Rooftop solar panel industry set for major expansion

The rooftop solar panel industry is set for a boom after the new Labour government announced plans to install photovoltaics on millions more homes to bring down energy bills.

As part of the plans, ministers want to bring in solar-related standards for new homes from next year. Energy secretary David Milliband said that his government wanted to “unleash a UK solar rooftop revolution.”

This would include incentives for both home-owners and the building industry, which existed up until 2016, when they were ended. Details of the new potential incentives for existing housing stock remain unclear so far, but Glenigan’s construction industry research has identified a swathe of refurbishment and new-build schemes with solar panel schemes.

Work is due to begin on more than 8,700 projects due to include solar panels in the United Kingdom over the next year.

Out of this total, just over 4,000 proposals already have planning and are cleared to start work. Construction projects in many different sectors now routinely feature photovoltaic panels (PV), but nearly 1,300 projects in this pipeline are located within the private and social housing sectors.

London and Southern England have the greatest number of projects featuring PV panels that have planning and are due to start in the next year.

The largest number of approved schemes is in London, where 270 projects are due to start. These range from five flats in Harrow (Project ID: 23058895) to Telford Homes £100 million Chapel Place development of 860 flats on the site of a former Sainsburys store in Redbridge (Project ID: 15403753).

Outside of the capital, the region with the next largest number of approved PV residential schemes coming up is in the South East. The 200 schemes in this region range from a £2.6 million conversion of a former HSBC bank on London Road in East Grinstead (Project ID: 23329441) to the £55 million Union Gardens development in Worthing, West Sussex (Project ID: 20143129).

In the neighbouring South West, Glenigan’s research found 156 private and social housing schemes with planning and due to include PV panels.

These range from 8 Tech Homes’ plan to build 14 flats at Manor Road in Torquay (Project ID: 21311324) to plans for 65 elderly care units on the site of a former deaf academy in Exeter, where Gladman was recently appointed as the main contractor according to Glenigan’s industry research (Project ID: 23194021).

Other sectors are also increasing their specification of solar panels. There are over 1,200 hotel and leisure schemes that have planning and are due to start in the next year.

These include a £10 million extension of the King Charles Hotel in Gillingham, where the appointment of a contractor is imminent, to a (Project ID: 19045729) to a 319 million overhaul of Eston Leisure Centre in Middlesbrough (Project ID: 22203081).

With a substantial pipeline of new-build and refurbishment schemes due to feature solar and millions more existing homes likely to be enticed into making changes, the PV industry looks set to be a major beneficiary of the new government’s drive towards Net Zero.