Cambridge Consultants Blog
Photovoltaics – beware the next mis-selling scandal
By Alan Richardson - Last updated: Monday, October 25, 2010In the UK an incentive has been given to homeowners to install photovoltaics and
- Be paid a feed in tariff of 41.3p per kWhr
- An additional 3p per kWhr for enrgy exported to the grid
- These tariffs are guaranteed for an extended period giving an indexed linked return on investment
- These payments are tax free
- There’s a standard model provided for the revenue generated – a bit like all those financial products where the government dictates a rate of return for projections taking no account of the actual returns of the investment or the costs the provider levies
The case then builds that for an investment in the order of £7000 to £16000, payback periods on the order of twelve years are predicted according to a model which depends on the aspect of your roof and its slope.
I had a consultation with a provider and asked the question – “what maintenance issues are there?”
To which the answer was none except you need to clean the panels once or twice a year with a special cleaning material because the accumulation of dust etc reduces the efficiency of the PVs. For anyone, who is considering putting them on their roof – this would be a very expensive maintenance operation since formally a contractor would have to erect a scaffold to do the work to comply with Health & Safety. Unfortunately when you subtract the cost of this maintenance from the revenue in the order of £700 per year, this doesn’t make economic sense.
What’s more likely to happen in practice is that the subsidy will lead to mis-selling in that many people will not be told on the maintenance issue, won’t have them cleaned and the efficiency will reduce and hence provide no payback.
