Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI)

Following the sign off of our ASHP installation we qualified for a RHI payment of £100 per month, paid quarterly. We are now into the 4th of 7 years of these payments.

It's not often you get "free" money from the Government and I'm pleased to be receiving the grant. But I think OFGEM missed an opportunity with the scheme. Apart from receiving the quarterly payments our only contact with OFGEM is to confirm, once a year, that we are still using the heat pump, as installed. This is purely an audit process. 

On a voluntary basis participants could have been asked to share their experiences with others who were still thinking about installing some form of renewable system. This would have helped to spread knowledge and understanding (which many on this forum now have) of these systems more widely and more quickly. After all, one reason for the RHI was to pump prime the industry in the same way that subsidies for electric vehicles have done.

Secondly, more active monitoring (eg of electricity usage) of installations that received the RHI was a golden opportunity to collect long term performance data on a huge variety of systems. This would have helped further improve understanding of best practice. There would have been some extra cost involved but I believe it was a missed opportunity.