Maybe I missed this elsewhere but I came across this today
New domestic energy efficiency requirements - from 1st April 2012. Where a domestic property does not meet these energy efficiency requirements, the Solar PV installation may receive the lower tariff of 9p/kWh. The UK Government is consulting on two alternative proposals:
* that the owner or occupier should bring the property up to an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of level C or above; or
* that the owner or occupier of a building should undertake all the measures that are identified on an EPC as potentially eligible for Green Deal finance, with no additional finance required.
from reading it I assume that it applies to installations after April 2012 but it doesn't seem to make it clear. If it doesn't does it mean that we will have to get a Energy Performance Certificate .
I live in Wrexham where the council has planned on install solar on 3000 council homes by next March (the original date of the tariff change) http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-w ... -29472555/
Wonder what will happen now, it was a massive investment but now it would probably be uneconomic. We also have a Sharp who produce solar panels close by, they took on 300 people to cope with the demand for solar http://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/news/ ... wales5478/ so these jobs could be in jeopardy.
Ed
PV array AS-5M-185W x 21 = 3.885 Kw
Inverter SMA SB 3800
Orientation WSW
Our council here in York were planning on doing something similar to yours, and have likewise been overtaken by events
However the local Green Party councillors are busy finding a source of much-cheaper installations (say £2200/kWp instead of the original project price of £3700), this is not unrealistic as the price of PV has fallen by 30% or so recently.
If you like doing that sort o'thing, it might be worth a quick letter to your council, encouraging them to follow-through in the light of installation price reductions: they'd also be doing the Sharp place plus other local green industry a service by providing them with orders during a time which is likely to be otherwise bleak.
This is a lot more concerning for the industry than the 43 to 21p cut. The industry can live with 21p FIT - they are clear about that, just unhappy about the lack of warning and the economic shock associated with it (a small installer may have ordered a container load of panels for several hundred thousand quid from China and it's not due to arrive until the New Year...). Anyway, the requirement to be C-grade or above effectively cuts 80% of the potential market out. That's the figure that was presented at the select committee meeting a couple of weeks ago. At that meeting, attended by a solar industry association representative as well as Leggett from SolarCentury and others, the main message was that cutting FIT is okay and no FIT at all will be required by ~2017, but cutting with so little warning was not okay and linking with energy certificates as they have done is a killer.
It's particularly irrational because EPCs are mainly determined by thermal performance of the building, and PV in most cases has nothing to do with heating.
But it's not just the buildings that make this a problem: insulation and PV are two completely different "markets", used by completely different types of people and often for different fundamental reasons. Very few people will be equally enthusiastic about both.
Indeed. On the one hand I can see the logic, why subsidise energy generation for a house that is inefficient (according to the official measure of house efficiency)? It'd make more sense to subsidise/incentivise insulation and save heating energy in those cases. On the other hand some folk are perfectly happy in a relatively poor performing (according to the official metric) house, heat with biofuel anyway and see PV as a way to address their grid electricity supply, a major source of carbon.
I know someone with a pv system they installed on a frame on the ground quite separate from their house which is a listed building with little or no opportunity for further thermal energy performance improvement and where electricity is not used for any heating. I know another where the pv system is on a farm building roof. It provides electricity to the milking parlour which, of course, needs to be a very well ventilated and unheated space.
I wonder if, now that we are cast adrift in the Atlantic, anything that proved to be successful in Germany must on no account be attempted. Basically, we have an even worse government than the last lot.
Ok, those Germans are just showing off now. Not only has the nation announced plans to shut down all of its nuclear power plants and started the construction of 2,800 miles of transmission lines for its new renewable energy initiative, but now the village of Wildpoldsried is producing 321% more energy than it needs! The small agricultural village in the state of Bavaria is generating an impressive $5.7 million in annual revenue from renewable energy
It seems the government have managed to upset the National Trust and the Church of England at the same time.
The Church of England and the National Trust have written to the government saying recent policy changes put community solar power schemes at risk.
They fear the changes "signal a retreat" in government plans to move towards localised renewable energy.
This week, the High Court ruled that a plan to halve subsidies for solar panels was "legally flawed", and MPs' committees said it was "panicky".
The church and the charity want a UK target for community energy.
Both organisations have tried to take a leadership role in developing community energy schemes.
They believe this type of project is being unfairly penalised by proposed changes to the feed-in tariff (FiT), the scheme that pays householders and communities a subsidy for producing solar electricity.
Their letter, to Climate Change Minister Greg Barker, is also signed by think-tank Forum for the Future and charitable consultants Carbon Leapfrog.
The National Trust said only two of its 14 planned solar projects would now go ahead. Mr Jenkins disclosed his personal concerns in a letter to Ian Lucas, an MP campaigning against the cuts.
“The changes to the feed-in tariffs, as set out in the consultation paper, are a blow to our plans,” Mr Jenkins said. “We have already had to withdraw several proposed schemes, which are no longer viable without the promised rate of subsidy.”
but it doesn't seem to make it clear. If it doesn't does it mean that we will have to get a Energy Performance Certificate 
.
