{"id":1222,"date":"2012-09-17T09:59:45","date_gmt":"2012-09-17T17:59:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greentechgazette.com\/?p=1222"},"modified":"2016-05-11T15:04:56","modified_gmt":"2016-05-11T23:04:56","slug":"lower-domestic-subsidies-pushes-growth-in-utility-scaled-solar-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greentechgazette.com\/index.php\/solar-energy\/lower-domestic-subsidies-pushes-growth-in-utility-scaled-solar-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Lower Domestic Subsidies Pushes Growth in Utility-Scaled Solar Power"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure style=\"width: 455px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Solar Panels in Belfast\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.greentechgazette.com\/images\/solar-panels-belfast.jpg\" alt=\"Solar Panels in Belfast\" width=\"455\" height=\"236\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" class=\"lazyload\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 455px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 455\/236;\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Solar Panels in Belfast<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><span style=\"color: #339966;\"><strong>By Guest Blogger Mathias Maehlum<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p>On 1st of August this year, the feed-in tariff in the UK, which enables household to put excess electricity generated by solar panels back on the <a title=\"grid for profit\" href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/environment\/2012\/may\/24\/solar-power-subsidy-cut\" target=\"_blank\">grid for profit<\/a>, was lowered by a quarter \u2013 from 21p to 16p for every kWh. On top of this, the payment lengths will also be reduced from 25 to 20 years.<\/p>\n<p>This means that solar becomes less financially feasible for households looking to participate in the green movement and put solar panels on their roofs. Taking the recent price reduction of the upfront costs of solar panels into account, financial returns are estimated to have dropped from 7-10% to 6% since the FIT-scheme was first launched in 2010.<\/p>\n<p>It looks like the reduction in the UK FIT-scheme has some interesting results for utility-scaled solar. Businessweek said the following on the recent development:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSolar-energy companies are applying to build the U.K.\u2019s biggest projects, sidestepping a cut in state subsidies aimed at limiting new power plants by relying on a decade-old incentive program and tumbling panel prices,\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe market for utility-scale projects, stymied since the U.K. lowered feed-in tariffs paid to generators in August, may as a result see as much as 600 megawatts of plants built through April, the Solar Trade Association said. That\u2019s about four times the level of such installations now operating in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The development is clearly exciting, and any type of solar added to the grid is a positive thing, but do we really want to lower financial incentives for households, and build large solar parks instead of spread them out on every rooftop?<\/p>\n<p><strong>About the Author<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Mathias is working for <a title=\"Energy Informative\" href=\"http:\/\/energyinformative.org\" target=\"_blank\">Energy Informative<\/a> where you can read more of his articles about solar panels, wind turbines and geothermal heating and cooling systems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Guest Blogger Mathias Maehlum On 1st of August this year, the feed-in tariff in the UK, which enables household to put excess electricity generated by solar panels back on the grid for profit, was lowered by a quarter \u2013 from 21p to 16p for every kWh. On top of this, the payment lengths will [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-solar-energy"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greentechgazette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greentechgazette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greentechgazette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greentechgazette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greentechgazette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1222"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.greentechgazette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1680,"href":"https:\/\/www.greentechgazette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1222\/revisions\/1680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greentechgazette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greentechgazette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greentechgazette.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}