REI Mar-Apr 2012 - Renewable Energy Installer

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14 | www.renewableenergyinstaller.co.uk
News: Profi le
Care for the community
In a recent issue of REI, Howard Johns
of Southern Solar described the Ovesco
community solar roof project in Lewes,
as an example of the kind of initiative
that has been hit hard by the proposed
changes to the Feed-in Tariff. Liz
Mandeville, a director of Ovesco,
spells out what this means
e completed and
W
registered our 98kW
roof last August.
No Feed-in Tariff
(FiT) payment in sight, but our
most serious problem was the
uncertainty over the future of
the FiT for solar. Community
projects don’t give investors
any direct fi nancial benefi t. Our
evidence shows that community
benefi t is the main motive for
investing, but there are lots of
ways to benefi t a community
that don’t require large sums of
money, so we have to include
interest payments in our
planning. The earlier FiT enabled
us, to maintain the system, pay
interest and a modest return on
investments, and have a small
sum for administration and
development.
The reductions in the FiT, on
the most optimistic assumptions,
just about make a project break
even, but leave nothing to pay
investors and for the continued
existence of Ovesco. We have
two good 30kW projects ready
to go, but will probably have to
abandon them. We could have
completed them by the March
deadline, but the back-dating
of the new FiT has made this
impossible.
The government, with its
series of appeals, is using up
the narrow window in which
we could have done something
more. If it loses in the fi nal
stage of its legal battle then,
organisations like Ovesco should
be given equivalent time to that
lost in litigation before the new
rates apply, to carry out projects
that could have been completed
within the original consultation
period. At the moment, it’s a case
of heads, the government wins,
tails, community solar loses. In
the longer term, communities,
people employed in the solar
business, individuals - every
one loses from this cack-handed
policy making. Hard to feel that
anyone in government actually
cares about climate change.
Tough times:
Those
involved
in the
Ovesco solar
community
roof project.
Photo
courtesy
of David
McHugh