What’s all this feed in Tariff stuff?
Easy – you can produce electricity at your home or business by using renewable energy generating equipment such as photovoltaic (solar) panels. These use the sun’s energy and turn it into electricity and government pays you for the electricity that you generate.
Some of this electricity may be surplus. It may be that it is electricity produced when a resident is not home or when a business is closed. In these cases this surplus is ‘fed’ into the national grid although you can be paid for all of the energy you produce, even if you use it yourself.
What’s the feed in tariff got to do with EPCs?
An EPC (Energy Performance Certificate) is needed to qualify for feed in tariff payments and it needs to show that your property is rated band D or higher. This represents a basic level of efficiency. It follows the thinking that there is little point in paying for renewable energy to produce say 10% of your energy if your property is currently wasting say 30%.
If properties rate lower than Band D they will receive much lower feed in tariff payments which over a the 20 year life of the tariff agreement could be considerable.
Although around 51% of dwellings are currently rated at B and D or above, it’s important that you choose a professional energy assessor to carry out your survey and accurately produce the EPC.
Producing commercial EPCs for instance can be fairly complex and large amounts of data are considered when making the calculation. The rating represents the energy balance of your building and takes such things into account as the thermal properties of the building fabric, solar gains, the building’s ventilation, cooling, heating, lighting and hot water storage losses.
It’s important that your energy assessor asks the right questions and as the process involves a considerable amount of desk work, investigates matters thoroughly.
If you are considering installing a renewable energy source to take advantage of the feed in tariff, drop us a line for a professionally calculated EPC – we are regularly quality audited by an independent body and have always passed the tests they make.