The UK government has doubled its estimate for solar deployment in the UK during the first quarter of 2015, upgrading its total deployment forecast to 6.5GW.
Figures released by the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) late last week state that the UK had deployed a total of 6,521MW of PV capacity by the end of March 2015, a significant increase on the 5.7GW capacity it originally forecast in April.
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The new figures take DECC’s total Q1 forecast to 1,285MW from an initial 614MW which, although ultimately more realistic than its previous estimate, still falls short of other figures suggested within the industry.
As reported on PV Tech’s sister site Solar Power Portal, research firm IHS estimated that 1.6GW had been added throughout the first quarter, however other estimates have suggested the UK’s total deployment capacity at the end of the period could have stood at as much as 8GW.
The majority of the added capacity in Q1 predictably came from capacity commissioned and accredited under the renewables obligation (RO) support scheme; DECC has forecast that total capacity under the RO stood at 2.3GW at the end of Q1 2015, an increase of 15% (308MW) on Q4 2014 figures.
DECC also estimates solar PV capacity at the end of April to have stood at 6,562MW from almost 700,000 separate installations, an increase of just 41MW from the previous month’s total.
The RO scheme has now been scaled back and is only available for projects under 5MW. Larger projects must bid for support under the competitive contracts for difference framework.
David Pickup, business analyst for UK industry body the Solar Trade Association, said: “We were expecting an upwards revision, as there is always a time lag in DECC and Ofgem [the UK regulator] data and are anticipating further increases. DECC states that current deployment is 6.5GW, but IHS estimates 7.6GW: this makes DECC’s 2020 ‘target’ deployment of 10-12GW increasingly unrealistic.
“We hope the new government will be updating this target range as a priority in the near future. Our Solar Independence Plan allows, in 2020, a Minimum Ambition of 20GW and a Higher Ambition of 25GW – we feel these are realistic.”