little conundrums to be
unravelled – for example, is it best to fit a solar thermal system or a bit
more PV and an energy diverter to direct any surplus energy into a hot
water tank? Issues such as this will no doubt be hotly debated at Ecobuild
next month.
The UK is now seen from abroad as one of the top markets for PV and
I believe it will continue to strengthen in 2014, with a stable demand for
domestic systems and an improving market for medium scale systems. But
with any shift towards commercial roof scale systems, it will be essential
to ensure that high quality systems are installed in order to maintain the
confidence of the market – since the FITs came in we’ve seen quite a
few horrors at the domestic scale, so the establishment of a good quality
process for systems larger than 50kW would now be very helpful.
The National Solar Centre, having moved premises to the Eden
Project, is now actively setting up its outdoor test site – we’ll be running
side-by-side comparisons of PV modules and inverters, refining the current
thinking on the effects of orientation and tilt of mountings, as well as
testing the effectiveness of various cleaning regimes. Its early days, but
we look forward to bringing forth some new publications (you may have
already seen the planning guide) and welcoming visitors at some point
during 2014.
W
T
he recent publicity over the
slow progress over the Green
Deal highlights the fact that
renewable energy installations are
not actively encouraged within the
scheme. Renewable energy systems
are on the list of eligible technologies
for Green Deal finance but they rarely
meet the ‘Golden Rule’ which is that
the cost of the loan repayments must
be less than the cost of energy saved.
This is because Feed-in Tariff income
is not allowed to be included within
the calculation. In order to meet the
‘Golden Rule’ the customer has to
fund around 60 percent of the total
cost and then the rest can be covered
by a ‘Green Deal’ loan. Considering
the cost of finance is approximately
7 percent, this is not a very good incentive. If the rules
could be changed to allow Feed-in Tariff payments to be
taken into account this could give a new boost to both
the Green Deal and the renewable energy industry. The
ECA has campaigned for this and other changes such
as a reduction in stamp duty and reduced council tax or
business rates for efficient buildings, including ones with
renewable energy systems. Will this happen in 2014? We
will just have to wait and see.
16 | www.renewableenergyinstaller.co.uk