Earlier this year the Government announced a move to slash funding for large-scale solar Feed-In Tariffs (FITs) projects.

The latest figures on renewable generation released the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), which also cover the fifth and final quarter of (FITs) scheme, show an increase of 51%.

A total of 164MW was generated from renewable sources with, perhaps rather obviously, solar photovoltaics leading the way.

A solar park is installed at Toyota’s Derbyshire plant this – more below.

New photovoltaic generation was 121.6MW, compared to new wind at 24.2MW, hydro at 12.8MW, 5MW of anaerobic digestion and just 0.2MW for micro CHP.

However, the vast majority of the total capacity, 125.4 MW, was in the domestic sector suggesting people were still using schemes for their own homes, which is what the Government has said FITs is for, while just 38.3MW was installed by business users.

Of the schemes to slip ahead of the FITs cut off is Toyota’s 4.6 million kWh a year Derbyshire plant.

The site, also home to production of the Toyota Auris Hybrid, now boosts an array of about 17,000 solar panels covering 90,000m2 of industrial land within the site.

The solar panels were installed and paid for by British Gas, which is claiming FITs for the project.

Luke Walsh

 

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