Feed-in Tariff Installation Statistics: The Data From the Closed Scheme

The Feed-in Tariff scheme closed to new applications from 1 April 2019, and all pathways for accreditation are now closed¹. Yet the scheme's installation statistics are still being published, still being updated, and remain the longest continuous record of household-scale renewable generation in Great Britain. Ofgem's most recent annual report counts a cumulative 870,164 small-scale low-carbon installations, holding 6.5 GW of generating capacity between them¹. The quarterly statistics page continues to publish data covering the period from 1 April 2010 to 31 March 2026, broken down by technology, installation type and region².

For a household trying to understand how Britain's stock of rooftop solar, small wind and other microgeneration came to exist, this is the primary evidence base. It shows who installed what, where, and at what scale, over a scheme lifetime that began on 1 April 2010 under the then Department for Energy and Climate Change¹. It also shows what the closed scheme still costs and still pays, because the installations accredited before closure continue to receive tariff payments for their eligibility periods.

What the installation records really measure

The quarterly installation reports are built on a single, strict rule: they count only installations that have completed accreditation. The report published in May 2022 states that its data is based on the number of installations that have completed accreditation in the period covered³, and the same wording runs through the series, from the report of 31 March 2018⁴ to that of 30 September 2018⁵ and back to the earliest reports, such as the 30 June 2012 edition, which described itself as a quarterly breakdown of accredited installations under the scheme⁶. An installation commissioned but not yet accredited does not appear; an installation accredited in an earlier quarter appears only in the cumulative totals, not in that quarter's new entries.

Behind the reports sits the Central FIT Register, or CFR. Ofgem states plainly that the report is based on the installations registered on the Central FIT Register⁴. The register is the authoritative record of what the scheme accredited, and Ofgem's graphical data represents installations that have completed the FIT accreditation process and are on the register as of a stated date, currently 31 March 2026². If a figure matters, the register is where it comes from.

The reports themselves are published as transparency documents, a standing Ofgem publication type rather than a one-off release. The 30 April 2022 report was published as a transparency document on 23 May 2022³, the 30 June 2022 edition followed on 7 July 2022⁷, and the series continues to the present day. Alongside the installation reports, Ofgem publishes quarterly statistics that include the total number of installations and total capacity by technology, alongside installation types, with a further breakdown by region². The two series serve different purposes: the installation reports give the detailed register-level breakdown, while the quarterly statistics give the headline counts and capacity figures.

One caution applies when comparing across publishers. Ofgem notes that its information and statistics may differ from those published by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero². The government's own releases, such as the commissioned installations statistics, were published separately as accredited official statistics⁸, so a figure read from one series may not match the other exactly. Our page on how to read UK energy statistics explains why official series can diverge without either being wrong.

The data: scale, technology type and ownership

The headline numbers are dominated by small, domestic installations. Domestic installations account for 95.38% of scheme accreditations, or 829,651 installations, and 45.53% of installed capacity, some 2,955 MW¹. Non-domestic commercial installations tell the opposite story: only 3.94% of accreditations, but 42.52% of capacity¹. A small number of large generators, in other words, carries almost as much weight in capacity terms as the vast mass of households.

The size split makes this explicit. Installations in the 0 to 50 kW microgeneration band number 862,944, which is 99.21% of all installations, holding 3,489.9 MW, or 53.78% of capacity. The 6,913 installations above 50 kW, just 0.79% of the total, hold 2,999.6 MW, or 46.22% of capacity¹. Solar dominates the small end: 99.56% of solar PV installations have a capacity below 50 kW¹. At the other extreme, the scheme's rarer technologies barely register in the counts: the annual report for Scheme Year 13 records 301 hydro installations⁹.

Because the scheme closed years ago, the totals now move only at the margins. The total number of active accreditations in Scheme Year 14, running 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024, fell by 206 to 869,857¹, and the quarterly report to 30 September 2024 put total installations at 869,858¹⁰. Installed capacity rose by just under 5.01 MW on the previous year's total of 6.48 GW¹. These are small adjustments to a stock that is essentially fixed: what the scheme accredited, it keeps.

All figures from the Ofgem annual report for Scheme Year 14¹.

For the current picture of new installations, the successor datasets are the ones to watch: MCS installation statistics and UK solar PV deployment statistics cover what has been installed since the FIT era ended.

Why the numbers move

The scheme's design explains the shape of the data. It was designed by government to promote the uptake of small-scale renewable and low-carbon electricity generation, and it required participating licensed electricity suppliers to make payments on electricity generated or exported by accredited installations¹¹. Eligible technologies were solar photovoltaic, wind, hydro, anaerobic digestion and fossil fuel-derived combined heat and power, with a total installed capacity of up to 5 MW, or 2 kW for micro-CHP¹. That 5 MW ceiling is why the scheme's installations are, by definition, small-scale.

Payment duration also shaped the stock. Most generators accredited on the FIT are eligible to receive payments for a maximum period of 20 years following their eligibility date, except for solar installations accredited before 1 August 2012, which have a maximum eligibility period of 25 years, and all micro-CHP installations, which have a maximum period of 10 years¹. The earliest solar installations, accredited in 2010 and 2011, are therefore now approaching the end of their payment lives, which will gradually shrink the count of active accreditations even though the panels remain on the roofs.

Deployment was also capped. Deployment caps place limits on the total capacity that can receive a particular tariff rate in a particular tariff period, and tariff periods for all solar PV, wind, hydro and anaerobic digestion installations are quarterly, while tariff periods for micro-CHP installations are six monthly¹². These caps throttled the rate at which installations could be accredited in the scheme's later years, and are part of the reason the cumulative total stopped growing well before closure.

The output side of the data shows a mature, slightly declining fleet. A total of 8.3 TWh of renewable electricity was generated on the FIT scheme in Scheme Year 14, a decrease of around 0.56 TWh, or 6.7%, from Scheme Year 13 levels¹. Approximately 1.3 TWh was exported to the grid under the scheme in the same year¹. Over the scheme's lifetime the totals are far larger: over 82 TWh of electricity has been generated throughout the scheme's lifetime¹, against the 8.3 TWh generated in Scheme Year 14 alone¹, and nearly £16.2 billion of FIT payments made to generators over the lifetime¹, against £1.76 billion in generation payments in Scheme Year 14¹.

The money still flowing is substantial. The value of the scheme in Scheme Year 14 was almost £1.86 billion, an increase of £125.3 million, or 7.3%, compared to Scheme Year 13, and included £1.76 billion in generation payments and £78 million in export payments¹. The total scheme cost in Scheme Year 14 was nearly £1.76 billion¹. Ofgem's cost to administer the scheme was just under £3.9 million, equivalent to 0.22% of the levelisation fund¹, and the levelisation process that spreads these costs across suppliers continues to be reported in its own quarterly reports¹³.

Coverage: Great Britain alone, with a strong South West tilt

The scheme's territorial extent sets the boundaries of the data. The FIT scheme covered renewable and low-carbon electricity generation technologies in England, Wales and Scotland¹, and the government's sub-regional releases likewise covered installations in England, Scotland and Wales¹⁴. Northern Ireland is not in the data at all: the commissioned installations statistics covered schemes under 5 MW installed in Great Britain⁸, and the same Great Britain scope applies to the earlier November 2016 release¹⁵. For Northern Ireland's own renewable installation figures, see certified renewable installations in Northern Ireland.

Within Great Britain, the distribution is heavily regional. Figures for scheme lifetime installations are 85.87% in England and 6.53% in Wales¹⁰. The South West has consistently led: the annual report for Scheme Year 13 records the South West with the greatest number of installations, 123,307, and the highest proportion of installed capacity, 17.90%⁹, while the Scheme Year 14 report records 123,256 installations and 17.86% of installed capacity¹. The South East and East of England are the only other regions with more than 100,000 installations, accounting for 11.32% and 10.49% of installed capacity respectively⁹.

South West figure from the Scheme Year 14 annual report¹; South East and East of England figures from the Scheme Year 13 annual report⁹.

Two cautions apply to the regional numbers. First, Ofgem warns that the regional data associated with installations may differ from what has been published in previous reports⁴, so regional figures can be revised between editions. Second, for some regions, micro-CHP, anaerobic digestion and hydro figures are not included in the breakdown due to low numbers of those technologies². The regional tables are therefore best read as solar and wind dominated, with the rarer technologies patchily covered. For the current regional picture, renewable installations by local authority carries the MCS data forward.

Constraints still shaping the register

Closure did not switch the rules off. The scheme is underpinned by the Feed-in Tariffs Order 2012 as amended, and conditions 33 and 34 of the Standard Conditions of Electricity Supply Licence¹. FIT support is payable for the installation's eligibility period: a maximum of 20 years for most generators, 25 years for solar installations accredited before 1 August 2012, and 10 years for all micro-CHP installations¹. The length of that period, set at accreditation, still determines how long each installation on the register keeps its entitlement.

Generators keep their entitlement for the duration of that eligibility period, and the register reflects it in what is paid rather than what is measured. In Scheme Year 14, only 14.43% of the total exported electricity was metered, with 85.57% (or 1.13 TWh) deemed¹. A household's export payments therefore rest on the assumptions recorded at accreditation, not on a live reading of what the home actually sends to the grid, and that position holds until the eligibility period ends.

The payment machinery also continues. In Scheme Year 14 there were 18 voluntary and 16 mandatory FIT Licensees participating in the scheme¹, and the levelisation reports continue to detail the total FIT payments made by licensees each quarter¹³. Ofgem's enforcement activity persists too: in Scheme Year 14 it identified almost £3.30 million of error and suspected fraud, prevented £2,993,651 being paid out incorrectly, detected a further £238,290 paid to generators not eligible to receive it, and closed 39 compliance investigations relating to suspected non-compliance from various scheme years¹.

Disputes have their own rules, and they are narrow. Only the owner of the installation, or those who have been assigned FIT payment rights as nominated recipients, may complain or raise a dispute, although non-owners may still make certain information requests¹⁶. A householder who buys a property with a FIT-accredited installation and never has the payment rights assigned to them may find they cannot use the dispute process, even though the panels are on their roof.

Implications of the data for energy self sufficiency at home

The FIT statistics describe the foundation layer of British household energy independence: 870,164 installations and 6.5 GW of capacity that generate power on the household's side of the meter¹. In Scheme Year 14 alone those installations generated 8.3 TWh of renewable electricity, of which approximately 1.3 TWh was exported to the grid¹. That exported power is the part that flowed back out to other homes; the remaining generation was used on site, which is where the independence value sits.

The export figures reveal how much of this independence is still unmeasured. In Scheme Year 14, 14.43% of the total exported electricity was metered, with 85.57%, or 1.13 TWh, deemed¹. Most FIT households have never had an export meter: their export payments rest on an assumption about how much their installation sends to the grid, not a measurement. For a household weighing up a battery, that matters, because storing generation for later use changes the real export profile while the deemed payment stays the same.

The dependence that remains is worth stating plainly. FIT households depend on their licensee to keep paying, on Ofgem to keep administering, and on the tariff indexation rules for the value of those payments; the scheme's costs are recovered through levelisation across suppliers¹³, so the payments ultimately rest on the wider electricity market. The data itself depends on Ofgem's continued publication, and Ofgem cautions that its figures may differ from those published by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero².

For the present day, the FIT record is the baseline against which newer schemes are measured. Boiler Upgrade Scheme statistics and home battery installation statistics show what has come since, and our full guide to UK home energy statistics places the FIT data in the wider picture. The scheme that built Britain's rooftop solar stock is closed, but its register is still the most complete count of that stock that exists.