Solar Tariffs A Temporary Setback

I was chatting to a man who runs a Solar energy company. I asked him about how the changes to feed in tariffs might affect the industry, and he was quite optimistic. For those that don't know the government has been offering a deal where anyone with solar panels could feed their electricity into the National Grid at a subsidised rate of about 43p per Kwh, due to the state of the economy they are reducing this dramatically so the feed in tarrif will be about 21p Kwh.

This will mean home solar electricity producers will get less for their excess power. However, the solar man explained that the cost of solar panels have came down dramatically over the last few years, so it makes it much cheaper to install, customers still get free energy that reduces their bills, and even the new rate means that people can be quids in for their excess power.

So, overall I was left with the impression that solar power for homes will continue to be a growing market, and the new lower tariff is just a small adjustment in the long term scheme of things.