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How much do solar panels cost in the UK?
A typical solar & battery system costs about £11,300 in the UK. Find out what factors affect the price you pay.
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Solar panel costs: at a glance
Solar panels can massively reduce your electricity bills and carbon footprint, while lessening the impact of any energy price rises – but the upfront cost can be a major hurdle.
A solar panel system for a three-bedroom home in the UK costs about £8,300, but this rises to around £11,300 if you add a battery.
In this guide, we'll explain how much solar panels cost, how different factors affect the price you’ll pay, and why it's a worthwhile investment for your home and the planet.
If you’re wondering how much a solar & battery system could save you, answer a few quick questions below and we'll provide an estimate.
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How much do solar panels cost?
Property size | Annual electricity usage (kWh)* | System size (kWp) | No. of solar panels (450W) | Estimated cost** | Estimated cost with 5kWh battery† |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 bedroom | 1,800 | 2.25 | 5 | £4,743 | £7,743 |
2-3 bedrooms | 2,700 | 4.5 | 10 | £8,307 | £11,307 |
4-5 bedrooms | 4,100 | 6.75 | 15 | £12,460 | £15,460 |
The average cost of a 4.5kWp solar panel system for a typical property with two or three bedrooms is about £8,307, including installation. This jumps up to around £11,307 if you’re adding a 5kWh battery.
This is a great time to get a solar & battery system, as there's 0% VAT on both panels and batteries until March 2027.
These costs are of course just estimates, and can vary widely on a whole range of factors, including the size of your system and the complexity of the installation.
Verified expertThere are certain solar panel costs that are ‘fixed’, meaning they generally stay the same regardless of how many solar panels you install. This includes labour, scaffolding, plus your inverter and battery. In many cases, adding a few extra solar panels to your system doesn’t add as much to the cost as you might think, whereas it has a big impact on your savings.
Alfie Ireland
Head of Operations & Technical at Sunsave
Alfie has worked in green tech for over a decade. During his four years at OVO, he helped develop the world’s largest domestic vehicle-to-grid trial.
Solar panel costs per m²
Solar panels cost around £415 per m² on average for a 10-panel, 4.5kWp system, which is typically the best choice for a three-bedroom household.
This is based on each solar panel measuring around 2m².
Since this figure includes installation costs like scaffolding, it drops as you add more solar panels to your project – so however many panels you're planning on buying, you should ideally have them installed at the same time.
To find out how much a solar & battery system could save you, fill in a few details below and we'll provide an estimate.
How much can you save with solar panels?
On average, you could save 86% on your electricity bills with a solar & battery system.
This figure is based on a sample of over 150 systems installed by Sunsave across England and Wales in 2024. The average system is 6.1kWp, with 54% of solar electricity used at home and 46% exported to the grid.
Your chosen combination of import and export tariffs will have a large impact on your savings. Read our guide to the best export tariffs for more information.
Solar panels can also increase your property's sale price by 6.1% to 7.1%, according to a 2024 study by Swansea University researchers. To learn more, check out "Do solar panels increase the value of your home?"
To learn more, read our guide to how much solar panels could save you on your energy bills.
Find out how much you can save
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How long do solar panels take to pay for themselves?
On average, you could break-even on your solar & battery system in just over eight years.
This figure is based on a sample of over 150 solar & battery systems installed by Sunsave across England and Wales in 2024.
The average system size is 6.1kWp, with 51% of solar electricity used at home and the other 49% exported to the grid, on average.
Your payback period can rise or fall, depending on multiple factors. These include the initial cost of the system, the panels’ electricity generation, local electricity rates, and the export tariff.
This is also just an average – your system's break-even point will depend on how much energy solar panels can produce on your roof, so it may be considerably shorter if you live in a sunny location and own a roof that's well-suited to solar panels.
If you’d like to learn more, read our guide that explains how long solar panels last after their break-even point.
Verified expertAny household appliance that heats or cools should be used as efficiently as possible to keep running costs low. Some of the most energy-hungry everyday appliances include washing machines, tumble dryers, dishwashers and EV chargers. If your home has solar panels, these are the things to use in the middle of the day when you’re generating the most energy.
Dr. Steve Buckley
Energy Doctor and Head of Data Science at Loop
With a background in statistics and data science, Steve is in charge of product direction at Loop and has worked at multiple successful startups.
Why are solar panels so expensive?
Solar panels are expensive mainly because they require a complex installation process.
This process throws up a large number of associated costs that you have to pay if you want your system to work effectively.
So even though the cost of solar panels is coming down, this trend has a negligible impact on the total cost of installation.
That's because in addition to panels, you also need to pay for an inverter, cables, racks, and potentially a solar battery, as well as business costs including labour, scaffolding, electrical expertise, and installer overheads.
These are unavoidable costs. Your roof is usually the best place for your solar panels, and unless you’re certified by the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) or Flexi-Orb, you shouldn’t install the panels yourself.
You'll save money in the short term, but miss out on major financial benefits, like export income and potentially increasing your home's value. It's also dangerous – one slip or poor electrical connection can be disastrous.
For more information, read our guide to DIY solar panels.
The cost of solar panels over the years, 1975-2024
The cost of solar panels has fallen dramatically over the past few decades.
Customers across the world paid $130.70 (£102.89) per watt in 1975 – meaning a 3kWp system would've cost you £297,750, with all prices adjusted for inflation.
That figure has plummeted by 99.8% since then, with the average global price of solar now standing at just 26¢ (19p) per watt.
This massive drop is due to increased manufacturing capacity, improved processes, increasingly cheap materials, and skyrocketing demand, as the solar panel has evolved from a quirky piece of promising technology to a transformative addition to the energy mix.
Solar is becoming increasingly popular in the UK, and currently more than 5% of the country's households have a solar panel system.
However, this long-term decline in solar panel costs looks like it's flatlining, and potentially starting to increase. You can find out more in our article: Will solar panels get cheaper?
What factors make up the cost of solar panels?
The biggest factor in determining the cost of your solar panels is usually labour and scaffolding, as you can see in the chart below.
Solar panel cost breakdown
As you can also see in this chart, there are plenty of other important – and costly – parts of a solar panel installation.
Click below on each of the factors to learn more about how they affect solar panel costs.
The hidden costs of going solar
Solar & battery systems come with a high upfront cost in the UK, but it's not just the initial price of the panels, battery and labour that homeowners need to consider.
Across a system’s lifetime, there are various maintenance requirements that lots of installers don’t talk about, including expensive hardware replacements.
Here are the four hidden costs of switching to solar:
1. Replacement battery
A solar battery costs between £3,000 and £7,000, roughly, depending on the size of the battery.
Most solar installers won’t tell you about this hidden cost, so be sure to factor this into your calculations.
2. Ongoing maintenance
Solar panels are built to last, but things can still go wrong, and it’s easy to miss problems if you’re not an expert.
What’s more, issues that go ignored can lead to much bigger problems further down the line, which means reduced output and smaller savings.
3. Replacement inverter
Every solar system relies on an inverter, which converts electricity from DC to AC.
However, according to a 2023 study by Bern University of Applied Sciences, 34% of inverters fail by year 15 – and a replacement string inverter costs about £1,400.
4. Pigeon proofing
Birds (mainly pigeons!) love to nest under solar panels, cause a lot of mess, and peck at the wiring, leading to a drop in output and reduced savings.
This can involve very expensive repairs and a pretty thorough clean-up job – unless you get protection. This costs around £25 per panel.
How to keep the costs of solar panels down
The roughly £11,300 cost of a solar & battery system isn't realistic for lots of people, since about half of UK households have less than £5,000 in savings, according to the Financial Conduct Authority.
Thankfully, there are multiple ways to combat the high upfront cost of solar panels, and to ensure that you don’t end up spending loads more money further down the line:
Government grants- Solar subscriptions
- Green home rewards
- Solar Together
- Top-tier installers
Government grants
There are only a few government grants for solar panels, and they all come with stringent eligibility criteria.
For instance, schemes like the Energy Company Obligation (ECO4) focus on energy efficiency improvements for low-income households and some social housing tenants – though ECO4 itself is due to end in December 2026.
And the Warm Homes Plan, which the government launched in January 2026, still doesn't have a start date or eligibility requirements.
Click the button below to find out if you could be eligible for a solar panel grant.
Solar subscriptions
Sunsave Plus is the UK’s first solar subscription. It comes with no upfront cost; instead, you make fixed monthly payments for 20 years.
Payments being spread out in this way protects you against energy bill inflation, and allows you to make instant net savings.
Sunsave Plus also comes with the 20-year Sunsave Guarantee, which provides 24/7 monitoring, maintenance, a free battery upgrade, free inverter replacement, downtime cover, and support with warranty claims
Your system will also be insured by Aviva against damage, fire, and theft.
This model has already been successful in other countries, and you can learn more about what our customers think on our reviews page.
For more information about Sunsave Plus, read our guide to solar subscriptions.
And find out how much you could save with Sunsave Plus by signing up here.
Other ways to get solar panels with no upfront cost include solar roof leases, solar panel leases, and some solar panel loans - but they all come with key drawbacks that we explore in each of the articles we've linked to.
Green home rewards
Some banks and building societies offer incentives to customers who boost their home's energy efficiency with measures including solar panels.
Homeowners who make the move quickly enough after moving in can get a reduced interest rate on their mortgage, a cashback payment, or a interest-free loan.
Some lenders also reward people for moving into a home with an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of A or B.
These initiatives help companies to fulfil their green goals, and should theoretically make it more likely that customers will be able to afford mortgage payments.
Between 2019 and 2026, the number of green mortgages on the market rose from four to over 90, as it became a standard, popular offering.
For more information, read our full guide to green home rewards and green mortgages.
Solar Together
Solar Together is a private scheme controlled by Dutch company iChoosr, which secures discounts through the power of group buying.
The initiative, which is now called Switch Together, convinces hundreds of homeowners in a local authority to sign up for solar installations.
The company then auctions all these jobs to the lowest bidder, which is an effective way of securing discounts – 20-30%, according to the Greater London Authority – but it comes with significant issues.
To join the scheme, an installer must fulfil sub-standard criteria, such as a solar panel efficiency of 18.1%, and a minimum 12-year product warranty.
These are far below industry averages, meaning your installation could ultimately cost more because of maintenance issues, and save you less because your system's solar output ends up being low.
The official report on Solar Together London said “some elements of the PV solar equipment specified by iChoosr are lower than would typically be expected of a domestic rooftop solar PV specification, which will have likely contributed to some of the cost reduction.
“In particular, the installation of lower quality inverters will have reduced cost. The consequence of this decision by iChoosr may be increased warranty claims and complaints in the future.”
To find out more, read our full guide to Solar Together.
Top-tier installers
Choosing a top-tier installer may not seem like an obvious way to cut costs, but solar panels are a significant investment which should last 30-40 years.
If you cut corners early on, you could end up paying far more in the long run. As the saying goes: buy cheap, buy twice.
Look for accredited installers with excellent reviews to ensure you get a system that doesn't break down and cancel out your savings with its maintenance costs.
Buying used solar panels or carrying out a DIY solar install is also risky, as it increases the chances of safety problems, insufficient output, poor savings, and – in the case of DIY systems – no export income.
To see why we're a top-tier installer, have a look at our accreditations, as well as our ranking of the best solar installers in the country.
What’s the cheapest type of solar installation?
If you're a homeowner with roof space who's looking to cut your energy bills, there are multiple ways of switching to solar.
But getting standard, roof-mounted monocrystalline solar panels is the cheapest option, as the table below shows.
Roof-mounted | Flat roof | Roof-integrated | Solar tiles | Ground-mounted | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Cost of a 4.5kWp system | £8,307 | £9,968 | £9,230 | £17,800 | £10,799 |
Generally, flat roof installations cost around 20% more than a standard rooftop installation. As your installer won't be able to drill into the roof without creating a high chance of leaks, they'll use ballasts to keep your panels in place.
The additional weight of around 80kg per panel is too much for most domestic flat roofs to bear. It’s also usually very difficult to physically inspect the rafters of a flat roof and make sure it’s structurally sound.
The extra cost is worth it to avoid the price of water damage, but it's almost always better to simply avoid putting a system on a domestic flat roof.
Roof-integrated systems typically cost 18% more than rooftop panels when retrofitted, to pay for the time, skill, and scaffolding it takes to remove the right roof tiles and fit panels flush with the remaining tiles.
Solar tiles cost around 114% more than rooftop panels, mostly because installing them involves replacing an entire roof. This usually takes weeks rather than days, and requires more materials, labour, and scaffolding than a standard job.
Getting ground-mounted solar panels is about 30% more expensive than buying a rooftop system because it takes more time and money to secure panels to the earth, and to do so at the right angle.
You'll also have to apply for planning permission, which you normally won't need if you're getting solar panels on your roof.
Next steps
In the great majority of cases, solar panels come at a high upfront cost, with households spending thousands of pounds before they can start saving.
It's definitely worth the investment, as solar panels can help you cut your electricity bills by hundreds of pounds per year, recoup their initial cost decades before they stop producing electricity, and potentially raise your home's value.
But if you can’t afford the upfront cost of a solar & battery system, you can still switch to solar.
Sunsave Plus is our solution to this problem, as it provides you with best-in-class kit with no upfront cost - instead, you pay a fixed monthly fee for 20 years.
If you would like to see the savings you could get from a solar & battery system, just answer a few quick questions below and we’ll provide an estimate.
Find out how much you can save
What kind of home do you live in?
Solar panel costs: FAQs
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Josh Jackman
Josh Jackman
Josh Jackman
Charlie ClissittWritten byJosh Jackman
Josh has written about the rapid rise of home solar for the past seven years. His data-driven work has been featured in United Nations and World Health Organisation documents, as well as publications including The Eco Experts, Financial Times, The Independent, The Telegraph, The Times, and The Sun. Josh has also been interviewed as a renewables expert on BBC One’s Rip-Off Britain, ITV1’s Tonight show, and BBC Radio 4 and 5.