Time limitations on Norwich city councils solar panels

As I mentioned in my previous post Norwich City Council are planning in install thousands of solar panels on their housing stock and other buildings they own. City Hall is one of these buildings and is to have a 40kW solar photovoltaic installation. Annually the electricity bill for this is around £110,000 and hence why the council are trying to minimise rising energy costs and gain money through selling energy back to the national grid.

 In February 2011 a review of the feed in tariff scheme was called by Chris Huhne (the minister for climate change and energy) as it was being questioned whether they were the really starting a low carbon economy. In June it was announced that there would be feed in tariff cuts to ensure that the money assigned for this does not get used up by large businesses. The idea is for this scheme to mainly benefit home owners and smaller community projects.

 Now, Norwich City council is under pressure to make these changes before the feed in tariff cuts kick in, in April 2012. The solar panel system to be installed on city hall will end up paying for itself over a 13 year period but only if it is installed by the end of March 2012. It would be a shame for these great environmental and profitable plans to fall through due to time limitations.

However it seems the council have a very positive attitude to this project with the leader of the city council Brenda Arthur saying this at the time: “This is a way in which we can lead by example when it comes to making a contribution to the environment”.

More solar panels to appear across Norwich rooftops

In this time of cuts and recession, it may seem surprising that Norwich City Council have pledged to install 5000 solar panels on their housing stock. But when you inspect this decision more closely it does make a lot of monetary sense.

This is due to a scheme the government introduced in April 2010 known as feed in tariffs. This was based on a similar and very successful German model. Feed in tariffs pay you for the energy solar panels make, at 4 to 5 times to current market rate and this money is guaranteed to be tax free for the next 25 years.  So although the initial fee of installation can seem like a lot, in time this investment not only pays for itself but also ends up being quite profitable.

Although this scheme was originally created with the intention to be applicable to home owners; in May the coalition government extended the applicability of fee in tariffs to local authorities.  This great opportunity has lead to councils such as Cornwall and Norfolk starting enquires into setting up their own energy service companies. Other city councils are also taking advantage of the feed in tariffs by installing solar panels on all their housing stock; like Birmingham city council. Norwich have not only agreed to install solar panels in their housing stock but also on other council owned buildings like city hall.

So the view of the roof tops across Norwich will soon be drastically changed. I feel it reflects a positive step towards investing in renewable energy sources and also will end up creating money for the council and therefore the community. If you are interest in or want more information on feed in tariffs the department of energy and climate change (decc) have a useful web page; feed in tariffs.