The feed in tariff will drop for domestic properties with less than 4kW from 15.44p to 14.99p on the 1st of July 2013.
The export tariff remains at 4.5p, although only a marginal drop of between £15 to £20 a year, coupled with the possibility of higher prices on solar PV due to the EU dumping tax on Chinese solar imports, as much as 45% we could well see a slow down in the uptake of solar panels. Greg Barker is hoping to stop this tax on Chinese Solar imports because he believes that it will set the UK industry back, and potentially put thousands out of work. This tax has come about mainly through large German solar PV manufacturers unable to compete against heavily subsidised PV exports from China.
Is it time we thought about holding the PV tariffs or even raising them? we haven’t hit the threshold for a tariff drop in July anyway, are the German manufacturers of Solar PV self subsidised to the point that they don’t rely on cheap Chinese imports of parts to manufacture their own modules ? if the ultimate goal is to increase solar PV in the UK and Europe can the German manufacturers of PV not work something out with the supply of parts from China and the UK have some stability on the feed in tariff.
