PV system performance and the potential impact of the green deal policy on market growth in London, UK

In order to limit climate change and ensure long term energy security, Governments worldwide are implementing policies which encourage the deployment of renewable energy technologies. Driven by the European Union's 20-20- 20 strategy, Governments throughout Europe have implemented policies to support renewable generation and energy efficiency. In the UK, a Feed-in Tariff (FiT) scheme was launched in 2010 and has been so successful in creating growth in the PV market that tariff digression has had to be accelerated. A loan scheme, the Green Deal, which provides up front capital for energy efficiency measures was launched in 2012. Despite the success of the FiT scheme, the penetration of PV in London has lagged behind other areas. In this paper we examine the reasons for this by taking Berlin and the German policy of Feed-in Tariffs and soft-loans as a comparator and modeling the effect of tariff rates and loan availability on uptake in London to understand the impact the Green Deal might have on the UK PV market. Further, we address another important consideration for policy, namely, shortcomings in the field performance of PV systems through the comparison of theoretical and measured performance. It is concluded that soft-loans would have a limited impact on market growth when compared with the effect of providing increased FiT rates to social landlords. © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

PV system performance and the potential impact of the green deal policy on market growth in London, UK. Energy Procedia, 42 347-356. 

Sweetnam, T., Spataru, C., Cliffen, B., Zikos, S., Barrett, M. (2013)