Breaking through the solar ceiling with Energy Sharing Communities

We saw an encouraging piece of news towards the end of January: according to Energy Live News, the first six months of the current government have seen a 10% surge in solar panel installations, with nearly 75,000 completed compared to 68,000 in the previous half-year. 

The increase  could be attributed to a number of factors including government efforts such as the establishment of Great British Energy, ambitious solar targets for 2030, and Labour’s ‘Rooftop Revolution’ plan to see millions more homes fitted with solar panels. All of these are clearly contributing to overall progress, but what if we could help turbocharge this and eliminate the natural ceilings to Britain’s solar potential? We think we can. 

Boosting community generation to unlock Britain’s solar potential

We fully support efforts to put more solar panels on people’s homes, and are proud of our own domestic solar offering, but there is a limit to the number of homeowners with their own roofs in the UK, and an enormous amount of potential to be tapped elsewhere. 

According to the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, installing solar on: “All suitable roof space and car parks in the UK could generate a whopping 117GW.” That’s considerably more than the Government’s total solar target of 70GW by 2035, and is by no means limited to car parks, warehouses, or even just businesses. 

Following an innovative model called Energy Sharing we could install solar PV not just on the roofs of houses, but public buildings such as schools, hospitals, libraries, and churches, helping them meet their own energy needs while raising additional revenue selling surplus to the local community. 

This wouldn’t just work to support public services, it would massively expand the pool of mid-to-large scale, high-impact solar installation opportunities in the UK – the low hanging fruit – allowing us to quickly and significantly increase the nation’s solar capacity. 

The solution is there, and preventing us from using it isn’t a lack of infrastructure or funding, but a quirk of policy. As things currently stand, a “prosumer” in an “Energy Sharing Community” (the public building or business selling surplus electricity to its neighbours) would see the power it exports subjected to network costs as if it had been transported along the national grid – even though this wouldn’t be the case. By doing away with these network costs solely for Energy Sharing Communities, government and regulators could unlock the UK’s significant solar potential, go far beyond the limitations of domestic installations and large solar farms on green land, and give a massive boost to the rooftop revolution. 

With Energy Sharing Communities we can break through the solar ceiling and make the most of the nation’s roofs. Follow this link to find out more about how Energy Sharing Communities could share the footprint of a British solar revolution