Strong Growth of Renewable Energy in UK

[jpak]

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2010/08/strong-growth-of-renewable-energy-in-uk

Two recent announcements highlight the success of the UK feed-in tariff according to consulting firm Ownergy and research consultancy iSupply. Ownergy announced that the UK figures on initial installations are out and show that the commercial sector was more active in renewable energy applications than the government had originally predicted.

Of the 20.7 MW of total installed capacity that has been registered for the UK feed-In tariff scheme since it went live on April 1, 6.4 MW was installed by the commercial sector, well ahead of initial government predictions that forecasted the domestic sector accounting for a far higher majority of the installation capacity.

In total, 4,609 installations were registered for the feed-In tariffs with the figures showing a significant monthly increase in the total number of installations being registered. In terms of quantity, the residential market accounted for the lion share of the total number with 4,541 registered installations – a figure that rose from just 408 in April. With the average domestic installation being 2.7 kW in size and all but 112 being solar PV installations, the average financial return for these early adopters can be predicted at £2,000 a year. With an average installation cost of around £12,000, these early adopters will on average achieve an 8 to 12% return over the 25 year lifetime of the solar PV tariffs.

The commercial sector showed a far lower number of installations, with just 55 registered between April 1st and July 31st. However, the average size of the installations was far higher and spread more equally between solar PV and wind schemes, as well as 6 hydro-power plants going live.

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