The money doesn’t come from the Government, but from the energy market
Who pays my tariffs to me?
Although the FITs are established in law, rather than coming from the government, the tariffs are actually paid by the energy suppliers.
When you register a system for the fits you nominate which energy supplier you want to use. Under the legislation, this supplier is called the ‘FITs Licensee’.
Where does the money come from?
It comes out of the pockets of the supply companies because they are really nice guys!
No seriously…
The suppliers pass on the cost of the Feed-In Tariffs scheme to all their electricity customers.
… so the bottom line is that people who don’t install renewable energy systems pay for those who do!
Might that be unfair on the electricity supply companies?
The scheme includes a fairly complex levelisation process so that the overall costs are spread uniformly across all companies.
They can even charge for the costs of administering the scheme.
There are also exemptions whereby small electricity suppliers can opt out and refuse to accept tariff customers in certain cases.
When and how are payments made?
If you use the same company that supplies your electricity to pay your Feed-In Tariffs, they should hopefully do both at the same time. They may even choose to ‘net these amounts off’ and just pay a cheque or submit a bill for the difference.
You can alternatively appoint an agent to collect your tariffs for you.