Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU, Gainesville, Florida, U.S.) has announced that due to strong demand, both its feed-in tariff (FIT) for solar photovoltaic (PV) plants and its rebate funds for residential PV systems have both been fully claimed for fiscal year 2012.

The next application for the utility's FIT is on January 1st, 2013, and applicants may apply for FY 2013 rebates beginning October 1st, 2012. The utility has not disclosed the total volume of FIT contracts awarded in 2012, but provided contracts for 2.7 MW of PV in 2011, and will publish the amount of available capacity for 2013 before the FIT becomes available.


PV system owners can choose feed-in tariff or net metering with rebates

GRU offers the option for solar system owners to either participate in its feed-in tariff program or use net metering, and sell excess electricity to GRU. For residential customers who use net metering, the utility also offers the PV rebate program.

Through the feed-in tariff program, GRU offers rates between USD 0.32/kWh and USD 0.24/kWh under 20-year contracts, depending upon the size and type of the PV plant. The program is limited to 1 MW of ground-mounted PV systems annually.

The utility's rebate program offers rebates between USD 1.5 and USD 1.15 per watt.


Gainesville FIT modeled on Germany FIT

Gainesville's feed-in tariff is the first European-style feed-in tariff in the United States, and was modeled on Germany's feed-in tariff.

Feed-in tariff advocates credit the policy for the utility reaching 7.39 MW of installed PV capacity by April 2011, despite the Gainesville metro area having a population of only 259,000 persons.

2012-01-25| Courtesy: Gainesville Regional Utilities | solarserver.com © Heindl Server GmbH

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