Latest DECC statistics show healthy demand but leading trade body issues warning on lookout for bigger projects.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has published its latest statistics on small-scale solar PV installations, showing that over 125,000 homes put solar on their roof last year.
The announcement has also set the tariffs to be paid out for the period from April to June of this year.
The growth in demand for residential solar has meant that for the first time since 2012 the tariff paid out for that size of system will reduce not just because of the automatic reduction every nine months but instead because of the healthy number of installations towards the end of last year.
David Pickup, the Solar Trade Association’s Business Analyst, commented: “These latest statistics show that the FiT solar PV market is seeing healthy growth with plenty of solar going up on domestic and commercial roofs as well as small solar farms.”
“We are particularly pleased to see good levels of growth in the large rooftop market with 33MW of solar – 164 installations – installed in the last three months of 2014, more than double that in the previous quarter.”
“But this isn’t enough – as we have shown in our model of the Feed in Tariff budget, we need to see more solar going up on roofs and more gradual reductions in the tariff to get to the industry’s goal of subsidy-free solar. Our Solar Independence Plan sets out how we can restructure the Feed in Tariff to get more solar for very little extra money and give a path to zero subsidy.”
