Renewable Heat Premium Payment
What is the Renewable Heat Premium Payment?
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.
This is a UK Government scheme designed to help you afford renewable technologies for your home this current scheme is available until March 2013. It is a one off payment by way of a voucher the scheme applies to any installation which was carried out from 1st August 2011.
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:
| Technology | Voucher Value |
| Solar Thermal Hot Water | £300 |
| Air to Water Heat Pump | £850 |
| Ground Source or Water Source Heat Pump | £1250 |
| Biomass boiler | £950 |
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.
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 us a call on 01483 488273.
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 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. A copy of the ‘Installer Checklist’ can be found here. 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.
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.
