The upcoming change in ROC rates should boost 2013 sales until April 2013 and help distributors of trade components in the UK PV market.
Through our finance arm we see a significant pipeline of hundreds of megawatts of large-scale, ground-mounted applications ready to go in 2013
We at Mercantile Investors see a rush of developers looking to beat the cuts to the RO rate is expected to lead to a significant surge in demand for the lowest priced off-the-shelf components.
WHAT IS THE RO?
The RO is currently the main financial mechanism by which the Government incentivises the deployment of large-scale renewable electricity generation. Support is granted for 20 years, which balances the need to provide investors with long-term certainty with the need to keep costs to consumers to a minimum.
Since the RO’s introduction in 2002, it has succeeded in supporting the deployment of increasing amounts of renewables generation from 3.1GW in 2002 to 13GW in the first quarter of 2012 and increasing the level of renewable electricity in the UK from 1.8% in 2002 to 9.4% in 2011. It is currently worth around £2 billion a year in support to the renewable electricity industry.
In April 2010, the end date of the RO was extended from 2027 to 2037 for new projects to provide long-term certainty for investors and to ensure continued deployment of renewables to meet the UK’s 2020 target and beyond.
HOW DOES THE RO WORK?
The RO places a mandatory requirement on licensed UK electricity suppliers to source a specified and annually increasing proportion of electricity they supply to customers from eligible renewable sources or pay a penalty.
The scheme is administered by Ofgem who issue Renewables Obligation Certificates (ROCs) to electricity generators in relation to the amount of eligible renewable electricity they generate. Generators sell their ROCs to suppliers or traders which allows them to receive a premium in addition to the wholesale electricity price.
Suppliers present ROCs to Ofgem to demonstrate their compliance with the obligation. Where they do not present sufficient ROCs, suppliers have to pay a penalty known as the buy-out price. This is set at £40.71 per ROC for 2012/13 (linked to RPI). The money collected by Ofgem in the buy-out fund is recycled on a pro-rata basis to suppliers who presented ROCs. Suppliers that do not present ROCs pay into the buy-out fund at the buy-out price, but do not receive any portion of the recycled fund.
We have seen huge PV growth in 2011 and 2012 which was fuelled byfeed-in-tariffs. The installer will now focus after Christmas on getting into the megawatt-scale ground-mount installations as installers seek to beat the end-of-March cut off deadline.
We are advising installers to team up with an EPC and look for a funding partner as the UK’s solar support mechanisms (FiT & RO) have makes the investors see the UK as top-10 global PV market
It is almost like investing in government bonds and for this reason (despite a mess from DECC) the UK has a lower financial risk than other PV markets. As a result, many PV component suppliers are now planning long-term strategies for the UK.
I am frankly negative about a continued decrease in PV prices but will be happy to be proved wrong as it will drive sales against high price increases for energy.
If so I look forward to eating humble pie and will apologise to all the top brass at DECC as they will hit or beat targets
We decided after seeing the developments at Ecobuild that we must form an alliance with the right manufacturer to supply a good share of the 4,000 certified PV installers in the UK and act as a manufacturers agent. Thus better pricing and better service will drive growth for ground-mount and next year will see a later drive in roof mounted systems. Too many middlemen will fail as the investors are clever with money and will not be paying too much for systems installed
Dear Blog reader,
If this is the first time you have ventured to this page, might I welcome you to this blog, explain more about my business concepts and how they work.
I work with a handful of extraordinary people many of whom have been involved together for twenty years sharing a vision have seen a different way forward.
We have in the past brought carefully selected global leading companies into the UK & Ireland who meet our criteria to
switch high consumption, high stress corporate lifestyles for greener lifestyles and passive incomes.
Our focus have seen thousands of distributors recruited, developed, to stock & sell health, water filtration, security, diet, nutrition, leisure homes, overseas and UK property.
We have also launched energy conservation and renewable energy for global leading companies or niche market challengers.
Climate change is no longer a scientist’s problem or problem for the government – it’s now an entrepreneurs challenge that is being disrupted rather than enhanced by government.
We decided as a group we could become interested in Ecosystem to use our business experiences we could choose to take action.
By also noting changes to pensions in the UK and the current trend in a cyclical market we are also enlisted (as we have before) to launch U.S. behemoths into the market.
It takes a few citizen consumers to act. We need to enthuse
people about the potential benefits of a better way of
living .
A little more about me
We can do so much more than we give ourselves credit for. Everyone has a comfort zone determined by their conditioning. Achieving real growth and change may require you to do things which are uncomfortable. Do it anyway!
Why did my thinking change? Well it can also roller coaster, just like a pencil can go blunt and need a sharpener.
Success was in my head.
I read three books, the first was when I was about to get sacked, working as a junior salesman for Brooklyn a Worcestershire Ford Main Dealer, I was in big trouble, at 6pm the showroom would close, the last person to get into their Ford demonstrator (company car) and be at the Pub had to get the beers in. As the junior I earned less than my colleagues, had the smallest (diesel Fiesta) car and drove like a nutter to avoid getting in those costly beers. Usually I could pull it off and was only liable to losing at spoof for the second round (which was home time).
The entire games were devised by the old lags in the dealership to extract beer from the pockets of the new-boys on the forecourt, I could drive like a getaway driver, play spoof like Pythagoras and resolved the long term answer is to make enough money to get the beers in for the newer team members and not see them as people to take advantage of.
On one of these escapades I managed to get to the pub in a timely way but went around a roundabout on three wheels and completely cut across the path of the sales manager’s wife.
In the following morning sales meeting I was asked to leave the garage for the entire day and consider what unemployment would be like.
My request to have my say was declined and off I went. The next morning my task was to arrive early so my future could be discussed with management.
Pulling out of the garage I turned left for Stratford upon Avon rather than right for home, had a very big challenge in what to say to a sales manager who frankly missed his vocation as at the time I thought he should have run some-kind of banana republic as dictatorship was a specialism of his.
What to do!
Pulling up at a parking place in High Street, Stratford upon Avon, was quite an achievement in itself, this was a parking place outside a bookshop, glancing in the window, the answer jumped out at me as I saw a book called ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ by Dale Carnegie, a quick flick over the covers and I was off for coffee by a nice log fire with the key to my situation.
The answer comes from books & learning!
I was hooked on every page and spent the next few hours devouring the pages , these pages showed me the opposite route to the confrontation I had intended for my defence and as the book said I agreed with my manager the next day. I was understanding of why he sent me away, thanked him for his wise words and the angry cloud shrank. He was frankly an amicable buddy, with the help of this book I sold a lot more cars, earned more money and got one of the finest demonstrator company cars on the fleet.
Amazingly my next book breakthrough came some years later just after I had been sacked!
Working as an optical representative was my next adventure, frankly was a great life for me as a single chap in my twenties, the open road was much more to my liking, company credit card, expensed to stay away three or four nights a week, covering all of Kent, Devon, Cornwall and everything south of the M4 including London South of the Thames. However lugging around these huge bags with hundreds of spec frames, upstairs, around shopping centers, up high streets, driving one or two thousand miles a week took its toll on my non–athletic shap. So bad back and sacked! It was a small business and they walked a (no hard feelings) tightrope.
There I was no job! No car so I spent £100 on a Morris Minor and signed on the dole. My job hunting started and I hated this time. A choice came to me with my last £7.50 from a dole cheque, go to the pub or buy a book.
The book won the day as the title dazzled me ‘The Lazy Mans Way to Riches” by Joe Karbo
This summed up written goals and visualisation. It worked! Within a month I was earning £1500 in a week and with three months I won a car in a selling competition.
I was a self employed sales agent for Spar Plas and the book was the only thing that allowed me to recognise this was a vehicle to achieve my goals.
During my time at the Ford dealership I kept hearing about the Pendle System, the sales manager laughed, the old lags scoffed, they also told me I spent far to long with customers, this system was a framework, something to hinge my selling on, having come from insurance selling and direct sales for an energy conservation centre I was trained to walk the customer through certain steps and knew the motortrade needed this.
The first time I saw a job advertised with Pendle recruitment I applied, went all the way from Hereford to Long Preston and landed a job in caravans with the help of Roz Armitage and later Les Armitage who impacted my career more than any living person when 20 years ago and business more than anybody as he called me and got me into my agency and distributor business.
For the first time I mixed with people who made £18,000 a month whilst I had earned £18,000 a year and I worked with who I wanted, when I wanted and in the place I wanted.
Many of the people including Les and the £18K a month man Bill Ascroft are very much still on my business radar today. My motto is to take advice from those who have made more than you and then you can be certain to get the result they got. It has worked so far!
NEED HELP 0845 055 8203
See you at the top,
Richard
Richard Williams
Co-founder of Airstream Consultants
Airstream Consultants
Cradley Ridge Business Park
Tanhouse Lane
CRADLEY
WR13 5JY
Direct dial 0845 055 8203
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