Can You Beat Rising UK Electricity Prices By Generating Your Own Electricity?

UK electricity prices are being driven higher and higher by the rising global price of fossil fuels, as well as the UK’s commitment to investing in greener ways of generating electricity. Although the adoption of renewable electricity generation methods, such as solar and wind power, is important to reduce the risk of disastrous changes to our climate, the cost of building wind turbines is pushing up electricity bills for the UK’s struggling families.

Is there another way? Is it possible to embrace renewable energy at the same time as lowering electricity bills? Some savvy consumers are in fact managing to achieve both of those goals at once, by generating their own clean electricity which they can sell back to the grid. Let’s take a look at how you can take advantage of this scheme.

Domestic Solar Energy

The UK government has been keen to encourage British homeowners to turn their roofs into miniature solar power plants. The feed-in tariff, which was introduced in 2010, pays homeowners for every kilowatt-hour of electricity that is produced by their solar panels but not used in the home. This excess electricity is effectively sold back to the grid and the revenue generated is deducted from the household electricity bill.

Solar feed-in tariffs were once very popular, with thousands of households choosing to install solar panels to take advantage of the scheme. When the scheme was introduced, solar panel owners could get up to 40 pence for every kilowatt-hour of electricity they sold back to the grid. Unfortunately, a change in government policy has meant that this subsidy has dropped to 4.5 pence per kilowatt-hour for solar panels installed after August 2012.

Is it still worth installing solar panels since the drop in the UK feed-in tariff? For many people, solar panels could still be a useful investment, although they will now take longer to pay for themselves than they would have under the old scheme. Fortunately, the cost of solar panels has fallen dramatically over the last few years, as the materials used to make the panels have decreased in price, so they could still be a cost-effective way of embracing green energy.

Sam Jones the author is often asked how to reduce the cost of energy bills. He advises that Price comparison is available at uSwitch energy comparison  website using the online price checking facility to secure the best deals