Business Green

Energy firms spy new business opportunity from FiT closures

house-with-solar-panelsjpg
Energy suppliers are offering to pay households for their solar power
  • LinkedIn  
0 Comments

Closure of Feed-in Tariff sparks new offers from Octopus and E.ON rewarding solar generators

Energy suppliers E.ON and Octopus have launched new tariffs which pay customers with rooftop solar for exporting their excess power to the grid.

The new tariffs were launched in the last few days to coincide with the closure of the Feed-in Tariff subsidy scheme and the closure of the Export Tariff, which both closed at the end of March. 

The Export Tariff paid generators a flat fee for their excess energy sent to the grid. Under fierce pressure from campaigners, who said the decision to close the Export Tariff means households would be expected to give their energy to the grid effectively for free, the government announced in January it would introduce a replacement Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) to ensure small scale generators can sell any excess power.

But the new SEG scheme is still under consultation, and not likely to be launched for many months.  

This week energy firms sought to plug the gap. Octopus Energy yesterday unveiled its new 'Outgoing Octopus' tariff, which it said will "replace and improve upon" the government's discontinued programmes.

According to Octopus, the new tariff uses the firm's smart technology to track the amount of electricity coming from home solar panels and pay the homeowner accordingly, with as much as £287 on offer in payments every year.

Octopus said it will offer homeowners a choice of two rates: a fixed rate of 5.5p per kWh, or a variable rate which will change according to the wholesale energy cost in any half hour period.

"Outgoing Octopus is designed to make it easy for households to choose to go green - by paying households to adopt solar, we bring locally generated energy to more people and help the UK adopt a cleaner, cheaper energy system," said Greg Jackson, CEO of Octopus Energy. "At Octopus Energy, we strongly believe in using smart technology to make energy work for our customers, and we're delighted to be the first movers into a promising new mark."

Meanwhile E.ON's new 'Solar Reward' tariff, launched on Friday, will pay solar-equipped households 5.24p per kWh for excess electricity exported back to the grid. E.ON said it had created the new tariff scheme to "help try and bridge the gap between the closure of the FiT scheme and the future launch of the SEG".

"We want to continue encouraging and giving confidence to homeowners across Britain looking to invest in solar energy," said Michael Lewis, chief executive of E.ON UK. "We know how important solar is for our future which is why we're leading the industry in rewarding our customers for doing their part to help."

The new offers follow the launch of rival Bulb's export payments scheme, which launched on March 15 ahead of the Feed-In Tariff closure. The trial version is only open to 50 members, while Bulb addresses challenges with data collection and payments, it explained at the time.

Further reading

  • LinkedIn  

More news