The reduction in the Feed-in-Tariff has created numerous challenges for the solar PV industry and managing operational costs has been fundamental to the continued success of many businesses.
In pursuing their efforts to address operational costs, owners of large domestic solar PV portfolios, such as social housing landlords, local authorities and investors face many challenges in tackling the pressures to maximise the FIT revenues while keeping administration costs to a minimum.
Goldfield Partners Limited is a case in point. Managing a diverse domestic solar PV portfolio of over 8 MW with 2,700 solar PV assets largely in the private domestic market in a challenging environment comes at a cost.
“It’s true that many thousands of jobs have been lost in the solar PV industry since the new FIT regime was introduced in January 2016,” said Karl Fernandes, national operations manager at Goldfield Partners Limited. “And we have seen the effects first hand. Installation and maintenance partners have gone which has added further administrative pressures on us whilst keeping operational costs as low as possible. This is whilst growing our portfolio through acquisitions and still managing and maintaining our current assets to ensure our customers are benefitting from the free energy generated from the solar arrays on their homes and to maximise the FIT revenues for our investment partners.”
