The government has lost its high court appeal over its plan to cut subsidies for solar panels on homes.

The appeal was against a High Court ruling blocking government plans to make large reductions to payments made to households with solar panels.

It would have hit customers who installed panels after 12 December.

Under the feed-in tariffs programme, people in Britain with solar panels are paid for the electricity they generate. The government tried to reduce them prior to the results of the consultation being released. The High Court agreed with opponents that this was legally flawed.

The new tariff of 21p per kilowatt-hour, down from the current 43p, had been expected to come into effect from 1 April, but in October the government said it would be paid to anyone who installed their solar panels after 12 December.

Upholding that ruling, the Supreme Court said the government’s appeal “does not raise an arguable point of law of general public importance which ought to be considered by the Supreme Court at this time”.

The government said the court’s decision drew a line under the case.

“We will now focus all our efforts on ensuring the future stability and cost effectiveness of solar and other microgeneration technologies for the many, not the few,” said Energy and Climate Change Secretary.

Here at solarfeedintariff.co.uk we applaud the High Courts judgment and hope it encourages fairer and better planned legislation from the government In the future when amending renewable energy policy.

It is unsurprising that the man who headed the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) when the feed-in tariffs were announced under the previous government has joined the campaign against making cutbacks to the feed-in tariff. Ed Miliband now leader of the opposition has come out in favour of maintaining the current rates paid to solar projects regardless of scale.

Greg Barker is in favour of reducing the feed-in tariffs for larger scale solar farms to ensure that investment is focused on solar rooftop installations rather than large scale solar farms which have sprung up in order to take advantage of the tariff payments. The coalition government has maintained that in order for household solar projects to be successful, a cap on payments will be introduced for all solar projects over 50kw capacity, making large scale solar farm projects financially unviable.

Miliband showed his opposition to proposed cuts by signing an early day moton with a view to provoking a debate in parliament to highlight the reasons for maintaining the solar feed-in tariff for all projects. A Labour Party spokesman commented that,

“There has been no real debate about this significant change and we want to see it debated properly at the committee level.”

The feed-in tariff works by offering guaranteed, premium rates for units of energy both used and fed-into the grid by solar photovoltaic generators. The feed-in tariff mechanism was introduced as a way of making solar projects more commercially viable by off-setting the obvious set up costs in installing solar pv equipment. Therefore, the proposed 40-70 per cent cuts for installations over 50kw could prove disastrous for larger schemes as investors are turned off by a lack of returns.

Shadow climate minister, Huw Irranca-Davies echoed the leader of the party stating,

“Minister Greg Barker’s decision to go ahead with the proposed dramatic Feed-In Tariff reductions for community, school and hospital schemes, is a big blow to British industry and betrays the government’s promise the be ‘the greenest government ever.”

Adding, “A decision such as this which fundamentally alters the future for the solar industry in the UK deserves real debate, where MPs can question the Minister on his rash and ill-thought out decision. It should not be snuck quietly through the Commons.”

Cambridge based solar technology company Polysolar has developed a hi-tech photovoltaic glass which could be used at next year’s Olympic Games in London and also the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. Polysolar’s transparent PV glass has been designed for use by architects in windows, cladding and glass structures as a way of generating green energy. The glass is already in use in other countries and is able to generate 100w of energy from each pane of glass making it an effective way of generating clean energy from wall and roof space.

Explaining the idea behind the glass, Hamish Watson the founder of Polysolar said,

“Our product is different from any other solar panel on the market, because it can be used as a building material, making it a highly cost effective integral part of the building. Unlike traditional solar cells, which need to be southward facing, the glass can be positioned anywhere, so is more flexible for large scale architectural and engineering projects and hence it generates a higher yield.”

Importantly, Polysolar’s glass has received MCS certification for the UK feed-in tariff. This means that where installed, landlords will be able to generate revenue from the energy which the panes generate which is used or fed back into the national grid. The Ploysolar product will also have the attraction that where installed, property owners will see massive reductions in their electricity bills. Aside from the obvious financial benefits, Hamish Watson is well aware that the green credentials of solar pv technology will be very welcome by event organising committees.

“Our PV glass has generated a lot of interest and we are in discussions to install it at the 2012 Olympic village, where it could be used to help generate power for information displays across the site. We have also had early discussions with the organisers of the 2022 World Cup and the developers of London’s Walkie Talkie building – both projects are obviously quite exciting for our company.”

Having just got back from Intersolar, Europe’s largest solar trade fair, I thought I’d give a round-up of some of my highlights from the show.

Thin film solar modules

I’m particularly interested in certain thin film modules that have now demonstrated their reliability and are starting to gain market acceptance. Some thin film PV companies have been around for over 20 years and many have fallen by the wayside. The surviving companies however are now looking very strong. Their products have now proven themselves in the lab and in the field, and the companies that make them have found ways to reduce production costs and improve efficiency. Thin film has inherently lower manufacturing cost than crystalline silicon, and the potential for efficiency improvement is greater. Therefore I’m confident that over time we will be seeing more thin film get installed.

Storage

A common theme of this years show is storage. Every inverter manufacturer had some kind of energy storage product on show this year. Most solar inverter manufacturers offer back-up energy storage systems that use batteries (typically Lead-acid or Lithium Ion). These provide day/night storage so that solar energy can be used after the sun has set in the evening. Batteries however are not great for storing energy over long periods, so they don’t solve the problem that more energy is produced in summer months than during the winter.

To deal with this problem, Fronius have unveiled their ‘Energy Cell,’ a hydrogen fuel storage system for the home. During the summer, an electrolyzer uses excess electricity from the PV system to split hydrogen from water and store it in a tank. During the winter, this hydrogen is then turned back into useful electricity via a fuel cell. The system has already been a prototype for several years, but this year’s Intersolar showed the system as being almost ready for the mass market. Of course the technology will start out very expensive, but it shows that solar energy can deliver constant power, and its only a matter of time before the cost of the technology falls.

How the Fronius energy cell works

Inverters

We spent some time with SolarEdge who have strengthened their product range and now offer a wider range of inverter sizes, all fully accredited for the UK. They have also been developing their system to be used on larger installations, so people may use them on commercial jobs as well from now in. They also launched a new solar ‘tetris’ game for Xbox Kinect – has to be seen to be believed!

Racking

Hilti have just launched their new flat roof mounting system and it looks amazing. It will make flat roof installations much more secure and manageable, and mean much lower risk of damaging the laminate. Also cool is this robot, used for cleaning solar panels on large arrays. It has 20 moveable sucker pads on the bottom that allow it to hop around cleaning the panels without falling off!

Solar panels cleaning robot