Solar Media Staff

In a bid to keep up with the fast-paced UK solar market, Eco Environments has spread to four new regions. Recruiting new Business Development Managers the company will now operate in Yorkshire, Cheshire, Lincolnshire and Derbyshire as well as from Carlisle, Newcastle, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, North Wales and the head office in Liverpool. The move is reportedly part of Eco Environments’ strategy to cover all major regional centres within the next two years.

The latest quarterly report published by IMS Research has shown that the expansion of PV wafer, cell and module manufacturing capacity will slow dramatically throughout the rest of 2012 in response to slowing demand in key regions and a severe oversupply of PV products.

In the wake of the Government’s formal FiT consultation, which proposed a slash in the FiT rate of over 50%, the UK solar industry has felt a great sense of injustice, stemmed from a seemingly…

The announcement this week from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) on solar feed-in tariffs (FiT) came as shock to the solar industry. But this shock wasn’t just from the FiT reduction, as Government had widely flagged its intention to reduce the subsidy designed to make solar panel installations economically viable – even if the size of the cut was larger than had been hoped.

The environmental charity, Friends of the Earth, has written to climate change minister Greg Barker warning that unless the Government agrees to amend its proposals by 4pm on Friday, November 11, it will commence court proceedings.

Shortly after the proposed feed-in tariffs were announced the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) published its Impact Assessment (IA) which outlines the finer details of why the UK solar industry is facing such extreme cuts.

In response to Government’s recent solar policy proposals the Environmental Audit Committee and Energy and Climate Change Committee are calling for evidence on the feed-in tariffs for small-scale solar photovoltaic energy, with a view to hearing oral evidence later this month.

Leominster Community Solar has taken the bold decision to proceed with the planned 50kWp installation on Leominster’s sports centre’s roof with the backing of the project’s installer Southern Solar.

In the wake of Government’s recent feed-in tariff announcement independent generation consolidator SmartestEnergy is calling for a single rate for all FiT projects in the UK.

Last week the Solar Power UK conference was held in Birmingham and the keynote speaker was Greg Barker, Minister for Energy and Climate Change. It was rumoured that he would make a ‘big’ announcement but, in the end, this did not happen. The announcement was leaked in the following days and was finally released by DECC on Monday  October 31. The result: a large cut in feed-in tariff rates from the end of this year.