The Good Energy Shop

Good Energy Shop customer case study: John Rhodes

John Rhodes in Bedfordshire is harnessing the sun's power and turning it into his own green electricity.

John is an old hand at solar generation - he's had a solar thermal system on his roof for the past five years which takes care of about 75% of his annual hot water needs. One of the first to join Good Energy's HotROCs scheme - which is funded by Good Energy Gas customers - he earns about £86 a year from us for the heat he generates, as well as saving money on heating his hot water.

John was so pleased with the performance of his solar thermals that he's gone a step further, and had a 10-panel 1.8 kWp Solar PV system installed on his roof, so he can start generating clean, green electricity.

"We try and follow a green lifestyle," John explains. "We do a lot of recycling and have a rainwater harvesting system for flushing toilets. I've always wanted solar PV, and when I saw it was available from the Good Energy Shop and Sundog for a good price, around £10,000, I decided to go ahead."

With interest rates at rock bottom, the attractions of solar PV are not only ecological but also financial. As a customer of Good Energy's HomeGen scheme, he'll earn 15p per kWh he generates, the highest rate in the market. John says, "At the moment, it's better to have your money on the roof than in the bank."

To find out how you can start the journey to generating your own energy, visit our new website www.generateyourown.co.uk

 

Good Energy’s Hot Roc Scheme

Good Energy leading the way in the renewable heat industry – get paid for your solar thermal power.

For many years there has been a government support mechanism in place for renewable electricity – called the Renewable Obligation – that increases the rate of return for renewable electricity generators. At the moment, there is no such obligation in place for renewable ‘heat’ generators. As a result, this market is massively underrepresented; only 0.6% of final ‘heat’ demand in the UK comes from renewable sources, tiny considering the potential is so huge.

And this is a real problem. Heat, in all its forms, currently accounts for 49% of the UK’s final energy demand and 47% of our carbon emissions. If the UK is to reduce its emissions, we must re address the way we heat our homes – burning Gas is simply not sustainable. But for some reason, this topic has remained elusive on the climate agenda, so we thought we’d better kick start it.

This year, the government has consulted on their intention to bring a support mechanism in for renewable heat generators – they think that it’ll be 2010 before anything of substance is in place – and one of the major sticking points is, quite simply, how to do it. Metering small heat generators isn’t easy, and it’s generally not very cost effective. The fact that metering isn’t really done at a domestic-scale means that very little has happened in this area.

We believe that we may have come up with a method around this. The approach is called ‘deeming’; a number of known factors (including solar radiation, site/situation of the panels, panel type, etc) are used to estimate the generators’ annual output.

We want to lead the way for the industry, while demonstrating to the government exactly how we believe a Renewable Heat Incentive could, and should, work. We are hoping to lead the way out of stagnation on this issue, and show the government how to roll this out across the UK.

We will be paying our generators 4.5p for every kWh we expect to be generated by their solar thermal installations (we are starting off with solar thermal, and hope to expand to heat pumps and biogas heating once we’ve achieved successful results).

Nothing like this has been done in the UK before – and as far as we can tell – the EU too. We’re very excited about the scheme.

If you are thinking about buying a solar thermal installation, we hope this will seal the deal. If you already have an installation and would like to get paid for the heat you are generating, that’s great!

We’ll ask that you become a Good Energy electricity and gas customer (if you are not already). Take a look at the electricity  and gas supply terms here. Fill out the contract  and send it to

Good Energy
Monkton Reach
Monkton Hill
Chippenham
Wiltshire
SN15 1EE

If you have any further questions that are not addressed here please feel free to call us on 01249 766090.

We welcome any comments and feedback you have.

The Good Energy team