There is no government grant available for domestic PV installations.
You may be referring to the FIT scheme.
This is not Govt funded, it is funded by the utility companies, who obviously recover that through our bills. It equates to a couple of £s a year on everyone's bill.
There were about 100000 installations in the last couple of months of last year. The vast majority of installations are "FREE". The companies that install them free will put them on any roof where they can generate a decent amount of electricity so is not dependent on the home-owner being rich. In fact, the biggest area of growth in the industry is from councils/housing associations putting installations on their houses, which by definition, are usually occupied by those on lower incomes, who are now benefiting from free electricity. So once again on this forum, we see someone being mis-informed and trying to suggest that the poor are suffering because of the rich, when in reality the opposite is true.
There are hundreds of homes in this area with solar panels on, and the owners are benefiting from that power, though they could never ever thought they would be able to afford them, themselves!
As I said, the cost of this to each of us is small. Of course, you could say you would rather not spend that money, but if you know any thing about the energy industry, you would know that the biggest influence on our bills are global costs of fuels, ie "dirty fuels", such as gas and oil. Over the coming years, these costs will soar as global demands soar, and Britain will become increasing insignificant in that market place. We need alternatives, and they need paying for, otherwise in the future, we risk having power blackouts, and fuel bills soaring at much higher rates than ever before....and that would be really good for poor people wouldn't it.
Everyone wants lots of energy for their heating, gadgets, etc but no one wants to pay for it.
And there are objectors too, as there are with everything, but as always, it would help if people actually looked at facts before spouting any sort of rhetoric.
And the idea about things being "Green"....that's a red-herring used by politicians because its, (or was) more "sexy" to be seen as green, and give them an excuse to introduce green taxes, something I would oppose. For most people in the industry, the issue of being green is not relevant. The issue isn't about carbon emissions, its about security of supply, and the cost of that supply, but politically these are less sexy, so politicians have mislead the public, but that shouldn't be used as an excuse to invalidate the real issues.
Topic: The cost of going green. ITV tonight (Read 1599 times)