Solar remains a sound investment for social housing

Despite the reduction to the Feed in Tariff rates (FITs) earlier this week as August took hold, we believe that solar PV is still a sound investment for social housing landlords across

Dorset

and the rest of the country. The national media and indeed our own industry media have been too quick to dismiss solar PV as a viable option now that the FITs have dropped by over half since last year. What a lot of the headlines fail to mention is that installation costs have dropped considerably over the last 10 years, as has installation.

Installers too are much more experienced than they were and this will improve with industry and government monitoring overseen by the MCS. (We have recently seen some early boomtime installs in our own nearby town of Dorchester – one panel was at least a foot over the roof line, duck when the next big wind comes!).

The panels too and investment in the technology continues and we are certain that a breakthrough will come in the coming decade to increase yields of panels making it even more attractive. Add into that the ever increasing energy bills caused in part by scarcer resource and solar PV (and all other renewables come to that) still make sense for those with money to invest in a system that could yield around 10%.

It would be good too, to see the government give increased FIT rates to Social Landlords and Housing Groups to firstly ensure those most likely to be in fuel poverty gain from this technology but also to provide funds that create more social housing for those in need.

With all that we read about Human Rights, having somewhere to live has to be one of the most essential and funding this via FITs would also help the government and closer to home for Dorset Council hit their promised energy targets.