The latest weekly installation figures for the sub 50kW market show a 90% fall off from last week’s year-high levels which saw 32MW installed.
According to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) the week ending 7 July saw 2.95MW of capacity installed, a drop of 29.58MW from the previous week.
Over the week 915 installations were registered, with 2.4MW installed in 0-4kW capacity band, 130kW at the 4-10kW band and 428kW in the 10-50kWp band.
The figures show that, despite the headline tariff of 15.44p/kWh only degressing by 0.5p, the solar industry saw a huge upswing in demand as customers looked to beat the feed-in tariff deadline the 1 July.
Managing director of Southern Solar and former chair of the Solar Trade Association, Howard Johns said the fall in installations is “inevitable” but predicts the market will “pick up again soon,” adding that solar is “not for the faint hearted” and the tariff fluctuations are just “one factor to deal with.”
The previous week ending 30 June, saw 5,867 50kW PV installations registered, with a total of 448,000 registered in total this year.