Despite the Tories best efforts to kill them, small-scale renewables have continued to grow under Britain’s pioneering feed-in tariff program.
Britains FIT program has been remarkably successful. Since the program began in 2010, 6,900 MW of small-scale renewables have been installed with nearly 6 MW installed last quarter, mostly solar PV.
The FIT program was officially closed by the Tory government in 2019. The program operated for nine years. The remaining installations were contracted prior to the programs closure.
Over the lifetime of the program 80% of total capacity was from solar PV in rainy Great Britain, 12% small wind, and the remainder small hydro and biogas.
For comparison, at the end of 2022 California had installed 12,500 MW of distributed solar PV in two decades. Cloudy Britain installed 55% of sunny California’s roof-top solar program in half the time.
British FIT installations generate about 9 TWh of electricity per year or about 3% of Britain’s 300 TWh of total consumption.
Great Britain’s 2022 50th Quarterly Feed-in Tariff (FIT) Report
