INDUSTRY I OPINION
of years, the German large rooftop market has been 20-30% of new capacity solar PV capacity additions. In Italy, this segment is closer to 30% of new PV capacity.
Therefore, releasing the potential of this segment within the UK is currently one of the most pressing short-term issues for domestic legislators and industry participants.
Ground-mount renaissance
Before 2010, ground-mounted solar PV in the UK was essentially driven by curiosity or for educational purposes only. The installation outside the Allen Building at the University of Central Lancashire is a perfect example of this, and one of the rare glimpses in the UK of trackers.
Figure 3: Average ground-mount PV projects in the UK peaked close to 5 MW during 2011 due to FIT limits. This threshold is absent through ROCs, with project sizes increasing significantly during 2013
a result of the FIT resets that were particularly unfavourable to all larger PV project sizes. While the large-scale ground-mount segment was able to transition to the ROC scheme, and the government provided strong backing to this change, the large rooftop segment has been left pretty much in limbo.
This is reflected clearly in Figure 2 that shows the cumulative PV installed within the >100 kW rooftop category as a function of the cumulative PV in the UK. Since the start of 2012, the large rooftop category has trended at just 3% of UK PV capacity, with limited signs of any reversal in fortunes.
Aside from leading supermarket chains (Sainsbury’s and Morrisons) and luxury car plants (Bentley and Jaguar), a tiny fraction of large warehouse space is being utilized in the UK. This is of particularly interesting, given government rhetoric this year that has identified the large commercial rooftop segment as the obvious choice to prevent the large-scale ground-mount owning non-residential capacity additions out to 2020.
Globally, the large non-residential rooftop segment will account for over 20% of all new solar PV in 2013. Within the U.S., for example, the large commercial rooftop segment is about 10-15% greater than the residential capacity installed. In the past couple
Figure 2 shows the quarterly average size for ground-mount solar PV installations, from Q2’11 to Q2’13. While the average figure depends on the spread of small and large ground-mount projects, it highlights several trends that have characterized the ground-mount segment in the past couple of years.
During 2011 (phase 1 of large-scale ground-mount installations in the UK), project sizes were capped at 5 MW from the FIT scheme. As a result, average ground-mount project sizes were below this figure. While the FITs in 2011 were conducive to large- scale projects, the most common project size was in fact just under 5 MW.
For most of 2012, the ground-mount segment was depressed, with project developers re-aligning IRR projections based upon ROC subsidies, after taking into account declining component costs. Only a few large-scale ground-mount projects were completed during 2012, with average project sizes well below the levels seen in 2011.
Once the larger projects came to fruition at the end of 2012 and during 2013, the average ground-mount level started to increase, exceeding pre-2011 levels during Q1’13 (Figure 3). During this time period, the South and East regions have dominated ground- mount capacity (represented in Figure 4 on a ttm basis). Within the South region, the South West has been the main focus of solar UK project developers, with Cornwall and Devon being the initial front-runners. The scale of activity in Cornwall has been nothing short of incredible, considering the state of the solar UK industry (and in particular the ground-mount segment) just three years back.
There is probably not a single village hall in Cornwall that has not been the scene of a heated debate over the application status of solar farm projects. Set against the backdrop of Cornwall Council welcoming the solar PV industry as a vehicle to stimulate the economy, the inevitable backlash from ‘outsiders’ proposing to alter the appearance of the landscape has provided a conflict of interests at the local level. The language and rhetoric used by the various parties has not always been of a poetic nature. In fact, there are currently daily examples that highlight the continued ambivalence of the British public to large-scale solar PV farms, in stark contrast to the favourable poll ratings that solar technology commands.
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www.solar-uk.net I Issue III 2013
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