Renewable Heat Premium Payment - Phase 2

The Renewable Heat Premium Payment is designed to help towards meeting the costs of installing renewable technologies in your home. If you’ve read about the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI), you may already be aware that the Renewable Heat Premium Payment is a different scheme to provide one-off grants prior to the introduction of the RHI for domestic customers.

• What is the Renewable Heat Premium Payment?
• Who can apply for the Renewable Heat Premium Payment?
• What do you have to do before applying?
• The main difference between Phase 1 and Phase 2 – (HEAT PUMPS ONLY)
• Metering and Surveys
• Preparation checklist
• How to apply
• Details of the Social Housing and Communities schemes

What is the Renewable Heat Premium Payment?

This is a UK Government scheme designed to help you afford renewable technologies for your home, such as:

• Solar thermal panels
• Heat pumps ( air to water, ground source or water source but excluding air to air and exhaust air heat pumps), and
• Biomass boilers

The amount received as part of the Renewable Heat Premium Payment scheme depends on which technology you are applying for. The voucher values for each of the technologies are listed below:

The Renewable Heat Premium Payment scheme - Phase 2 will run from 1st May 2012 to 31st March 2013, subject to available funding.

Who can apply for the Renewable Heat Premium Payment?

If you live in England, Scotland or Wales and your installation did not receive funding under RHPP Phase 1 you are eligible to apply for the Renewable Heat Premium Payment.Your installation must also not have been commissioned for the first time, as detailed on your MCS certificate, before the 21^st July 2011.

How you currently heat your home will depend on which technologies you are able to apply for. 

Those who have recently removed a mains gas heating system or currently heat their home with mains gas are only eligible to apply for Solar Thermal. 

However, if you currently rely on oil, liquid gas, solid fuel or electricity then you could also apply for air-to-water heat pumps, ground-source or water-source heat pumps and biomass boilers. 

If you have any further questions about whether you can apply, please feel free to give one of our Advisors a call on 0800 512 012.

What do you have to do before applying?

• The property must be owned by you and continue to be owned by you for the duration of the metering and survey requirements or if you are a tenant you must be purchasing the system yourself and have permission from the owner of the property;

• If the property is a new build, then you must retain ownership of the property either as the occupier or as the Private Landlord.  Please note applications from installers, builder/developers or householders in relation to “off-plan” developments, are not eligible for support under this scheme;

• Property must have loft insulation to 250mm and cavity wall insulation (where practical);

• You should have all necessary planning and environmental permissions in place;

• The product and installer you go with must be certified under the  Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) or Solar Keymark (or equivalent).

It is important you understand the full eligibility criteria before applying and read the Renewable Heat Premium Payment scheme FAQs. If you have any further questions, please e-mail these to RHPremium@est.org.uk.

The main difference between Phase 1 and Phase 2 – (HEAT PUMPS ONLY)

In order to help increase the rate of meter installation relative to Phase 1, a small change will be made to the voucher payment process. For heat pump installations, all householders will receive 80% of their voucher value when a valid claim is submitted, together with a signed checklist from the installer confirming whether or not the installation can be fitted with a meter. Householders will receive the final 20% following a visit from the metering team to check that the installation is really ‘meter ready’ and install a set of equipment, or if their installer has been trained to install monitoring equipment and installs it on EST’s behalf.  If a householder has indicated that they are not meter ready, they will receive the final 20% of the grant at the end of the scheme.

• Download your own copy of the  installer checklist

Installations of biomass boilers and solar thermal panels are not affected by this change.

It is important you understand the full eligibility criteria before applying and read the Renewable Heat Premium Payment scheme FAQs. If you have any further questions, please e-mail these to RHPremium@est.org.uk.

As the applicant it is your responsibility to ensure that all information supplied at application and claim stage is accurate and complete. Any information that you provided to the Energy Saving Trust that is subsequently found to be untrue, inaccurate or incomplete may affect your ability to claim your rebate. Accordingly, applications should not be submitted by your installer.

Metering and Surveys

The metering equipment provides live data to the Department of Energy and Climate Change to enable them to evaluate the performance of heat pumps. This is ground-breaking research. The results will be used to inform heat pump technology developments and future government policy. The Energy Saving Trust has commissioned the Building Research Establishment (BRE) to coordinate the monitoring programme. In addition to this, as a mandatory requirement for the Renewable Heat Premium Payment, you will be asked to submit information about how the technology you have installed is performing in its environment via online surveys. This is to support the monitoring programme and allow the Government to learn as much as possible about renewable technologies.

It is a condition of the grant that you participate fully with the survey and metering programmes. Refusal to do so will result in your grant being withdrawn or reclaimed.

Preparation checklist

• Check the technology is suitable for your home. Try our Home Energy Generation Selector tool which will identify the most suitable technologies for your home
• Ensure you have all the basic energy efficiency measures installed in your home (cavity and loft installation)
• Investigate all the various renewable technologies on offer and call our advice line on: 0800 512 012 for more advice and information
• Try getting a minimum of three quotes from MCS certified installers or Solar Keymark (or equivalent).
• Check planning permission (particularly for Air Source Heat Pumps)

Other considerations

• No vouchers will be valid beyond 31st March 2013 but the expiry date on your voucher may be earlier than this.
• Please note, the offer is cash limiting. Once the budget for the scheme is reached we will no longer be able to accept applications.

How to apply

Apply for the Renewable Heat Premium Payment.

Download the terms and conditions for the Renewable Heat Premium Payment.

Details of the Social Housing and Communities schemes

DECC is pleased to announce the launch of a scheme for social landlords to compete for funding to install renewable heat on Monday 28th May in London. The competition is part of phase 2 of the Renewable Heat Premium Payment (RHPP) scheme and will be run by the Energy Saving Trust.

The launch will be held at St Martin’s in the Fields, in Trafalgar Square London. Subject to ministerial commitments, DECC Minister of State, Gregory Barker MP, will be speaking at the launch. If you wish to register for the launch on Monday 28th May please provide details using this form. 

A similar competition was run in Phase 1 of RHPP and was extremely successful. Registered social landlords will be invited to bid for money to support the installation of renewable heating systems in social housing stock. Given the high demand last year, the overall budget for this year’s scheme has doubled to £10 million. As with the previous competition, the maximum amount per project is set at £175,000 (€200,000): this ensures that we are aligned to the European Commission’s rules for state aid funding which allows state funding up to a threshold of €200,000 (de minimis). The main aim of the scheme is to encourage the installation of renewable heat technologies, particularly in social housing in off-gas grid areas. All projects will need to be completed by 31 March 2013. Competition details will be provided at the launch and posted on this site. 

The event will be followed by a series of seminars across Great Britain.

• 30th May: Glasgow, Scotland
• 30th May: Durham, England
• 8th June: Manchester, England
• 12th June: Newtown (Powys), Wales
• 14th June : Exeter, England
• 19th June : Norwich, England

These seminars will also include presentations form winners from the Social Landlords Competition from Phase 1 and will be an excellent opportunity to find out more about the competition.

Register for one of the RHPP Social Landlords Competition seminars using this form.

The Seminars may be held in the morning or afternoon depending on the number of attendees. More details will follow upon registration.

Details of the Community scheme

Request information, when it is available, on the Communities stream

Renewable Heat Premium Payment – Phase 1

How many vouchers were issued through Phase 1 of the scheme?

For statistics on how many vouchers were issued including statistics per technology and country please download our weekly statistics.

And you can read the monthly regional breakdown of the number of new technologies installed here.