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Microgeneration and the Renewables Obligation

Microgeneration

The Government published the Microgeneration Strategy in March 2006. The aim is to create conditions under which microgenerators become a realistic alternative or supplementary energy source. The strategy contains many measures to address some of the wider barriers preventing the development of a sustainable market in microgeneration. The Energy Review committed to ‘aggressive’ implementation of the strategy.

If you or your company produces less than 50kW or less you may be entitled to claim support under the Renewables Obligation (RO).

Support is in the form of electronic certificates called Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROC’s), one certificate being issued for each megawatt hour (MWh) of renewable electricity generated.

Once a ROC is issued it can be sold to anyone who wants to buy it – most commonly electricity supply companies who use them to meet their renewable obligation.

The price of a ROC is set by the market and could be as much as £40 or as little as £15.

Measures the Government has introduced to help microgenerators include

• Changing the RO to allow small generators to make either monthly or annual ROC claims (large generators are required to make monthly claims).
• Enabling small generators to appoint agents to sell ROCs on their behalf.
• Ending the ‘sell and buy back’ requirement under the RO (small generators will be able to use their own renewable energy without having to sell it first).
• Enabling microgenerators to sell surplus electricity to energy companies (providing an export meter is installed). The value offered however is variable and not all energy companies will do so.

Further information on microgeneration and the renewables obligation is available on the Microgeneration and Renewables Obligation factsheet.

The RO is administered by The Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem). Their website explains more about microgeneration and what Ofgem can do to help microgenerators.

Further information for microgenerators

• The Low Carbon Building Programme is a demonstration programme providing grants to help install microgeneration technologies. It will allocate £86 million over a period of 3 years to March 2009

• Microgeneration and the Renewables Obligation (182KB)
  
• Microgeneration and REGOs factsheet (43KB)