Speaking with the solar industry yesterday Minister of State for Energy and Climate Change Greg Barker revealed that the 21p rate proposed by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is confirmed from December 12 to March 31. This means that all systems installed in that time will receive that rate for the full 25-year lifetime.
Since posting this announcement, many of you have refuted it on the basis that DECC is yet to publish an official statement, however we have had confirmation that this is the case, and that an official statement is currently being prepared. In fact, last night the Minister tweeted:
While this morning he linked directly to the article we published, re-tweeting:
Also during the meeting with industry the Minister confirmed the amazing installation figures we have seen in the past weeks. According to DECC’s latest numbers ~71,000 solar PV installations have been added to the MCS database in the last five weeks, peaking at ~9,000 a day. Most recent estimates conclude that ~35,000 installations were registered in one week.
However, while these figures display the great amount of solar uptake in the UK, they cannot be viewed as definite. Due to the disruption caused by the sheer volume of installers trying to register their systems before the December 12 deadline, the system had registered some installations more than once.
According to MCS there is also evidence of fraud, where make-believe solar installations have been registered before December 12 in order to beat the deadline. It is unclear just how many of the total these account for, yet policing of the process is now underway and checks will be carried out to ensure all installers registering yet-to-be-constructed systems are caught out.
DECC is currently working on an official statement, which will be published in due course.