Hansard - United Kingdom Parliament

129W
Written Answers
20 JUNE 2011
Written Answers
130W
The data available from the Department’s arm’s length
bodies are about orders rather than contracts and show
that:
1) The Coal Authority has placed 1.5% of its orders with
SMEs based in Scotland and 0.3% of its orders with SMEs based
in Lanarkshire.
2) The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) placed
1.5% of its orders with suppliers based in Scotland. The NDA is
unable to determine whether the orders related to SMEs without
incurring the disproportionate expense of examining all individual
orders.
Solar Power
Huw Irranca-Davies: To ask the Secretary of State
for Energy and Climate Change what his most recent
estimate is of the number of solar farms with a
generating capacity greater than one megawatt that will
be installed and commissioned before 1 August 2011.
[61248]
Gregory Barker: To date, Ofgem have not approved
any applications from PV schemes with an installed
capacity greater than 1 MW. However, from discussions
with the industry I anticipate that some schemes of this
size will be generating before 1 August 2011. DECC’s
current understanding is that the total capacity of such
schemes could be around 40 MW.
Huw Irranca-Davies: To ask the Secretary of State
for Energy and Climate Change what assessment he
has made of the UK’s performance in developing solar
photovoltaics. [61251]
Gregory Barker: In the first year of operation 28,000
solar photovoltaic (PV) installations were confirmed
under the GB feed-in tariffs scheme, totalling over
77 megawatts (MW) of installed capacity. In the first
two months of this financial year, close to a further
150 installations were completed per day.
There are two UK-based manufacturers of PV panels:
Romag and Sharp Solar.
Solar Power: Public Buildings
Huw Irranca-Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for
Energy and Climate Change what his Department’s
most recent estimate is of the number of (a) schools,
(b) hospitals, (c) other public buildings and (d) community
buildings that will be fitted with solar photovoltaic
installations with a generating capacity between 50 and
100 kilowatts under the feed-in tariff scheme in the year
after 1 August 2011. [61247]
Gregory Barker: The design of tariffs under the feed-in
tariffs (FITs) scheme, as completed by the last Government,
is based on the technology and generation capacity of
the installation and not on generator type. Therefore,
we do not currently have the information requested
either for existing installations or future installations.
As confirmed in the recent Government response to
the fast-track review of the FITs scheme, the intention
is that from 1 August 2011 a new tariff of 19.0p/kWh
will apply to solar photovoltaic installations of between
50 and 150 kW. We consider that this will deliver a
5% internal rate of return for well located installations,
which could include those on community buildings.