Householders have just six weeks to take advantage of the current Government payments for solar-generated electricity, a leading renewable energy company has warned.
On Monday, (October 31) the Government is to announce that as of December 8, 2011 – instead of April 1, 2012 – its feed in tariff paid for generating electricity from solar panels will be slashed from 43.3p per unit to just 21p per unit.
The move – to bring it forward by four months – has been criticised by Spencer Cassidy, the managing director of Harrogate-based Clean Energy (Yorkshire).
Mr Cassidy, whose business employs just under 30 people, said:
I can’t understand the Government’s reasoning for bringing the date forward. It’s going to throw the whole industry into panic.
Householders have just six weeks to install a solar energy system if they want to take advantage of the current payments.
We are predicting an avalanche of orders between now and December 8. After that it will be a totally different story.
Mr Cassidy said he could also see a number of companies that just installed solar panels going out of business by the end of the year, as a direct result of the Government’s decision.
He added:
We are relatively well placed to ride this out as we install a number of other renewable energy solutions.
These include wind turbines, anaerobic digesters, ground source and air source heat pumps and pellet-fuelled boilers. Some of these technologies have actually seen their tariffs increased.
