On the 31st of March this year, the Government brought the Feed in Tariff (FiT) to an end. This scheme was in place to incentivise small-scale generators of energy, specifically electricity, through renewable technology such as solar photovoltaics and micro wind turbines. For those of you who are still on this scheme, don’t worry, your existing FiT agreement with your FiT provider will remain unaffected. However, for those of you who are looking to adopt some renewable tech for your home and wanting a financial incentive, then a new scheme is in place to take over from FiT, this is known as the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG).
The SEG is essentially the successor to the export tariff component of the FiT scheme, this means an energy supplier will pay you a fixed or flexible rate for the amount of electricity you generate and export to them, this will be measured in kilowatts per hour (kWh) and paid in pence per kWh.
The Government will make it mandatory for all ‘large energy suppliers’ such as British Gas and EDF Energy (this means they have at least 150,000 customers) to have a SEG scheme in place by January 1st 2020, so you may have to wait until your own supplier comes out with its SEG scheme. Alternatively, you may wish to switch to a supplier which already has an appealing scheme in place. There are a handful of suppliers that are trialling the SEG and can offer the SEG, such as Octopus Energy, Bulb and E.ON. It should be noted for those of you involved with a smaller supplier, that they may introduce a SEG scheme of their own accord as it is possible for them to be voluntary SEG providers.
Joining the SEG scheme offered by a supplier is a fairly straight forward process, though it is useful to know the eligibility criteria to see if you could join a SEG scheme:
- The renewable technology you are using/plan to use to must have a capacity limit of 5 megawatts and be one of the following: solar photovoltaics, onshore wind, micro combined heat and power system, hydropower or anaerobic digestion.
- The renewable technology itself by must be certified under the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) and installed by an MCS-certified installer.
- The electricity that you export must be metered using a meter capable of metering half-hourly export volumes, in other words you will need a smart meter.
- There will not be an eligibility requirement based around a particular EPC rating.
Current generators should be aware that if they are currently in receipt of government support through the FiT scheme for their existing installations then they will be ineligible to receive SEG payments for said existing installations.
However, if a generator is in the receipt of Renewable Heat Incentive for say their solar thermal heating system or air/ground source heat pumps, then this will not prevent an installation for technology such as solar photovoltaics and wind turbines from registering for the SEG and receiving SEG payments.
For those of you who are quite keen on your renewables and are ‘storing’ the electricity you generate (e.g. using battery storage combined with solar photovoltaics), or plan to, then this stored electricity can be sold to your SEG provider at more lucrative times. This would be when demand is higher to the supplier, however, it should be kept in mind that the Government have stated this aspect is optional for suppliers to include in their SEG scheme.
In summary, the SEG is the Government’s current solution to replace the FiT scheme. It can provide the financial incentive that will hopefully help you decide to become a generator and help tackle climate change by exporting, green, homemade electricity to the grid.