fun on the farm

I have been reading this morning about Micheal Eavis (of Glastonbury fame) - http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/nov/10/solar-power-glastonbury-michael-eavis he has installed 1,116 solar panels on the roof of a cowshed at his farm.

During his interview he mentioned how easy he has found it, with the help from the governments feed in tarriff (http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/what_we_do/uk_supply/energy_mix/renewable/feedin_tariff/feedin_tariff.aspx) which has used powers in the Energy Act 2008 to introduce a system of feed-in tariffs to incentivise small scale (less than 5MW), low carbon electricity generation. The Department's Response to the Consultation on Feed-in Tariffs (FITs)(set out the decisions in relation to the FITs scheme. These feed-in tariffs work alongside the Renewables Obligation (RO), which will remain the primary mechanism to incentivise deployment of large-scale renewable electricity generation, and the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) which will incentivise generation of heat from renewable sources at all scales. The Department launched the Renewable Heat Incentive consultation on 1 February 2010 and the deadline for responses to this was on 26 April 2010.

Householders considering generating their own electricity should look at the Energy Saving Trust’s Clean Energy Cashback[External link] web pages for more information on energy efficiency measures as well as independent advice on the technologies concerned.

Small-scale low-carbon electricity technologies eligible for FITs are:

• Wind;
• Solar photovoltaics (PV);
• Hydro;
• Anaerobic digestion; and
• Domestic scale microCHP (with a capacity of 2kW or less)*

* Domestic scale microCHP pilot will support up to 30,000 installations with a review to start when the 12,000th installation is completed.
Solid or liquid biomass technologies continue to be supported under the Renewables Obligation (RO) at all scales.

I have a colleague who has diversified from energy assessments in fitting photovoltics as he said it is definately the way to go, he has them on the roof of his own property and has saved money on his energy bills already.