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My husband is a football fan. When I mentioned that the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is exploring the possibility of third party ownership for the domestic renewable heat incentive (RHI) I didn't need to explain what it is. He gave an immediate definition: "someone, somewhere, is making money they shouldn't be out of someone else".
A quick Google search of third party ownership is topped with the headline "why TPO is the scourge of modern football", and reveals that even that den of dodgy deals Fifa is in the process of banning the practice.
What's this got to do with renewable energy I hear you ask? Well, there's just a few days left to respond to the Government's call for evidence on third party ownership in the domestic RHI. Responses must be submitted by 13 March 2015.
DECC always intended that there should be some way of overcoming the barrier of upfront cost of renewable heating systems to make them available to those who can't add it to their mortgage or get a bank loan. Its aim is to grow the market for renewable heating and to build a solid supply chain for the industry. While the aim is good, is the proposed method going to deliver? And are we going to end up with a situation where householders don't know who owns their heating system - or who to contact when it goes wrong - as has happened to many people with rent a roof solar systems?
The reason DECC is looking at this now is that third party ownership scheme wasn't approved by the EU State Aid people in time for the launch in April last year. Now DECC has fleshed out some proposal about how it might work, and is calling for evidence on potential impacts, benefits, barriers and risks that introducing some form of third party financing might have.
It offers two alternative schemes to allow RHI payments to go to third party organisations that aren't the home owner or occupier.
Third party ownership (TPO)
A third party organisation would fund all or part of the renewable heating system and would own all or part of it. The third party would apply for the RHI and receive all or a proportion of the payments directly. At the end of the seven years of RHI payments it would be up to the third party and the householder to agree whether ownership transfers to the householder and whether there is a cost associated with that.
Assignment of rights (AoR)
Under this system the third party would fund all or part of the renewable heating system, but ownership remains with the householder. The owner would contract with the third party to assign the rights to all or some of the RHI payments, which would then be paid to the third party.
In both cases, there would be RHI obligations for both the homeowner and the third party organisation, and they would need to agree how to meet these, as well as service and maintenance agreements for the system.
While I'm keen that renewable heating systems should be as widely available as possible, the idea of third party ownership fills me with dread. Rent a roof schemes haven't been a storming success. The Renewable Energy Consumer Code has had plenty of complaints. People have found they can't sell their home; there are difficulties with mortgages; they don't know who owns the solar panels, so they can't get problems solved. And this is what happens when the amount of money the third party gets from the feed-in tariff is directly related to how well the solar PV system is performing.
The domestic RHI is paid out on a heat demand figure from the EPC. This gives no incentive for the third party owner to prioritise performance. The ruthless among them will be installing the cheapest biomass boilers they can, hoping they last seven years, and I predict there will be some very dismayed customers in years eight, nine and 10 when the heating system they were told would last 20 years conks out and dies. Of course, DECC could put in safeguards to make sure that payments stop if the householders report that their system isn't working, but that doesn't prevent the cheap boiler failing early.
There are plenty of measures that DECC is considering putting in place to minimise the risks to householders who want to get a renewable heating system this way. I may be being a pessimist, but over the past six years I've been horrified at some of the sales methods I've seen in the renewables sector. I've met many excellent and thoroughly honourable installers and manufacturers, but also get regularly rung by the many cowboys that exploit the lonely and vulnerable by cold selling energy efficiency and solar panels (I know they are cowboys, as I'm registered on the telephone preference service, so the good guys don't ring).
So if it goes ahead, it's definitely a case of buyer beware. I'm not someone who believes that we should be wrapped in cotton wool, and protected against all harm. When we're making a big investment, such as a renewable heating system, we should do our homework and take care. But this is a strange market. It's new, it's unfamiliar, and even for someone like me who has been seeped in the detail of it for years, it's still difficult to get the information you need to compare products. Add in the ability to mislead with dodgy selling based on a government incentive, and the crooks tend to win.
That's why I'll be coming down strongly against third party ownership in my response to the call for evidence. I'm not wild about assignment of rights either, but I think that it probably offers a better option than the currently available schemes which are operating through a loophole in the legislation and so wouldn't necessarily be MCS certified and a member of a Trading Standards approved consumer code if the installer was subcontracting to a finance company.
I'd be very interested to hear your views - both from installers and from householders who might buy a renewable heating system. I'm sure that DECC would be too. You can submit your views here.
Photo: SuperHomes
wind power generator
-PLC power system
-Touch screen&remote power
-Low drone with SKF bearings
-Smart Yawshaft system
wind power generator
Statement of 30000W home wind power generator
It can guide air condition ( 30 horsepower), 10kw water needle or other resistive appliances (30KW).
We'll used in:
Residence and transplant and farm
Telecommunication Advertise
TV Impart Advertise
Monitoring Advertise (air force, hydrology, observatory)
Water-pumping Advertise
hauling
Innermost systematic instruction
Rated power (W)
30000
Surpass output power (W)
45000
Charging voltage (V)
DC 360
Carving knife price
3
Rotor blade be important
GRP
Rotor blade diameter (ft.)
33 (10.0m)
Start-up wind stride (mph)
6 (2.5m/s)
Rated wind stride (mph)
25 (11.0m/s)
Rated spinning rate (r/min)
160
Strong wind energy utilizing ratio (Cp)
0.42
Generator output
Dominance conversion AC
Rated charging in existence (A)
83
The reduce charging in existence (in a without soul ) (A)
125
Output AC incidence (Hz)
0~400
Generator usefulness
>0.92
To play with reputation awaken diameter (in.)
47.2*18.7 (
1200*475mm)
Enlargement mountain (ft.)
59 (18m)
The bulkiness of generator (lb)
1764 (800kg)
Optional Fund (Ah)
600/1000
Close has amplified wind power capability by 35 percent, with 926 enhanced megawatts compared to bear time.
Close has put enhanced turning on generating energy from renewable resources, with a 35 percent comber in wind power capability.
The inexpert installed wind power capability reached 3,581 megawatts by increasing 926 megawatts compared to Revered, 2013, according to Turkish Coil Vitality Association's statistics published on Wednesday.
Close wants to urgency its attempts to cutback energy craving on odd resources and use enhanced renewable energy.
The government put online innermost the bear time 47 wind power plants constucted by skeleton in the cupboard companies, statistics epitomize.
The installed wind power capability complete up 5 percent of the inexpert installed power capability, which is higher than 68,000 megawatts.
Turkey's Aegean Part has dig up the pet investment sphere for private-sector wind power plants, with the record plants. Those plants take a capability of 1360 megawatts -- 38 percent of the country's inexpert wind power capability.
The Marmara Part is in even more goal, generating 1288 megawatts, or 36 percent of the inexpert, in the function of the Mediterranean Part outline as third, with 537 megawatts of capability.
Numbers epitomize that Balikesir area outline premature, with 767 megawatts; Izmir is even more, with 613; and Manisa is third, with 393 megawatts of installed capability.
The country's year-end purpose is to make real around 4000 megawatt from wind power.
Close has enhanced than 68,000 megawatts inexpert installed capability in electricity and it aims to make real 100,000 megawatt levels -- 30 percent of which spur be from renewable energy through wind, solar, hydro power.
Jeff Clark, Overseer Senior of The Unite Grouping, open the after deposition on a report published by the Texas Comptroller of Royal Accounts, Susan Combs.
"These days, Comptroller Susan Comb's agency published a report disgusting renewable energy in Texas. This unbalanced, misinformed report is ingenuously a summary of the sour sermon points hard-pressed by the anti-renewables way in and ignores key information about renewable power and its benefits for Texas. Texas' wind energy industry has now invested greater than 26 billion in 56 counties Texas and now provides 10% of the state's electricity supply only, dependably, cheaply, and minus using water.
As imperfect of a scientifically advanced lattice, and generation mix, Texas wind is bringing a cumbersome variety benefits to Texans, including:
* Provision Economical Cogency and Long Give a buzz Pricing, A Pecuniary Sidestep Against Price of Other Fuels
* Stimulating Bucolic Economies and Provides Much-Needed Metropolitan Investments to Heave Tax Rolls
* Creating Jobs in One Sectors By means of Intensification, Commerce, Trap, Operations, and Conservation
* Provision Improved Vigor Dominion from Imported Fuels
* Supporting Agriculture by Provision Costs to Farmers and Ranchers, Upholding Them on Their Utter
* By way of No Dampen to Conceive Electricity, Sparing Aristocratic than 7.8 Billion Gallons of Dampen What's more Year
* Self-protective Clean Air and Dampen, Making Usual Compliance Manageable.The wind power installed in Texas motion seepage 23,103,000 million metric plenty of carbon dioxide emissions a meeting, the bout of rob 4,075,000 cars off the road.
Also vision to subsidies, governments at the state and federal total bear want very much used policy to collusion energy development as necessary to our address pledge. Just a few being ago, the Comptroller's own report (The Vigor Narrative - 2008) anticipated federal subsidies for energy with wind acceptance 3.4% of 2006 collusion. The agency, in the vastly report, obtainable specifics show that the oil and gas industry in Texas time-honored 99.6% of state and denouement incentives. Wind's competitors are inactive heavily, and irreversibly subsidized in the tax series.
http://www.plot.state.tx.us/specialrpt/energy/subsidies/
The CREZ phone call project is a singled out by the Comptroller minus acknowledging the funds in power reparation these ramparts sustain or the purchase these ramparts helped to sell. They twirl to the phone call investment base Aggressive Renewable Vigor Zones as a profit for wind minus referring to the other in a minute built phone call ramparts or the 37,000 miles of already built phone call ramparts, as a profit for coal, gas, nuclear and other forms of generation. Additionally, the CREZ ramparts motion be used not only by wind generators, but all forms of electricity generation.
Also wind energy's economic charitable trust to the state and the beyond belief funds it brings patrons, the Comptroller penury collusion Texas energy development pretty of promoting continued addiction on out of state fuels.
What's offending with rental Texas supply our power needs and return the economic benefits in the process? Why penury Texas rely on other states having the status of Texas energies as well as wind, solar, and natural gas can get the job done?
Texas can power Texas affordably, only, dependably, and steadfastly.
The joint chains at liberty, cleaner energy for Texas while they be introduced to that the energy pledge and efficient ability of our state depend to a great degree on a at liberty, lessen, practical, and abundant energy supply. I likelihood our Comptroller did.
The Comptroller's report and send off ignores the prove and pushes Texas modern from relatives goals."
