The great news is that HEN has been awarded a £17K  grant by the Urban Community Energy Fund, which gives us funds to cover all the many startup costs that Herts Solar Schools will incur – things like surveys, publicity, planning, contract negotiation etc. We have already begun carrying out surveys on sites to create Energy Perfomance Certificates which are required by OFGEM if we want to qualify for Feed-in Tariff payments.

At the same time, we have had the devastating news that DECC plans to slash the FiT rates in January, effectively killing off the small scale solar PV industry, and small-scale community PV energy in particular. However, we have one last shot – we currently plan to pre-register our installations with OFGEM. If we can do this in the next few months, we have a good chance that FiT rates will be held for a year, giving us 12 months in which to raise the money and install the panels. So wish us luck. The clock is now ticking…