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Support under the Renewables Obligation (RO) for new large scale solar farms above 5MW in size will close by 1 April 2015.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) said the subsidies for larger solar farms have been cut to ensure “bill payers are seeing the benefits” of the sector growing and becoming “increasingly competitive”.
Projects which had made “significant financial commitments” by 13 May 2014, when the consultation on the proposed changes began, will be eligible for a grace period, which Decc is set to consult on.
This grace period would give projects that have been awarded preliminary accreditation by 13 May 2014 or those that can demonstrate their significant investments, a 31 March 2015 deadline for completion.
This comes on the back of Decc changing the way it supports rooftop mounted solar power as part of its Solar Strategy.
Changes to the Feed-in Tariff (FiT) have introduced a degression bands for solar installations over 50KW, which the government said will “help to protect existing levels of financial support”.
This removal of large scale solar from the RO comes as Decc announced that renewable projects, including solar developments of more than 5MW, will compete for £300 million of support in this autumn’s first contracts for difference allocation round.
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