SEG and tax implications

[Andy]

EON had some incorrect tax information which made me do some digging. If I’ve read it right, the document below says there is no tax unless exporting more than 20% of what you use.

https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manual ... l/bim40520

[SporranMcDonald]

Yes, my understanding too. However, for a normal domestic setup it seems unrealistic ( to check ) and bad PR. Even the slightest mention of TAX would be enough to put a lot of people off getting Solar PV.

Something like :
( PV Total + Import ) MINUS Export = Actual Usage

If ( Export / Actual Usage > 1.2 ) then Calculate the kWh in excess . . . .

Apportion the % kWh excess to Export payment £££ value => Declare that value .

[Sim_C]

I guess that is where the maximum 120% of consumption value used by Ripple comes from.

What is then unclear is what is the tax situation when a homeowner has rooftop solar PV and a Ripple investment?

But as previously mentioned, how is the solar PV generation value collected?

It was under FIT, but not under SEG although the MCS install does require a generation meter to be fitted that no-one actually reads.

[nowty]

Ripple investment generation is irrelevant to the tax situation as its already taxable under the "interest" tax heading. The 120% rule in Ripple's case was an agreement with the FCA so the Coop can be a "Trading Benefit" Coop and not the usual "Community Energy" Coop. It was finally explained by Sarah at one of the last AGMs.

The grey area is the recycling of cheap grid import and then exporting it at a profit.

I take the "consumption at premises" to include ALL battery charging but the taxman might have a different view and I'm unlikely to ask them for clarification. And what about EVs, the energy is stored by the EV charger at your premises but typically consumed away from home unless you have V2H or V2L.

For now its too complicated for the government or HMRC to do anything about it, some of my PV generation is metered via FIT, but the bulk of my generation is not. All the leccy gets mixed up and consumed (or exported) in a complicated way.

SporranMcDonald gives the only reasonable way but almost impossible to enforce as the non metered element would have to be officially metered.

Another way could be if your export exceeded your import and tax that as its metered, but even in my extreme case I still import slightly more than export, at least in terms of kWh's.

[resybaby]

Id imagine, currently at least, hmrc have bigger and easier fish to fry.
The upside of course is that when paying taxes youncan of course deduct expenses - new/additional batteries to offset the gain required all round id suggest.

[Krill]

I take the "consumption at premises" to include ALL battery charging but the taxman might have a different view and I'm unlikely to ask them for clarification. And what about EVs, the energy is stored by the EV charger at your premises but typically consumed away from home unless you have V2H or V2L.

EV charging counting as "Consumption at (the) premises" would be extremely hard to argue against unless there was a specific carve out somewhere in the regulations that stated EV charging didn't apply, and then there would be a problem for V2G interpretation. The issue can be articulated that power is treated as a commodity and it is a commodity which is used at that point in time and place (note the issue with ToU tariffs and VAT implications).

HMRC would have a problem proving how much is used as well, if you have more than one inverter when they all say different things because of how the CT clamps are set up. For example, I have two inverters which are off by 30kWh over the course of a month and neither tally with the actual meter. A solicitor, or at least a decent one, could have a field day with what nowty has.

[Andy]

The document also talks about own domestic needs which I read to mean what all the products in the house use (not including the battery). The only place I have that info is in my Victron hub and it's not accurate enough for the purposes of billing.

I use 24000kWh a year and generate about 16000kWh. I could charge the battery to cover the daily electrical needs in the house and set ALL the solar to be exported. Which of course works with cheap import and export > import /.85. Although as we mentioned elsewhere you need to think about the wear on equipment/batteries.