UK solar panel sales boom - with Trump tariffs set to cut prices even further

UK households are in a solar boom with sales shooting up by 37 per cent this year to their highest level in a decade, new figures show.

There were 58,386 certified installations of rooftop solar panels in homes and small businesses in the first three months of the year – bringing the total in the UK to 1.7 million, most of them on homes, according to the MCS Foundation, which certifies the quality of renewable energy in UK homes.

This is the highest number since the record set in the final three months of 2015 – just before generous subsidies were dramatically cut early in 2016 and home solar installations plummeted.

But they have been growing steadily again in the past four years as households and landlords seek to improve the energy efficiency of their homes and cut costs in the face of rising gas and electricity bills fuelled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Although costs and benefits vary, installing solar panels save a typical three-bed home around £330 on annual electricity bills over the 30-year lifespan of the project, factoring in both the upfront costs and all the bill savings over that period, according to Solar Energy UK.

Adding solar panels will also push up that typical house price by between £1,891 and £2,722, based on an analysis of five million property sales, it says.

And the initial outlay would be about £8,000, according to MCS – helped by a 73 per cent fall in the cost of a standard home solar power system in the past decade as manufacturing costs drop, according to government data.

Experts also say solar panel prices could be pushed down further as a result of Donald Trump’s tariffs.

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These are expected to prompt China – which makes more than 80 per cent of solar power components and is subject to the highest tariff increases on exports to the US – to flood UK and European markets with excess stock.

As well as growing demand from people living in older homes, solar panel sales in new builds have been turbocharged in the last year or so by new building regulations – known as Part L rules – which require higher energy standards that encourage the use of solar panels.

As such, Solar Energy UK estimates that more than one in four new homes completed in the final three months of last year had solar panels – three times as many as a year earlier.

Rising demand for “retrofitting” older homes with solar panels, as rising electricity prices put an increased focus on energy efficiency, is also playing a key role, however.

“The UK’s solar boom is good news for the climate, for grid flexibility, and for energy bills,” David Cowdrey, director of external affairs at The MCS Foundation, told The i Paper.

Gemma Grimes, director of policy and delivery at Solar Energy UK, added: “The new build sector is becoming more and more important as a driver for growth in smaller-scale solar energy installations.

“But retrofitting panels to existing homes and other buildings remains the largest segment, showing that the public is increasingly confident in the benefits that solar technology brings to bills and the environment alike,” she said.

‘We spent £22k on solar panels – we’re glad we did’

Jason and Sue Incles spent £22,000 on new solar panels and a powerful battery system for their five-bedroom Victorian House in Nottingham just before Christmas.

And they’re very glad they did.

Based on the savings they have made so far, they estimate they will have paid their investment off after eight years – after which they will not only have free electricity but will make a little bit extra from exporting any excess energy they generate into the grid.

“In March and April I’ve taken no energy from the grid for the house at all. The solar’s delivered it all and I’ve sold a lot of it back to the grid,” Mr Incles told The i Paper – acknowledging he was helped by the sunniest March in England on record.

“It’s a big old Victorian house and I was spending a lot of money on electricity and I wanted to bring down the running costs given that electricity costs are only going in one direction,” he said.

Mr Incles, who works in financial services, says they used to spend £2,500 a year on electricity but they now expect to actually make a profit of £200 a year.

That’s because in the “greyest” months they estimate they will not quite be able to generate quite enough energy for their use and so will have to buy them from their energy supplier to top-up their supply.

They expect to pay a total of £200 a year for this electricity (buying it in the middle of the night when it’s cheaper and storing it in the battery).

Meanwhile, in the sunnier months, they expect to generate more than they need and will be able to make £400 from selling that to the grid. As such, they will effectively have free electricity and make a profit of £200, if all works out as they expect.

“I’ve invested in something that gives me a tax-free return for around 20 years after I’ve paid it off” – before the solar panels come to the end of their life, he says.

“That’s a tax-free investment return as nobody is counting that as income. It would be a no-brainer for anybody if you had the spare capital – the problem is having the capital,” he said.

“And it’s also helping the environment,” Mr Incles added.