Market status – Powersun on Tariffs and funding
The FiT scheme is still providing a sufficient level of funding to ensure that roofs and sites will continue to be built.
Larger sites, above 5MW, are at present more difficult to fund. The government moved the goalposts in 2014, by taking all sites >5MW out of the old ROC (renewable obligation certificate) scheme two years early. These sites now have to bid for their export rate, alongside wind energy. In the first round of bidding, announced at the end of February, only 5 schemes got through and these were at very low energy sale prices, which may prevent their exploitation. We will have to see what the future brings.
Longer term we feel that costs will continue to fall roughly at a pace which keeps track of FiT degression, at least for the near to mid future. What the market needs is for prices to fall to a point where subsidy is not required and the market is self sustaining.