I have been involved for some time in discussions with departments and agencies on the way micro hydro schemes are regulated and on other matters affecting their development. I have now drafted a paper which proposes ways to lessen the burden both for potential scheme owners and developers, and for agencies and planning authorities.
It is alarming that the few suppliers with real experience are now abandoning micro hydro owing largely to the delays and complexities of the red tape - hundreds of valuable schemes risk delay or abandonment otherwise. Please contribute your comments and ideas in response to this entry.
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The full list is available from Ofgem here (large Excel spreadsheet):
Feed-in Tariff Installation Report 31st December 2012 - MS Excel - 38986Kb I have extracted data for hydro installations in this spreadsheet (also in pdf format here) Below are analyses of this data for micro hydro schemes (<=100kW) commissioned from 1 April 2010 to 31 December 2010. DECC have just publicised the orders that will implement the FiT changes which were announced on 22 July (see entry here). The problem with a single band for hydro schemes in the new degression mechanism remains (once a few big schemes have been completed the tariff will drop sharply, affecting many potential smaller schemes). There are supposed to be 40 days for parliamentary scrutiny of these orders, but they are not likely to be adjusted at this stage. The announcement came today but there are now only 4 (correction) days remaining to review the draft standard conditions which state the degression rates.
DECC's announcement and links to the documents are below: "Following announcement of the Government Response to Consultation on Comprehensive Review Phase 2B in July, we have recently laid the two aspects of legislation in Parliament. Subject to parliamentary scrutiny, the decisions will therefore be implemented on 1 December 2012. You can view the FITs order 2012 on the legislation website. A draft of the modifications to the standard conditions of electricity supply licences can be found on the DECC website. Ofgem will release updates to their guidance on their website in due course. You may also like to know that we release updated statistics relating to the FITs scheme on the DECC website each week. Information about the degression policy can be viewed on the DECC and Ofgem websites." OFGEM have published the revised Feed-in Tariff table to have effect until 31 March 2013.
DECC has dropped proposals to disallow the option for schemes between 50kW and 5MW to register under the RO. See DECC announcement.
(apologies for earlier error in upper limit) Following the response released by DECC on the FITs 2B consultation, MCS is now asking for open comments from the industry as to whether it should continue to maintain and develop its hydro product certification scheme requirements and installer standards. They have created a short online survey here: Link to survey.
Please respond individually. As a previous participant in the MCS hydro working group I shall be responding with my view that the MCS process and standards are not suitable for micro hydro schemes, whose design and implementation should be site specific, and therefore that their maintenance or development should not be continued. DECC have announced the changes from 1 October and 1 December 2012 here. I have extracted decisions relevant to micro hydro from the Government response following the consultation and added my initial comments here. Key points differing from the present arrangements are:
As well as submitting a formal response to the consultation on 25 April, I prepared working draft proposals for ideas to improve the FiT for micro hydro schemes. I submitted these separately to DECC as the ideas could not be directly related to the consultation questions and I hoped to engage DECC in discussion. As this has not yet happened, I have now passed them through to the Minister of State in the hope that they may be looked at during rather than after this consultation.
These draft proposals contain ideas I have already discussed with a number of people in the industry and subsequently modified, but they will need further work to put into practice. This may or may not be feasible in the current FiT review, but please comment here to add to the debate which I hope will happen! A consultation has been announced by Gemserv, who run MCS, on guidelines for assessing competencies of individual installers and installation companies. Micro Hydro is covered in the consultation. The consultation ends at 5pm 9 July 2012.
*MCS certification is not available or planned for micro hydro products and installers (though some installers and products have been registered with MCS under "transitional arrangements"); the current DECC Feed-in tariff consultation (see earlier entries) is, however, still considering whether MCS will have some role in certification for micro hydro. I have submitted this response to the consultation - thank you to all those who have contributed.
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