Government Incentives

Let’s quickly check the various incentives that are offered by UK government in order to make solar energy (and renewable energy, in general) more attractive to all consumers.

For Solar Thermal, the UK government offers Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI). Actually, Renewable Heat Incentive is applicable for all types of (qualified) renewable energy systems that are being used for heating purposes.

Here is how it works:
- First you need to install the solar thermal heating system
- Subsequently, an estimate is made as to how much heat energy will be produced by the solar thermal energy system

- Finally, the estimate (as calculated above) and tariff chart is used to pay you a fixed amount of money as incentive over a long period of time (20 years). The RHI tariff is between 17-18 pence/KWh.

Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) is discussed in greater detail in the Solar Thermal section of this website.

Grants, for Solar Thermal, are also available from the UK government under the ‘Low Carbon Buildings Program’. These grants can go up to 30% of your total solar thermal energy system cost (with an upper cap). However, there are certain easy requirements that you need to fulfil in order to be eligible for the grants.

For Solar Photovoltaic, Feed-in-tariff system is the equivalent of RHI. FIT or Feed-in-Tariff is a UK government initiative to provide incentives to people who use renewable energy to produce electricity. With FIT, you get paid for every KWh of electricity that you generate and you are also paid for the part of electricity that you feed into the national grid.

The FIT tariffs came into force from 01 Apr 2010 and pay you up to to 43 pence per KWh (and these are for 25 years with provision to factor-in inflation) for systems that are installed before April 2012. You can use the feed-in-tariff calculator at http://www.aesolarsystems.com/feed-in-tariff-calculator.html to do your own calculations.