The U.K.’s Solar Trade Association (STA) has welcomed publication today of the government’s Smart Export Guarantee (SEG), brought in to replace the export tariff previously paid to small scale solar generators for excess power fed into the grid, and which lapsed in April.
As anticipated by the solar trade body, the government did not announce a minimum price for solar energy exported by residential generators but did leave the door open to such a move if power companies do not provide a sufficiently competitive market for generators.
What would constitute a competitive market was not defined and the STA today stated the “one existing domestic offer linked to the wholesale price” should be regarded as the minimum requirement. The STA has previously highlighted the fixed £0.055/kWh export tariff offered by London-based Octopus Energy plus a potentially higher smart tariff offered by the same provider to generators with solar storage.
C&I left high and dry
The STA also pointed out the SEG will only apply to residential solar arrays, meaning the owners of small scale solar commercial and industrial (C&I) systems are still left without access to payments for their excess power.
Under the rules of the guarantee, energy companies with at least 150,000 retail customers must publish their payment terms for small solar generators exporting excess power to the grid from January 1 onwards. Smaller companies can do so voluntarily, as Octopus does.
The STA has pledged to maintain an online SEG league table indicating which power companies are offering the best deals for solar power exporters.
With reference to the lack of a minimum export payment price and the fact the U.K. government has been forced to cap residential energy bills since late 2018, however, STA director of advocacy and new markets Léonie Greene said: “It is a requirement under EU law to offer fair, market rate payment for small scale solar power exports and [the] government has decided to leave this to a market that it does not trust to supply power at a fair price”.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
1 comment
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.