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STA praise latest installation figures

The Solar Trade Association has heralded the latest PV installation figures published by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) as a ‘gradual recovery’ from the recent downturn.

DECC’s figures appear to show a weekly increase in deployment of 620kW since the end of April which will come as welcome news to the industry following the disappointing trend in early April which saw installations drop to just 2MW a week.

STA chief executive Paul Barwell said: “We have been monitoring deployment very carefully. We’re now fairly confident that the UK PV market is on the road to recovery. This steady climb in deployment is a sign of a stable and sustainable future for the UK PV sector. Consumers are getting the message that returns are as good as ever and the Feed-in Tariff is finally stable.”

STA PV specialist Ray Noble added: “The previous peaks and troughs were of course not sustainable.

“The feedback we are getting from industry is that deployment will continue to rise. We need to increase present deployment to a steady rate of 21MWp/week in order to achieve the Government’s expected annual deployment of 800-1,000MWp.”