Solar Panel Installation near you

Most domestic solar goes ahead without a planning application, but the allowance is a set of measurements rather than a blanket permission. For a house, the Planning Portal sets out the limits now in force, which it presents as applying from 27 August 2026: on a wall, balcony or roof enclosure which abuts a highway the solar PV should not protrude more than 0.2 metres beyond the plane of the wall, and on any other wall, balcony or roof enclosure it should not protrude by more than 0.4 metres. On a pitched roof, panels should not be installed above the highest part of the roof, excluding the chimney, and should project no more than 200mm from the roof slope. On a flat roof the highest part of the solar PV equipment cannot be more than 600mm higher than the highest part of the roof, again excluding the chimney. Blocks of flats are dealt with separately, with the same 200mm and 600mm figures.

Designations override the measurements. The Planning Portal is explicit that panels must not be installed on a building that is within the grounds of a listed building or on a site designated as a scheduled monument, and that if your property is in a conservation area or in a World Heritage Site, panels must not be fitted to a wall which fronts a highway. Section 7 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 is why listed buildings are treated so differently: no person shall execute or cause to be executed any works for the demolition of a listed building or for its alteration or extension in any manner which would affect its character as a building of special architectural or historic interest, unless the works are authorised. A newer restriction catches the plug-in products now on sale, which should not be installed on a wooden wall, balcony or enclosure, or any exterior clad in timber.

A ground-mounted array has its own allowance. Only the first stand-alone solar installation is permitted development, no part of it should be higher than four metres, the installation should be at least 5m from the boundary of the property, and the size of the array should be no more than 9 square metres, or 3m wide by 3m deep. In a conservation area the equipment should not be higher than 2 metres. Whichever route applies, Part 14 of the permitted development order attaches conditions to both classes: equipment must, so far as practicable, be sited so as to minimise its effect on the external appearance of the building and on the amenity of the area, and must be removed as soon as reasonably practicable when no longer needed. None of this is the law in Scotland, which runs its own planning system and its own building standards system, where local authority verifiers grant building warrants and completion certificates under the Building (Scotland) Act 2003; Northern Ireland is separate again.

Ofgem describes the Smart Export Guarantee as a government-backed initiative which launched on 1 January 2020, and which requires some electricity suppliers, known as SEG Licensees, to pay small-scale generators for low-carbon electricity which they export back to the grid, providing certain criteria are met. Solar PV is one of the eligible technologies, and installations must be located in Great Britain with a total installed capacity of no more than 5MW. Ofgem's published guidance draws the line on who must take part: a licensed supplier with at least 150,000 domestic electricity customers is a Mandatory SEG Licensee and must offer at least one SEG compliant tariff, while suppliers with fewer domestic customers may offer one voluntarily. You do not have to take the tariff from the supplier who sells you your electricity.

Certification is the gate you have to pass through. Ofgem's guidance for generators says that for solar PV installations up to 50kW, applicants will be asked to demonstrate that their installation and installer are suitably certified, and that this may be a Microgeneration Certification Scheme certificate, though the scheme also recognises that other schemes may be equivalent to MCS. Where there is no MCS certificate, the same guidance says the installation and installer should be accredited in accordance with EN 45011 or EN ISO/IEC 17065:2012. Government describes MCS as certifying, quality assuring and providing consumer protection for microgeneration installations and installers, and notes that the scheme became independent of government on 20 April 2018. In plain terms: an uncertified installation can still be perfectly good work, and can still leave you unable to get paid for what it exports.

The meter is the other half of the answer, and it is the part homeowners forget. Ofgem's guidance says the renewable export from an eligible installation must be metered, that the meter must be capable of taking half-hourly measurements and have an export MPAN, and that it should be located at the point where the installation connects to the distribution network. Readings may be collected automatically from a smart meter or submitted manually by the generator. So there are two questions worth putting to every installer before you accept a quotation: exactly which certificate will I be given at the end, and what has to happen to my meter before a supplier will pay for my export?

Before anything is chosen, the structure has to be capable of holding it. The Planning Portal's building regulations guidance for solar puts it simply: the ability of the existing roof to carry the load, meaning the weight of the panel, will need to be checked and proven, and some strengthening work may be needed. It adds that building regulations also apply to other aspects of the work, such as the electrical installation. On older British houses with slender rafters, long spans or historic alterations, that check is not a formality.

The covering matters almost as much as the structure. Slate, plain clay tiles, interlocking concrete tiles and flat roof membranes all take fixings differently, and the risk of breakage and of later leaks varies with them. The age of the covering is the decision most often got wrong: an array is expected to stay up for decades, so a roof that is close to needing recovering is a roof to deal with first, rather than one to fix panels to and revisit later at the cost of taking the array down and putting it back.

Orientation and shading set what the system can do, and British conditions make the seasonal swing large: long days and high sun in summer, short days and low sun in winter. A south-facing slope collects the most over a year, while an east and west split spreads generation across the morning and the afternoon, which can suit a household that is out at midday. Shading is the quiet spoiler, because a chimney, a dormer, a neighbouring roof or a growing tree can affect an array out of all proportion to the size of the shadow. A survey that does not look at shading through the day has not been done properly.

A proper survey covers the roof structure and covering, the shading through the day, where the inverter and isolators will live, the cable route between them, and what the consumer unit can accept. That last point has a legal edge in England: under regulation 12(6A) of the Building Regulations 2010, electrical work must be notified to a building control body where it involves the installation of a new circuit, the replacement of a consumer unit, or any addition or alteration to existing circuits in a special location. A solar installation normally brings a new circuit with it. GOV.UK confirms you do not need to get approval yourself if you use someone registered with a competent person scheme.

The network side is the step homeowners never expect. Regulation 22 of the Electricity Safety, Quality and Continuity Regulations 2002 provides that no person shall install or operate a source of energy which may be connected in parallel with a distributor's network unless they have the necessary and appropriate equipment to prevent danger or interference with that network, have the necessary and appropriate personnel and procedures, comply with British Standard Requirements where the source is part of a low voltage consumer's installation, and agree specific requirements with the distributor who owns or operates the network. A lighter route applies to small installations: the requirements about personnel and about agreeing specific requirements do not apply where the source does not produce an electrical output exceeding 16 amperes per phase at low voltage, the source disconnects itself when the distributor's equipment disconnects the supply, and the installer ensures that the distributor is advised of the intention to use the source of energy in parallel. That is why a good installer talks about notifying or applying to the network operator as part of the job rather than as an afterthought.

Then comes the practical week: scaffolding, the roof work itself, the inverter and cabling, commissioning, and the handover of paperwork that you should not let anyone skip. LokalMatch sits at the beginning of that, not inside it. You describe the property once, with the roof type, roughly where it faces and your postcode, and installers covering your area contact you directly. The pros pay for the requests they receive. LokalMatch does not install anything, does not set prices and does not vet, rank or recommend any of the businesses that reply, so asking each of them about certification, about the network notification and about what their price includes is your part of the work.

Quotations for the same number of panels diverge over access, over the roof, and over what the electrical installation needs before it can accept the array. The modules themselves are rarely where the difference sits.