Solar Energy Feed-in Tariffs

You have probably wondered about the solar energy feed-in tariffs that many people are talking about. How much will they be? Will I make any money from it?

The short answers are, ‘not very much’, and ‘probably not’.

Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU)

In Ireland, the responsible body is called the CRU, or Commission for Regulation of Utilities, and they are currently in the process of determining how feed-in tariffs will be applied in Ireland.

A decision paper was published in December 2021 called ‘Remuneration of Renewables Self-Consumers for exported electricity: Interim Clean Export Guarantee‘, which is available at the CRU website www.cru.ie.

Based on ESB Network’s response to the process, www.esbnetworks.ie, we can say that there are currently 500,000 smart-meters installed in Ireland and that just under 12,000 customers have “export capacity“, which means there are almost 12,000 end-users who can be metered for the feed-in tariff scheme that is being implemented. But how much will they receive? And what about the others?

Possible outcomes for feed-in tariffs in Ireland

There are a similar number of customers with “export capacity” but no smart-meter installed yet. These customers will have to accept an estimate, or “deemed quantity“, of how much electricity they are feeding into the grid.

It’s safe to state that the vast majority of prospective prosumers (‘renewables self-consumers‘) have installed something under 6 kWp and therefore the payouts are going to be small anyway, really- really- small, in most cases negligible.

Realistically we are talking about micro-payments for micro-producers.

One of the potential outcomes from this process, and perhaps the most promising, is that a new class called mini-generation will be accomodated under an ‘inform-and-fit‘ style process, thereby allowing consumers to install more solar PV with less red-tape. In the future, a household consumer might potentially consider a 12 kWp system, or an agricultural enterprise could feasibly install a 50 kWp system without much additional paperwork.

This seems like real and tangible progress.

Example Feed-in Tariff of 9 cents/kWhr

Let’s consider a theoretical example where the feed-in tariff is set at 9 cents/unit. (This is the lower end of the production costs for small-scale rooftop solar PV systems. See here.)

If the prosumer (or ‘renewables self-consumer‘) has an excess of 100 kWhrs per month which they export to the grid, then the feed-in tariff of 9 cents/kWhr will pay out 9 euros per month.

Due to lower incident solar radiation during the winter months, we assume that very few prosumers will have anything like an excess of 100 kWhrs from October to March, and therefore the feed-in tariffs may only be non-negligible between April and September giving a potential annual pay out of something like (6 * 9 =) 54 euros per prosumer.

The best approach to solar PV remains

Given the increasingly high-cost of household electricity, the best approach to solar PV remains, to consume as much of your own power as you can before thinking about export tariffs. Buy a good quality battery with your solar array in order to maximise your self-consumption. Utilise everything you produce.

Direct your thoughts to energy independence …

… and forget about feed-in tariffs for now … unless you are considering something like a 100 kWp, 500 kWp or 1 MWp solar PV array.

Feel free to Contact Us if you are, and one of our engineers can guide you through the process.

Want more information? Read our update on the Microgeneration Support Scheme.

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