FAQs

Solar panels convert daylight into electricity for your home. Each panel contains photovoltaic (PV) cells, usually silicon-based, which release electrons when light hits them. That produces direct current (DC), which an inverter converts into the alternating current (AC) your lights, kettle, washing machine and everything else actually run on.

Once converted, the electricity feeds into your consumer unit and is used by whatever is switched on at that moment. Your home draws from the panels first and only pulls from the grid when the panels can't keep up — on a dull afternoon, or after dark.

If you generate more than you're using, the surplus doesn't vanish. It either charges a battery, if you have one, or is exported back to the grid. Under the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG), licensed energy suppliers pay you for what you export, so surplus generation earns you money rather than being given away.

There are no moving parts in a panel. Nothing spins, nothing burns, and nothing needs fuel. That's why they last decades and need so little attention once they're properly installed.

Four reasons, in rough order of how much they tend to matter to people.

Lower bills. Every unit you generate and use yourself is a unit you're not buying. The more of your generation you consume directly — or store in a battery for later — the more you save.

Income from what you don't use. Through the Smart Export Guarantee, your supplier pays for surplus electricity you export. That turns a sunny day when nobody's home into money rather than waste.

Less exposure to price rises. Energy prices have moved sharply and unpredictably in recent years. Generating your own doesn't make you immune, but it reduces how much of your household budget is at the mercy of the wholesale market.

Carbon. Solar generation produces no emissions at the point of use, so it directly reduces your household's footprint.

Solar isn't right for every home — a heavily shaded or north-facing roof may not stack up, and we'll tell you if that's the case. The honest answer depends on your roof, your usage and your habits, which is what a proper survey is for.

Most quality solar panels are built to last 25 to 30 years, and many keep producing well beyond that. They don't stop working at a cliff edge — they slowly become less efficient.

That decline is called degradation, and it's gradual: typically around 0.5% a year. In practice, a panel guaranteed to still deliver roughly 80–90% of its original output after 25 years is normal. A system installed today should still be doing useful work when it's older than most cars on your street.

The panels are the long-lived part. Other components have shorter lives:

• Inverters generally need replacing at some point around the 10–15 year mark. They're doing constant electronic work and are the most common component to be replaced.
• Batteries, if fitted, are typically warranted on a combination of years and charge cycles, and will also be a mid-life replacement rather than a lifetime component.

None of this is a hidden catch — it's simply worth knowing when you're weighing the system up over its whole life rather than just year one.

Yes. This is probably the single biggest misconception about solar in the UK.

Panels run on daylight, not direct sunshine or heat. On an overcast day they still generate from diffuse light that's scattered through the cloud — at a reduced rate, often somewhere in the region of 10–25% of what they'd do in bright conditions, depending on how heavy the cloud is.

Two things worth knowing:

Panels actually prefer cooler weather. PV cells lose a little efficiency as they get hot, so a bright, crisp spring day can outperform a sweltering August afternoon.

What matters is the annual total, not any single day. A well-designed system is sized around what it produces across a year. Long summer days do the heavy lifting; winter contributes less. That's expected and it's built into the design.

Rain, meanwhile, does you a small favour — it rinses dust and pollen off the glass and keeps the panels working properly.

The south coast gets some of the better solar irradiance figures in the UK. Dorset, Hampshire and Wiltshire are perfectly viable places to generate.

System size is driven by four things, and a good installer will look at all of them before quoting.

1. How much electricity you actually use. Your annual kWh figure is on your bill. This is the anchor — there's little sense installing a system far larger than you can use or store.

2. Your roof. Usable area, orientation and pitch all matter. South-facing is ideal; east and west-facing roofs still work well and can suit households using power in the morning and evening. A roughly 30–40° pitch is the sweet spot in the UK.

3. Shading. Chimneys, trees, dormers and neighbouring buildings all cost you output. Shading is assessed properly during a survey, not guessed from a photo.

4. What you want it to do. Covering daytime usage is a different job from charging an EV or running a heat pump.

As a rough orientation, a typical family home often lands somewhere around 3–4 kWp, but that's a starting point, not an answer.

MCS-certified installers size systems using a standard calculation method, so your estimated generation figure is produced consistently rather than plucked out of the air. Our system size estimator gives you a ballpark before you speak to anyone.

There's no honest single figure, and anyone quoting you one without seeing your roof or your bills is guessing.

Your savings come from two separate places:

Electricity you don't buy. This is the big one, and it depends heavily on self-consumption — how much of your generation you use as it's produced. A household that's in during the day, or that has a battery, uses far more of its own generation than one that's out from 8 till 6 with no storage.

Electricity you export. Your surplus earns you money through the Smart Export Guarantee. Rates vary by supplier, so it's worth shopping around rather than defaulting to whoever you're already with.

The variables that actually move the number are your usage pattern, your roof orientation and shading, your system size, whether you have a battery, and your tariff. Two identical systems on two identical roofs can produce quite different savings purely because of when the households are home.

We'd rather model this properly against your real consumption than give you a headline figure that doesn't survive contact with your actual bills. Our savings calculator is a reasonable starting estimate.

Very little, which is one of the quiet advantages of solar. There are no moving parts to wear out.

That said, "low maintenance" isn't "no maintenance". Over the years it's worth attending to:

Cleaning. Rain does most of the work. But panels near trees, under a flight path for gulls, or on a shallow pitch where water doesn't run off freely can accumulate grime, moss or droppings. Soiling reduces output, and a shaded or dirty cell can drag down a whole string.

Monitoring. The most useful maintenance habit costs nothing — glance at your app or monitoring occasionally. A gradual drop in output is the earliest sign something needs attention, and it's easy to miss if nobody's looking.

Inverter checks. The inverter works hardest and is the component most likely to need attention or eventual replacement.

Bird proofing. Gulls and pigeons nesting under panels is a common south coast problem. It's messy, noisy, and can damage cabling.

We offer solar PV maintenance and cleaning, including for systems we didn't install.

Most roofs, but not all — and we'll tell you straight if yours isn't suitable rather than sell you something that won't perform.

What we're assessing:

Structure. The roof has to carry the additional load. Older roofs, or ones with existing timber problems, may need attention first. This is a safety matter, not a formality.

Covering. Slate, concrete tile, clay tile, metal and flat roofs can all be worked with, using different mounting systems. Some are more involved than others. Very brittle or unusual coverings need more care.

Orientation and pitch. South is best, east/west is workable and often sensible. Due north is rarely worth it.

Shading. Heavy, unavoidable shade across the main part of the day is the most common reason we advise against proceeding.

Access. Scaffolding needs somewhere to go.

Flat roofs are entirely doable using ballasted or fixed mounting frames set at an angle. And if the roof genuinely isn't right, ground-mounted solar is sometimes the better answer where there's land available.

A survey settles it. Guessing from Google Earth doesn't.

The install itself is quick. The process around it takes longer, and it's worth knowing why.

On the roof: usually 1 to 2 days. Scaffolding goes up beforehand, the mounting system and panels go on, the inverter and cabling are fitted, and the system is commissioned and tested. Most homes are done inside two days.

Start to finish: typically a few weeks. That covers the survey and design, agreeing the specification, scheduling scaffolding, the install, and the grid side.

The grid connection is the part people don't expect. Your Distribution Network Operator has to be notified. Smaller systems are generally notified after commissioning under G98, while larger installations need G99 approval before they can be energised — and that approval takes as long as it takes.

Two things that genuinely affect the timeline: scaffolding availability, and weather. We don't put people on a wet roof in a gale.

Every install is carried out by our own team. We don't subcontract, so the people on your roof are the people we're accountable for — which is also why we won't promise a date we can't hold.

Generally yes, though it's worth being precise rather than repeating the marketing line.

Solar affects value through a few routes:

EPC rating. Solar PV improves your Energy Performance Certificate. EPC is increasingly visible to buyers, and it's a formal number attached to your property rather than a matter of opinion.

Running costs. A home with lower bills is a more attractive home, particularly when energy prices are in the news. Buyers increasingly ask about running costs, not just the asking price.

Buyer appetite. A meaningful group of buyers actively want an efficient, lower-carbon home and will favour one that already has solar over one where they'd have to arrange it themselves.

Some honest caveats. The uplift isn't a fixed percentage and varies by property, area and market conditions. Documentation matters — keep your MCS certificate, warranties and handover pack, because a buyer's solicitor will ask for them, and a well-documented, professionally certified system is worth more than an undocumented one.

An owned system is a straightforwardly better position at sale than one tied to a third-party arrangement over your roof.

Across a year, a well-designed system with storage can generate as much as many homes use. But "powering your entire home" and "never needing the grid" are two different claims, and only one of them is realistic for most people.

The seasonal problem. UK solar generation is heavily skewed to summer. In June you may produce more than you can use. In December, daylight is short and generation is a fraction of that. A battery sized to shift power from afternoon to evening cannot shift power from July to January — that would need storage on an entirely different scale.

What's realistic. Solar plus a sensibly sized battery can cover a large share of a typical household's electricity across the year, with the grid filling the winter gap and unusual demand peaks. Many homes get very high self-sufficiency in summer months and considerably less in deep winter.

Going fully off-grid is possible but a different project — significantly more generation, far more storage, usually a backup generator, and a much higher cost. For a home already connected to the grid, it rarely makes financial sense.

Staying connected also lets you earn from surplus via the Smart Export Guarantee.

There are several layers, and they cover different things. It's worth understanding which is which, because "25 year warranty" on its own doesn't tell you much.

Panel product warranty — typically 20–25 years, covering manufacturing defects and physical failure.

Panel performance warranty — separate from the above. The manufacturer guarantees the panel will still produce a stated percentage of its original output at a given year, often around 80–90% at year 25.

Inverter warranty — commonly 5–12 years, sometimes extendable. Shorter than the panels, because the inverter works harder.

Battery warranty — usually defined by both years and charge cycles, whichever comes first.

Workmanship warranty — covers the installation itself rather than the hardware. This is the one that depends entirely on who fits your system.

Insurance-backed guarantee — protects your workmanship warranty if the installer ceases trading. This matters more than people realise, given how many solar firms have come and gone.

We're MCS certified and NAPIT registered, and our work comes with an insurance-backed guarantee. We'll walk you through every warranty in writing before you commit — not after.

A battery stores the electricity your panels produce but your home isn't using at that moment, so you can use it later instead of buying it back from the grid.

Without storage, the pattern is unhelpful: panels generate hardest in the middle of the day, when many households are out. Peak demand is in the evening — cooking, heating, TV, EV charging — exactly when the panels have stopped. A battery bridges that gap.

What it gives you:

Higher self-consumption. The single biggest lever on your savings. Using your own generation rather than exporting it cheaply and buying it back at a higher rate.

Access to time-of-use tariffs. Some tariffs — including several from Octopus Energy, whose Trusted Partner network we're part of — offer cheap overnight rates. A battery lets you charge when electricity is cheapest and use it when it's expensive, which can pay off even in winter when generation is low.

Backup, on some systems. Certain setups keep essential circuits running during a power cut. Not all do — ask specifically if this matters to you.

Batteries add cost and have a shorter life than panels. Whether one is right for you depends on your usage pattern and tariff.

Yes. We install home EV charge points across Dorset, Hampshire and Wiltshire, either alongside a solar installation or as a standalone job.

Most domestic installs are 7kW units, which is the practical ceiling for a standard single-phase home supply. That typically adds somewhere in the region of 25–30 miles of range per hour of charging — enough to fully replenish most cars overnight. Faster 22kW charging needs a three-phase supply, which most UK homes don't have.

Pairing a charger with solar is where it gets interesting. Some chargers can be set to draw only surplus solar — so the car charges on electricity you'd otherwise have exported, rather than on grid power. If your car is home during the day, that's close to free miles. If it isn't, a battery combined with an off-peak tariff achieves something similar overnight.

What we check: your incoming supply and consumer unit capacity, cable route from board to parking space, earthing arrangements, and whether your DNO needs notifying.

All EV work is carried out by our own electricians. We don't subcontract, and we're NAPIT registered.

For most UK homes, no. Solar panels on a house usually fall under permitted development, meaning no planning application is needed — provided you stay within the limits.

The main conditions for a pitched roof in England:

• Panels must not protrude more than 200mm from the roof plane.
• They must not sit higher than the highest part of the roof, excluding the chimney.
• They should be sited to minimise visual impact, and removed when no longer needed.

When you do need permission or consent:

Listed buildings. Listed building consent is required, and it's a separate process from planning. Don't skip it.

Conservation areas and World Heritage Sites. Panels generally can't go on a wall or roof slope forming the principal elevation if it fronts a highway. A rear or side roof is often still fine.

Flat roofs and ground-mounted arrays have their own separate limits and are more likely to need an application.

Parts of Dorset, Hampshire and Wiltshire have a lot of conservation areas and listed properties, so this comes up regularly. We check it as part of the survey rather than leaving you to find out afterwards, and rules can be applied differently by local authorities — so we'd always confirm with yours.