About the Scheme
The FITs scheme guarantees a minimum payment for all electricty generated by the system, as well as a separate payment for the electricity exported to grid. These payments are in addition to the bill savings made by using the electricty generated on-site.
Once you have a microgeneration technology installed you should experience a monthly reduction in your elecctricty bill and then receive an income from your Feed-in-tarriff provider. However, if you have taken out a loan to pay for the installation you will have to make monthly repayments to your loan company.
Feed-in tariffs are designed so that the average monthly income from your installaton will be significantly greater than your monthly loan repayment (with a 25 year loan).
The scheme covers the following electricty-generating technologies, up to an installtation size of 5 Mega Watts:
- Solar electricty (PV) (roof mounted or stand alone)
- Wind turbine (building mounted or free standing)
- Hydroelectricty
- Anaerobic digestion
- Micro combined heat and power (micro CHP) (limtied to a pilot at this stage)
The tariffs available and the process of receiving them vary, depending on when the technology was installed, and whether the system and the installer were certified under the MCS* scheme. See below for further details.
You will qualify for the full FIT payments if:
The technology was installed between 15 July 2009 and 31 March 2010 and you transferred to FITS before 1 April: OR
It is installed after 1 April 2010 using an MCS* certificated product and installer;
* The Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) is an independent scheme that certificates microgeneration products under 50kW and installers ini accordance with consistent standards. Any commercial or larger scale systems, over 50kW, and all anaerobic digestion installations msut apply directly through the Renewables Obligatioin Order feed-in Tarriff process for larger installations (ROO-FIT) process as they are not covered by the MCS. Information on the ROO-FIT process is available on Ofgem’s webisite.
