Because of the the dash to be green along with the penalty charges for excessive carbon emissions there are various schemes on offer to households to make their properties significantly more energy-efficient.
All of these schemes are now being provided by Private Companies and there are some government backed schemes property owners can’t afford to make changes to their houses.
In this article, I will be taking a look at Feed in Tariff (FIT) scheme, what it is as well as the advantages of the scheme. In Part II, I will examine the problems, and what you should be looking for when signing up for one of these schemes.
FIT was introduced in April 2010 and since then UK property owners have been able to take advantage of the benefits of free solar power systems for the home provided by many of the environmentally friendly electricity companies and contractors.
The FIT scheme means that the suppliers who prior to this sold and installed photovoltaic or pv solar panel systems for many thousands of pounds can now afford to give them away but still make money.
The FIT was created so that if you do elect to purchase the solar panels yourself you’ll get your investment back through the free electricity generated plus the surplus electricity made that you can sell to the National Grid. The standard solar panel system currently costs about £15,000 and it has been calculated that if you took out a twenty-five year personal loan to pay for the installation, the payments that you receive for the electricity produced which is fed into the National Grid along with the value of the electricity which you have used, should be worth more than the amount of money you pay off on the personal loan per year.
Purchasing the solar panel system yourself does provide you with a better financial reward nevertheless, you will have to either have the spare hard cash to spend upfront or be able to get a sufficient bank loan to pay for the purchase price.
If you opt to have free solar power systems installed, you keep all the free electricity you create and use, and the company who installed the solar energy panels sell what remains back to the national grid. Solar panels are usually available for 41.3p per Kwh, tax free. This is whether or not the energy is used up now or in the future.
If you’re choosing a company to either purchase a photovoltaic system from an installer or take up the offer of free solar power systems you must make certain that they are MCS certified. MCS is an independent microgeneration certification scheme that certifies the system and installer. If the system and installers are not MCS certified then the electricity companies are not going to pay you or the company that installed the system the feed-in tariff or the export tariff.
The best time to take advantage of this system is now to lock in the guaranteed high payments before the March 2012 deadline. After that is might not be as cost effective to get solar energy panels installed. The great thing is that if you are taking advantage now you are guaranteed the payments for 25 years. Who would not want 25 years of free electricity particularly as many peoples electric bills will rise dramatically over that timethat period of