In July, the government announced the new Green Homes Grant, which provides homeowners and landlords with £5,000 – £10,000 vouchers for energy-saving renovations.
The Green Homes Grant scheme is a £2 billion package to help the UK bounce back from the covid-19 pandemic by saving money, cutting carbon, and creating jobs. A further £1 billion package for the public sector was announced by Mr Sunak.
In total, this £3 billion initiative by the government plans to make 650,000 homes more energy efficient, help save households money on bills, lower the UK’s carbon emission by more than half a mega tonne per year — equivalent to taking 270,000 cars off the road — and support an estimated 140,00 green jobs.
‘This is going to be a green recovery with concern for our environment at its heart,’ Sunak says.
Green home improvements ranging from insulation of walls, floors and roofs, to the installation of low-carbon heating, like heat pumps or solar thermal – measures that could help families save up to £600 a year on their energy bills.
Households will be offered a list of approved TrustMark and MCS registered tradespeople in their local area to carry out the work. Once the works are agreed, vouchers will start to be issued from the end of September so work can commence.
An area covered by the new Green Grants is Air Sourced Heat Pumps. Carter Electrical will be registering with the Microgeneration Certification Scheme to enable their clients to claim under the Green Grant scheme.
In addition, households can use their voucher for further energy saving measures, including appliance tank thermostats and heating controls.
Promoting the use of renewable energy sources has been on the UK government’s agenda for many years now. The EU’s Renewable Energy Directive set out for all member countries to reach a 20% renewables target before 2020. The UK has been working towards that goal, but recently approved policies have been scrapped or the related incentives have been reduced.
Carter Electrical Installation have been installing and maintaining Solar PV systems in the Thames Valley since 2010. Although many installers have ceased trading as the Feed in Tariff has been scrapped, we’re still installing and servicing systems. If you’re interested, we can usually provide an initial quote and illustration without even visiting your home. Rest assured there will never be any hard-sell from us.
Prices are from approximately £1000 per 1kW installed (depending on specifications). If you’re looking to improve the efficiency of your home (and future-proof yourself a little against price increases in electricity), this can be a great addition to your home. We also offer battery storage with PV systems, from under £12,000 for an entire system comprising 4kWp solar PV together with 8kWh battery. We can of course fit battery storage to an existing solar PV system. Don’t worry if this sounds a little complicated we can take care of everything and provide you with the appropriate system for your home.
We can also service and repair existing fitted Solar Panels. Whether we installed them or not. Carter were recently called out to a fire caused by badly fitted and maintained solar panels on an industrial unit. (See the photo of the cherry picker on the right.)