Please respect FT.com's ts&cs and copyright policy which allow you to: share links; copy content for personal use; & redistribute limited extracts. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights or use this link to reference the article - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8122616e-6ecd-11e0-a13b-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1KUplpiyB My solar panel payback time has gone from 10 to 30 years

Sir, I was interested to read David Blair’s article “Companies affected by solar rethink demand judicial review” (April 20) about “feed-in tariffs” for photo-voltaic solar panels. I have had discussions with Greg Barker about our predicament, which concerns the lower generation level of below 4KW rather than the above 50KW mentioned in the article. Mr Barker happens to be our local MP.

We installed our panels in mid-2009 when a rate of 36p had been mooted for each KW generated from April 1 2010. We were given the option of 28p from the electricity supplier for the period from installation until March 31 2010. Having applied for the 41.3p rate, we learnt that there had been a cut-off date in July 2009, which meant that installations before that date would receive only 9p. We installed one day before the cut-off date, the existence of which was not known either to us or to the solar installer. Worse was to follow since we installed a further set of panels a week after the cut-off date, only to be informed by Ofgem that all installations within a year of the first (9p) installation would also carry the 9p rate. I have been unable to discover from Ofgem or the Department of Energy and Climate Change why this one-year rule applies.

My grievance is that there is a huge discrepancy between 9p and 41.3p (a rate of 28p in our case would have been reasonable). Mr Barker states that “extending FITs to existing installations would not only increase the costs of the scheme, but would not encourage additional installations”. I would argue that the 41.3p generation rate was too high to start with, and the feed-in rate of 3p was too low. These figures could have been reversed. Households that use generated power in fact have 41.3p plus the cost charged per unit (at least 20p).

I feel aggrieved that my pay-back time has been increased from 10 to 30 years, while the installers of huge solar arrays have made a fortune by utilising the excessively generous 41.3p generation rate.