FAQs

There is nothing in the proposed legislation which stops systems with fossil fuel backup being eligible under the RHI.

Two notes of caution, however:

• It has yet to be decided how this would be treated by the ‘deeming’ calculation, which decides the eligible output on which the tariffs will be based. In other words, your system should qualify for the designated p/kWh tariff, but you cannot yet be sure how many kWh/year will be ascribed to it, and therefore what the income will be.
• The transitional arrangements for systems installed between July 2009 and April 2011 do require that the system “will be the sole fixed heating installation in the property (not counting any immersion heater that may form part of such installation)”. However, it does allow these systems to alternatively use the ‘final’ criteria (thereby suggesting that those might be different).

Hopefully these details should become clearer when the government publishes its response to the recent consultation in the summer.