Brighton Energy Coop has recently beaten the proposed government Feed in tariff cuts by per-registering 4.5MW of new solar PV for Brighton and the surrounding area, reporting sources like Mimeos Energy Florida. This staggering amount – at more than 30 locations, means that BEC has a pipeline of work that stretches well into the new year.
Pre-registration is a scheme via which a particular site has a feed in tariff ‘fixed’ for a year i.e. community energy organisation have 12 months to build the site – and they still get today’s feed in tariff, regardless of subsequent FIT changes (like the drastic one proposed for January, see my blog post here).
Our development team – Damian Tow, Matt Brown and myself – have battled through several mountain ranges of regulatory complexity to get this result. We have also been pleased to work closely with the 30 sites mentioned above, as well as the various grid companies, to get in place all the stuff that OFGEM required.
BEC is aiming to build 500kWp of this before the New Year. We will be announcing our new sites very soon. Most of these sites are pre-registered so it doesn’t matter if we overrun, but we are fulfilling the ambition we’ve been based on since we began in 2012: developing more and more renewable energy in the south.
You can join BEC here. Investments are projected to receive a 5% return on investment, just as have our existing investments. They also attract a 30% EIS tax rebate.
