Green Britain

Any homeowner or business owner who would like to make money from their property could do so by investing in solar panels and taking advantage of the Feed-in-Tariff (FiT).

However many people are put off by the complexity of the scheme and feel unsure about whether they want to invest. The following offers a brief outline which should set minds at rest.

The FiT offers a minimum payment to everyone who generates their own electricity via solar panels, wind turbines and other renewable energy sources. Any electricity not used is sold back to the national grid at the agreed rate. This amount is on top of any savings which are made in electricity bills.

Even systems which are purchased with a loan should generate income over and above any loan repayments, making this a great long term investment. The extra energy is exported to the grid via an energy supplier, who will make payments directly to the homeowner.

All systems installed since April 2010 need to be correctly certified by the installer and should generate less than 50kW of energy. Systems which generate more than this are usually industrial and are covered by their own certification system.

The government is currently reviewing the rates of the FiT and it seems likely that levels will decrease for larger installations. At the moment there seems to be no direct effect from the review for small scale domestic systems.