Had a meeting this morning with Somer Housing Trust to discuss with them the need to look at opportunities afforded by the Governments Feed-in Tarrif regime for households to generate solar powered electricity. With this scheme households are gauranteed a feed in tarrif rate of about 41p per unit for 25 years. And the rate is linked to inflation. The downside is that the power generation must be on stream by April 2012.
If this was fitted to every Somer property it would save all tennents a lot of electicity bill money and also generate extra income for Somer. As well as generating clean sustainable electricity.
I am pleased to report that Somer are well advanced in their planning to take the opportunity afforded by this scheme. In conversation though some planning issues were raised and so I will get onto the planning department and find out what possible objections there are to these panels.
The scheme is open to any household and at 41p per unit the payback time for the investment is about 7 years. After that free electricity is yours. All you need is Southerly facing roof space.
The catch lies in selecting good quality panels. As with any products if it is too cheap to be true it is probably not a good panel. Good panels should last about 25years.