Off Grid systems eligible for feed-in tariffs

It is possible for a solar power system that is not connected to the national grid to be eligible for feed-in tariff payments.

The system will have to be installed by an MCS-accredited installer, and will have to use MCS-accredited solar panels. It has to meet a number of requirements in terms of the configuration and installation of the system.

The scheme is extremely badly designed for off-grid systems. One requirement of the scheme is that the amount of energy generated must be metered with an approved meter. There is no approved meter for DC battery-based systems however. So in practice you have to invert the DC power from the battery bank to 240V AC, and measure the energy actually used from the battery bank with an approved AC kWh meter.

The fact that you are then measuring energy used creates an incentive to use as much power as possible - even if it is going to waste. Typically, you might run an immersion heater as a dump load to get rid of excess power when the batteries are full. Even if you have no need for the heat generated by the immersion heater, you get paid up to 41.3p per kWh that is used, so you are better off using as much power as possible.

We don't like encouraging customers to waste energy, and we'd much rather the government hadn't been quite so daft in setting up this bizarre loophole, but it exists so you may as well make use of it!

If you have an off-grid property and would like us to come up with a suitable system for you we would be delighted to do so, please get in touch