The UK’s overall solar PV capacity at the end of March stood at just over 5.7GW, according to figures released by the Department of Energy and Climate Change on Thursday.
DECC’s figures show a 6.4% increase in capacity on February’s figures, driven largely by a 2.3% sequential increase in capacity installed under feed-in tariffs to 2,985MW, resulting in capacity under FiTs to represent more than half (52%) of total solar deployment in the UK.
The figures also show a month-on-month increase of just 1% in capacity installed under ROC accreditation to 2,058MW, a figure which is likely to be challenged by many within the industry.
DECC’s figures estimate that just 614MW of capacity was added in the UK throughout Q1 2015, almost a third of the 1.6GW figure published by research firm IHS yesterday and publications from developers and EPCs collated by Solar Power Portal totalled at least 1,071MW.
DECC does however caveat its figures by stating they are produced when a site is commissioned, rather than when it has gained accreditation for either ROC or FiT support and that “lags in data sources” will result in data that is not up to date with revisions to the data published the next month.