Editor’s Blog

Solar Intelligence’s Finlay Colville reveals just how many sub-5MW solar farm applications were rushed through on 22 July after the government’s RO proposals.

Finlay Colville, head of market intelligence at Solar Intelligence, on how the Department for Energy and Climate Change is only just catching up with solar deployment in Q1 2015.

The Department for Energy and Climate Change – and Amber Rudd – have been particularly busy of late, but too busy to explain this summer’s policy reset?

Energy secretary Amber Rudd and minister Andrea Leadsom were forced to defend damaging proposals to cut the FiT yesterday, but was there a softening in the message, and can the industry take heart from the sheer weight of political support the campaign has received to date?

John Parnell compares the UK’s “bonfire of renewables”, to use a phrase coined by Jenny Jones this week, with a far more different approach in Washington, highlighted by this week’s appearance from US vice president Joe Biden at US solar industry conference Solar Power International.

Not content with completely decimating the available feed-in tariff rates for solar, the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s (DECC) potentially catastrophic consultation on the future of the feed-in tariff (FiT) also introduces the possibility of a cap on all new FiT expenditure.

The Conservative government has shown a complete lack of respect by leaking details of subsidy cuts via unofficial press briefings, something which is just further evidence of a double-standard when it comes to its attitude to energy generation, Liam Stoker writes.

At this year’s awards, we’ll be asking you the industry to help install solar at a hospital in Uganda, an install that could literally save lives.

Much has been said and many column inches dedicated to just what the Department for Energy and Climate Change’s proposed changes to renewable energy subsidies will do to the industry itself. But more often than not the secondary victims – those outside of the industry and, as a result, overlooked – will be hit just as hard, writes Liam Stoker.

According to the latest release of Solar Media’s UK Ground-Mount Report 3 – Opportunity Pipeline report, the UK’s pipeline of large-scale solar farms (>250kW) has grown now to 3.3GW. This is due mainly to an increase in applications received by LPAs on 22 July, and an uptick in rejected (or called-in) sites to appeals.