Am I selling at 43p or 21p?

After Government this week announced its intention to take the ongoing appeal case to the Supreme Court; the UK solar industry has been left with a huge question mark hanging over what on the feed-in tariff rates will be between December 12, 2011 and March 3, 2012. The point is: what rate should installers be selling at?

After being defeated in the Court of Appeal, the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) refused to back down, again pushing the point that its drastic feed-in tariff cuts needed to take place as soon as possible.

Owing to the current situation, the Department’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Chris Huhne, has warned that solar installation companies should not be selling at the higher rates.

“We respectfully disagree with the judgment and are seeking permission to appeal to the Supreme Court,” he said.

"In the light of that, we cannot rule out the possibility that lower tariffs could be applied to installations which became eligible for FiTs on or after the proposed reference date. It is important that consumers are aware of this."

Many Solar Power Portal readers have written in with queries on this topic, and we would like to clarify the point: 43p is very far from guaranteed.

Government’s decision to take its appeal to the Supreme Court has given birth to yet more uncertainty. Shrouding the rates between December 12, 2011 and March 3, 2012, this uncertainty looks set to stay for a while after the Supreme Court confirmed that it can take up to a year for a case such as this to even be heard – meaning we are no closer to finding out whether the proposed cuts will go ahead as planned.

Annoying, aggravating and disappointing though this is, the fact remains: installers should now be selling at the lower rates, as outlined in the table below.