Published: 25 Nov 2021, 10:58
Hello and welcome to Solar Power Portal’s coverage of day three of Solar & Storage Live, taking place between 23-25 November in Birmingham. The Solar Power Portal editorial team is reporting live from the event, bringing you all the insight, news and views from the show floor.
A competitive marketplace driven by the SEG
While a competitive marketplace has spawned out of the Smart Export Guarantee – the replacement to the small scale feed-in tariff that allows energy suppliers to set their own export rate – the question remains over whether it has done enough to increase deployment. That was the key theme that emerged out of a presentation given by Josh King, operations director of AES Solar, at the Everything Installer theatre this morning.
“In general, the trajectory of solar’s on the up,” King said, but raised the question of whether this is due solely to the SEG or if a range of factors are at play. He suggested that increases in deployment are likely also due to factors such as consumers becoming more conscientious and changes to building regulations.
While King said that there is a competitive marketplace and there is innovation in the market such as new tariffs like Octopus’ Agile tariff, as well as the ability for solar to be deployed subsidy free, he added that deployment of residential solar isn’t yet fast enough.
“The SEG doesn’t quite do the trick if we want solar to stand on its own two feet, as tall and fast as it could,” he concluded, before suggesting a few ways of boosting deployment, including addressing the VAT rate – either by removing it completely or bringing it back down to 5% – as well as the removal of environmental levies – with King asking why “should we export green electricity then pay those subsidies back on top” – and the introduction of long-term secure finance such as the Home Energy Scotland finance scheme.