IT was just in the nick of time.

Workmen managed to install 208 solar panels at Huddersfield’s Kingsgate Shopping Centre – just days before Government subsidies were slashed by nearly half.

Centre manager Jonathan Hardy, said that Holmfirth wind and solar engineers, Newgen UK, pulled out all the stops so the photovoltaic panels were up and running before December 12.

Any panels running before the cut-off date will make 43p for every kilowatt of electricity they generate, as part of the Government’s Feed-in Tariff scheme. But anything installed after the date will receive just the new rate of 21p.

Mr Hardy said: “It all became a little bit more urgent when the Government recently announced it was cutting the Feed-in Tariff by almost 50%.

“We were in a bit of a rush to get it all in before December, 12, but everything was up and running by December 8.”

Mr Hardy first came up with the idea two months ago, after a visit to Cummins Turbo Technologies, where they have 256 solar panels on the roof of their St Andrew’s Road building.

The Kingsgate panels cost £100,000 to install on the Cross Church Street shopping centre and the work took about two weeks.

The set is predicted to generate 43,000KWh a year – 5% of the previous energy consumption in the building’s common areas.