WORCESTER: Details of the RHI Premium Payment (RHPP), which were released earlier today by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, have been warmly welcomed by one of the UK's leading boiler and renewable technologies manufacturers.
Neil Schofield, head of external and governmental affairs at Worcester, Bosch Group, commented: "The RHPP will be an easy-to-administer scheme run by the Energy Savings Trust. Lessons have been learned. The success of boiler scrappage, based upon an easy-to-administer scheme which gave consumers a voucher, is essentially being rolled out again.
"For RHPP, consumers will get their voucher from the Energy Savings Trust and will have a set period of time to cash it in depending on which technology they choose. This is excellent news."
The details of the new scheme are that consumers with off-mains gas will get £1250 towards a groundsource heat pump, £950 towards a biomass boiler and £850 towards an airsource heat pump.
Those on or off the mains gas grid can receive £300 towards a solar-thermal installation. However, details of the tariff levels have not been released.
"We have a one-off grant scheme with an annual payment from the RHI," said Mr Schofield.
"My only concern is that the tariff levels, which are a vital part of the promotion of renewable technologies and are central to their ability to quote for a job, remain very opaque.
"Under the plans announced today, RHPP will be cut off in March 2012 which means that between March and October, when the RHI tariff payments start, there will be no incentive for consumers to install renewable technologies.
"The concern is that this will lead to a significant dip in demand for six months while consumers wait for the incentive to return."
