By: Reporter, Solar Power Portal On 1 January 2020 – just over a year ago today - the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) went live. A brand spanking new incentive scheme, the SEG was intended to replace the feed-in tariff (FiT) but with one major difference: this time the rate would be set by energy suppliers, resulting in a wide spread of prices. To really understand what happened when it was implemented – and the following year of operation – a look at the events from the closure of the FiT to the end of 2019 is required. The small scale solar sector had truly ridden the solarcoaster with the FiT, seeing such a boom that in 2015 the government unveiled sweeping – and at the time execeptionally unpopular – changes that saw a cap introduced to limit how much solar could be installed as well as a proposed reduction from 12.47p/kWh to 1.63p/kWh that was later upped to 4.39p/kWh following a number of industry protests. Whilst this certainly had an impact, with the initial rate being extremely lucrative considering the falling of costs of the solar that had occurred, small scale solar continued to be installed under the scheme, though at less of an impressive rate than before.