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UK Solar News

Policy changes, SEG rates, grants and industry news, curated for East Kent homeowners weighing up a DIY plug-in setup or an MCS-certified install.

Regulation

Government drops planning permission for cross-pavement EV chargers and opens two consultations on charging for flats and new buildings

The Department for Transport says homeowners without a driveway no longer need planning permission to run a charging cable under the pavement to a car parked on the street, saving up to £300 on installation. Two consultations on EV charging in tenanted homes and in building regulations are open until 16 December 2026.

21 October 2026 · GOV.UK (Department for Transport)

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Market

Ember: homes with rooftop solar and a battery are ten times better protected from energy price shocks than an all-gas household

A new report from the energy think tank Ember, published 23 September 2026, finds that UK homes running on solar, battery storage, heat pumps and EVs (what it calls electro-fortification) carry far lower exposure to global oil and gas price swings, with battery storage now fitted alongside nearly half of all new solar installs.

25 September 2026 · Ember

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MCS standards

MCS now requires installers to buy a financial protection product on every domestic solar job, covering at least six years even if the installer goes out of business

Announced at Solar & Storage Live 2026 in Birmingham, the requirement replaces the old two-year industry-minimum cover with a mandatory six-year guarantee, and MCS is also taking over as the single point of contact for complaints rather than leaving homeowners to chase installers and warranty providers separately.

22 September 2026 · Renewable Energy Installer

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Regulation

A Planning Inspectorate inquiry into a 49MW solar farm less than a mile from Sandwich runs through this Friday, with Richborough Roman Fort at the centre of the fight

Dover District Council's planning committee unanimously rejected Statkraft's 206-acre Little South Solar Farm on Ash Level in November 2025 over harm to the neighbouring Richborough Roman Fort and Amphitheatre. Statkraft appealed, and the Planning Inspectorate's public inquiry, running until Friday 25 September, is now weighing whether that rejection stands.

21 September 2026 · KentOnline

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Market

LCP Delta forecasts AR8 could cut wholesale electricity costs by £51 billion and hand consumers £11 billion in net savings

Published 18 September ahead of October's auction, LCP Delta's analysis puts solar's average AR8 clearing price at £68 per megawatt hour, below the £75 ceiling this site covered when the application window closed in August, and flags AR8 as likely the penultimate CfD round for solar before the 2030 Clean Power deadline, with solar still 14.8 gigawatts short of its target.

20 September 2026 · Solar Power Portal

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Regulation

Dover council officers recommend approving a 49.5MW solar farm near Elvington, just under the threshold that would take the decision out of their hands

PACE Vanish Energy's 330-acre solar and battery storage scheme near Tilmanstone and Elvington goes to Dover District Council's planning committee on 17 September, with officers recommending approval despite over 600 objections against 295 in support. At 49.5MW, the scheme sits just below the 50MW threshold that would otherwise hand the decision to the Secretary of State.

15 September 2026 · KentOnline

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Regulation

From 15 October, a new battery storage chapter in the wiring regulations bans loft installs and puts a metre of clearance around anything sited outside

BS 7671:2018+A4:2026's new Chapter 57 is the first dedicated regulatory framework for stationary battery storage, requiring domestic systems to meet PAS 63100 on location, ventilation, fire protection, isolation and testing. It bans loft installs, bans siting in hallways or stairwells, and requires a metre of clearance from windows, doors and vents outside. It is not retroactive, but any alteration or addition to an existing system after 15 October has to meet the new rules.

12 September 2026 · Cool Power

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Market

Two weeks after plug-in solar went legal, 48 kits are compliant but only 20 are actually for sale

The ENA Type Test Register listed 48 complete plug-in solar kits as compliant as of 10 September 2026, up from 20 on 2 September, but under half of those have an actual price and retailer attached. Perlight Solar leads the compliant pipeline with 12 approved kits, more than double any rival, yet most of its listings are still pending pricing and availability.

11 September 2026 · Plug-in Solar Calculator (ENA Type Test Register tracker)

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Regulation

Folkestone and Hythe councillors voted 9-1 against the 500MW South Brooks solar farm on the Marsh, but the vote can't actually stop it

The district council's planning committee submitted a formal holding objection to the 1,600-acre South Brooks scheme near Lydd during statutory consultation, citing road safety, structure height and cumulative environmental impact. The vote is advisory: this is a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project, so the final call rests with the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, not the council.

10 September 2026 · KentOnline

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Market

Ofgem's October price cap goes up 4%, but the rise is almost entirely gas, not electricity, which matters if you're weighing solar against your bill

The new cap, effective 1 October to 31 December, takes the typical dual-fuel household to £1,723 a year, an extra £60. Gas is up 8%; electricity is described by Ofgem as "broadly stable" this quarter thanks to VAT removal. Worth knowing before assuming this announcement makes solar's payback case any stronger than it already was.

9 September 2026 · Ofgem

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Market

Anker's new Solarbank 4 Pro is being sold into the plug-in solar moment, but the small print says a Part P electrician still has to wire it in

Anker put the Solarbank 4 Pro on UK pre-sale at 1,699 pounds for 5kWh, expandable to 30kWh, with plug-in capability built into the hardware for a regulatory change that has not happened. Right now it still needs a Part P-registered electrician on a hardwired connection to the consumer unit, because plug-in solar's 27 August legalisation covers panels only, not batteries.

7 September 2026 · The Eco Experts

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Market

EDF signs a battery optimisation deal for 179.8MWh of new UK grid-scale storage, the kind of capacity that sets the price your home battery gets paid against

Trinasolar's Ruby project near Aberdeen (80MWh) and Chatterley in Gloucester (99.8MWh) will go live between October 2026 and March 2027, both managed by EDF's Powershift trading platform to soak up cheap power and release it at peak demand, the same price swings that make a domestic battery and a flexible export tariff worth having.

6 September 2026 · Solar Power Portal

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Market

Carbon Brief analysis: UK solar generated a record 8.8 TWh over summer 2026, up 23% on last year, with nearly 1.7 million households now on rooftop panels

Solar Energy UK's Chris Hewett credits clear skies and continued deployment growth for the record, and Carbon Brief's numbers back the deployment half of that claim: 172,000 new systems installed so far in 2026, UK capacity nearing 24 GW, and domestic rooftop now making up roughly 29% of that total.

5 September 2026 · Carbon Brief

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Market

Octopus Energy becomes the first major UK energy supplier to sell plug-in solar direct to customers, starting at £450 for a single 460W bifacial panel

Where Amazon, Currys, B&Q and Lidl entered the plug-in market as retailers stocking third-party kits, Octopus is entering as a supplier, bundling the kit with its own tariffs and pitching a two-panel setup on a smart export tariff at roughly 5.5 years' payback, with orders open now and delivery expected by the end of September.

4 September 2026 · Octopus Energy

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Market

MCS data shows a record 210,000 certified home solar and battery installations in H1 2026, with battery storage nearly doubling year on year

One MCS-certified installation went in every 74 seconds across the UK in the first half of 2026, 17% ahead of the previous best opening half-year, and the mix has shifted: battery attach rates are climbing fast while heat pump installs fell, a pattern worth reading correctly if you're weighing up a Kent quote right now.

3 September 2026 · MCS (Microgeneration Certification Scheme), via CIBSE Journal

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Grid connection

Field's 400MW High Marnham battery storage project wins planning approval in Nottinghamshire, construction not due until 2028

Bassetlaw District Council has granted irrevocable consent for a standalone 400MW battery site on the old High Marnham power station land, built to soak up surplus renewable power and feed it back when demand is high, another sign of how much grid-scale storage capacity is queued up behind slow build timelines.

2 September 2026 · Solar Power Portal

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Market

Argos became the first major high street name to actually put plug-in solar kits on sale, with UKSOL bundles listed at between £599 and £989 depending on wattage and mount type, two days before other big retailers had confirmed a date

We flagged on 26 August that Lidl, Amazon and Currys hadn't committed to an on-sale date despite plug-in solar becoming legal the next day. Argos moved first, listing UKSOL kits directly on its own website rather than waiting for the wider rollout everyone had been expecting.

29 August 2026 · Bloomberg

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Regulation

The day after plug-in solar went legal, the detail missing from the government's own announcement turns out to matter more than the headline: one compliant kit per property, a 28-day grid-registration duty, and only seven approved products on the market

With plug-in solar now legally on sale as of 27 August, a Byline Times investigation into the small print flags a hard single-device cap per property, a legal duty to notify the local grid within 28 days of installing, and landlord or freeholder permission requirements for renters and leaseholders that the official announcement did not spell out.

28 August 2026 · Byline Times

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Regulation

The government has approved Beacon Fen Energy Park, a 400MW solar farm with 600MW of co-located battery storage in Lincolnshire, the first project of its kind signed off by new Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh since she succeeded Ed Miliband

London-based developer Low Carbon's scheme went through the Development Consent Order route used for nationally significant infrastructure, having been submitted to the Planning Inspectorate in April 2025 and accepted the following month. It will be bigger than any solar farm currently operating in the UK, with construction on the transmission-connected site expected to start in 2027.

27 August 2026 · pv magazine

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Market

New Spitalfields Market in London has become home to the capital's largest rooftop solar installation, 2,730 panels across five roofs expected to generate 1.27GWh a year, enough to power around 470 homes

The installation is projected to cut the market's carbon emissions by roughly 225 tonnes annually. It's a large-scale commercial example of exactly the principle behind a domestic install, that a big enough roof with a clear run at the sun is a genuine generating asset, just scaled up from a household roof to five warehouse-sized ones.

27 August 2026 · Energy Live News

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Regulation

Plug-in solar becomes legal tomorrow, 27 August, but Lidl, Amazon and Currys haven't confirmed exact on-sale dates yet, and industry bodies are already warning that not every kit on a marketplace listing will actually be compliant

We've covered the regulation change itself since late July, but the detail worth flagging the day before launch is what a compliant kit has to include, a prominent no-battery warning and a consumer unit label so anyone working on your wiring later knows generation is connected, and that a listing without clear UK compliance documentation is exactly the kind of thing industry bodies are telling buyers to check for before ordering.

26 August 2026 · TechRadar

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Grants

UKRI has launched a £28 million challenge fund for storage technologies that can hold surplus solar and wind power for 100 hours or more, on top of a separate £3 million study competition into the electrochemical tech that could do it

Energy Minister Michael Shanks says the goal is storing homegrown clean power for when it's actually needed rather than relying on gas when solar and wind generation dips, and it complements Ofgem's parallel consultation on 16 long-duration storage projects, including new pumped-hydro schemes, announced back in June.

26 August 2026 · Energy Live News

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Regulation

The Department for Education has made its standardised power purchase agreement compulsory for any new school solar deal from 15 July, and is now running market engagement, including an 18 August webinar, ahead of the pilot's autumn relaunch

Under a PPA, a private developer funds, installs and maintains rooftop panels at no upfront cost to the school, and the school buys the electricity generated at a pre-agreed rate below the standard grid tariff. Up to 150 schools and colleges in Yorkshire and Humber, the East Midlands and the south east are in the first phase, with permitting for new projects due to resume this autumn.

23 August 2026 · Solar Power Portal

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Grants

A new toolkit for councils and community energy groups launched 18 August, ahead of Great British Energy opening two new funding routes this summer, its Community Fund and a Partnership Fund for joint council-community solar projects

Written by former Cotswold District Council cabinet member Dr Rachel Coxcoon with Community Energy Pathways, UK100 and Community Energy England, the guide gives councils ready-to-edit templates, a cabinet decision paper, a community solar strategy and a full council motion, aimed at councils that want to move fast once the roughly £1bn of GBE funding opens for applications.

23 August 2026 · edie

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Market

Swale Borough Council, just up the road from Sandwich, says 200-plus rooftop solar panels cut its head office electricity bill by 55% and generated £7,262 in savings plus £1,864 in export income in three months

Swale House in Sittingbourne installed the panels earlier this year, and between March and June exported 13,850 kWh of surplus power to the grid while cutting the building's own bill in half, a real-world payback figure this site can compare directly against a Kent household's numbers.

22 August 2026 · Energy Live News

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Grid connection

UK Power Networks, the DNO covering Sandwich and East Kent, has launched an Opportunity Finder tool giving schools, hospitals and community groups estimated install costs and network connection information before they apply for solar funding

Built by UK Power Networks' Distribution System Operator arm and currently piloted with three NHS trusts, two community energy groups and the Greater South East Net Zero Hub, the tool is aimed at non-domestic applicants but is a useful signal of how seriously the local DNO now takes solar connection planning.

22 August 2026 · Energy Live News

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Market

Drax completed a £548 million cash takeover of Bluefield Solar Income Fund on 31 July, an enterprise value of around £1.08 billion for 852MW of operating solar, wind and battery assets plus a 2.8GW development pipeline

Bluefield shareholders got 92.574p in cash per share, a 31% premium to where the stock closed before the deal was announced, and Drax now owns one of the largest listed UK renewables portfolios outright rather than through a fund structure.

21 August 2026 · Renewables Now

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Regulation

UKSOL became the first plug-in solar brand to secure formal Compliant listings on the ENA's Connect Direct database, with four Plug-In Solar Pro products cleared to go on sale from the 27 August legal launch, ground-mount kits starting at £699

The Energy Networks Association's device register is the practical gatekeeper for plug-in solar: a product needs a Compliant listing there before a retailer can sell it as legitimate rather than grey-market, and UKSOL is the first brand across that line.

21 August 2026 · Solar Energy UK

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Market

Pathfinder Clean Energy has taken the final investment decision on Tophams, a 55MWp solar farm paired with a 22.6MWh battery in North Hertfordshire, backed by a 20-year Contracts for Difference agreement

Construction starts this year with commercial operation targeted for the second half of 2027, financed through a euro100 million convertible bond secured in June, another sign that new utility-scale solar in the UK is now routinely built with storage attached from day one.

16 August 2026 · Solar Power Portal

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Export income

Octopus Energy paid its solar export customers £99.2m over the past year, an average of £244 per household, as heatwave-driven enquiries jumped 34% and battery-only installs rose 630%

More than 405,000 UK homes on Octopus export tariffs fed 825 GWh back to the grid, roughly a full gas power station's annual output, while May-July heatwave conditions drove a surge in both new solar enquiries and standalone battery installations.

15 August 2026 · Octopus Energy press release

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Regulation

Ahead of plug-in solar's 27 August legalisation, an industry analysis warns the UK grid has no reliable way to track how much self-installed capacity is actually connected, pointing to Brazil's estimated 14 GW of undeclared rooftop solar as a cautionary comparison

From 27 August, self-installing up to 800 watts of plug-in solar becomes legal under a connect-first, notify-within-28-days version of the existing G98 process, but the piece argues that self-reporting alone leaves network operators effectively blind to a fast-growing category of distributed generation.

15 August 2026 · Solar Power Portal (opinion, Maya Pindeus, Another Earth)

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Market

Wolverhampton manufacturer Laystall Engineering, a 1903-founded firm that once supplied Rolls-Royce and now makes hydraulic cylinders for JCB and Caterpillar, installed a 740kWp rooftop solar system using a six-figure Lloyds Clean Growth Financing Initiative loan, expecting a 52% cut in site carbon emissions

The funding also covered site re-cladding for better insulation and a full LED lighting conversion, with the combined package forecast to cut 120 tonnes of CO2 a year while lowering ongoing energy bills for a manufacturer that has been trading on the same Wolverhampton site for over a century.

13 August 2026 · TheBusinessDesk.com

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Market

UK firm Power Roll, the University of Sheffield and Sweden's Dyenamo AB launched the POP-PV project to develop lightweight, roll-to-roll perovskite solar film for warehouses and factories whose roofs cannot bear the structural load of conventional glass-panel systems

Ordinary glass-panel solar is often unsuitable for large commercial buildings because of structural load limits, installation complexity and cost, leaving many warehouse and factory roofs untapped. POP-PV, launched under Eureka SMART's 8th Advanced Manufacturing Call, aims to improve the stability, durability and manufacturing scalability of Power Roll's patented micro-groove solar film to close that gap.

13 August 2026 · Solar Power Portal

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Market

The 12 August partial solar eclipse, Britain's deepest since 1999, briefly knocked out up to 1.2 GW of solar generation and pushed the National Energy System Operator to issue and then cancel an Electricity Margin Notice as it paid up to £875 per MWh for emergency backup power

Octopus Energy asked its roughly 8 million customers to hold off on washing machines and dishwashers between 6pm and 8pm while the eclipse coincided with a summer heatwave, and the episode has become the largest real-world test yet of how much solar-heavy Britain's grid now leans on the sun.

13 August 2026 · IBTimes UK / Bloomberg

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Market

Danish developer European Energy has secured 58.1 million pounds in construction financing from Danske Bank for its 68MW solar plus 47.5MW/95MWh battery hybrid project at Indian Queens in Cornwall, on track for commercial operation in 2027

The Indian Queens project, which started construction in May 2026, already has a corporate power purchase agreement in place for the solar output and a capacity market contract for the battery component. European Energy deputy CEO Jens Peter Zink said hybrid projects are becoming a bigger part of the UK renewable market as developers pair storage with generation to strengthen the investment case.

11 August 2026 · Solar Power Portal

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Market

The Green Party and Reform UK have found rare common ground opposing plans to cover more than 5,000 acres, around a tenth of Romney Marsh, with three combined solar farms including the 500MW South Brooks project near Lydd

Romney Marsh's flat terrain, strong sun and spare grid capacity from the decommissioning Dungeness nuclear stations make it genuinely well suited to utility-scale solar. Final planning authority sits with central government, not Kent's councils, since the schemes qualify as Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects.

10 August 2026 · Financial Times / EnergySector

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Regulation

UK fire services attended 212 solar panel fires in 2025, a 133% rise since 2022, more than double the 52% growth in installations over the same period

Freedom of Information data obtained by insurer QBE from UK fire services shows DC cabling and connectors were the leading cause, 49 incidents in 2025 up from 26 the year before, and fires that spread beyond the solar installation itself nearly tripled from 33 to 88, with QBE's Adrian Simmonds saying installation quality and fire safety are not keeping pace with the speed of deployment.

10 August 2026 · Insurance Times

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Grants

The Warm Homes Loan Scheme's first tranche of FCA-authorised lenders begins onboarding between 12 and 24 August 2026, the concrete step that moves the £300 million low and zero-interest loan pot for solar, batteries and heat pumps from announcement toward something households can actually apply for

Applications from banks, building societies, credit unions and specialist lenders for the first tranche closed 17 July 2026, and the government says a further lender application window will open later in the year. This is the scheme this site flagged on 28 July as real money that wasn't open yet.

10 August 2026 · GOV.UK

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Market

Aura Power and Verdant Energy have merged into a single UK solar-and-battery independent power producer with roughly 1GW of operating and under-construction assets and a 10GW development pipeline, backed by infrastructure fund CVC DIF

Aura Power founder Simon Coulson stays on as chief executive of the combined business, which trades under the Aura Power name. Verdant brings around 660MW of built and building utility-scale solar and co-located battery assets to add to Aura's own 2.1GW of projects already advanced to ready-to-build stage.

9 August 2026 · Solar Power Portal

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Market

Santander UK has provided debt finance for two battery storage projects in a single week, a 42.7 million pound facility for Econergy's 80MW Immingham site and a senior debt facility for Brockwell Energy's 60MW Inchbean Farm project in Scotland

Econergy's Immingham battery has locked in two 10-year revenue agreements with EDF Energy worth an estimated 45-50 million pounds, about half its projected lifetime revenue, before the site has even finished construction. Brockwell's Scottish project reached financial close in May with Fluence handling the build.

9 August 2026 · Solar Power Portal

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Market

The application window for the UK's eighth Contracts for Difference auction closed on 7 August 2026, with the solar PV strike price held at 75 pounds per megawatt hour and Gate 1 projects barred from bidding for the first time

Developers had until noon on 7 August to register eligible projects for Allocation Round 8, with sealed bids opening this autumn and results due between 27 November 2026 and 17 February 2027. Solar remains the cheapest technology in the auction, behind onshore wind at 92 pounds per megawatt hour and offshore wind at 113 pounds, and this round is the first to exclude projects without a secure Gate 2 grid connection date.

8 August 2026 · reNews

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Regulation

Amazon, Currys, B&Q and Lidl are preparing plug-in solar kits for the 27 August legal launch, and the fine print includes fire-safety restrictions that will rule some Kent homes out entirely

Statutory Instrument 2026/848 confirms typical plug-in kits will cost £300 to £600 with a realistic 3 to 5 year payback, but the rules ban installation on timber balconies, aluminium composite panel buildings and properties under fire remediation, and every install still needs a DNO notification.

8 August 2026 · Tech Digest

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Market

Braintree District Council has approved Push Power's 16.5MW solar farm paired with a 22.5MWh battery in Essex, the latest sign that new solar consents now come with storage attached as standard

The Kentishes project is one of six grid-connected solar-plus-storage developments Push Power now operates in the UK, and research cited alongside the approval ranks the UK as Europe's second most attractive market for co-located solar and battery projects.

8 August 2026 · Solar Power Portal

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Grants

Great British Energy has put £7.5 million into Crawley-based Naked Energy, its first investment in the UK solar supply chain, backing a new automated factory for solar thermal panels that will create 40 direct jobs

The money comes from GBE's £1 billion Energy Engineered in the UK programme and sits alongside a wider £27 million funding round with Barclays Climate Ventures. It won't change what a Kent homeowner pays for a rooftop PV install tomorrow, but it is a signal of where government money is now backing UK manufacturing rather than just installation grants and export tariffs.

7 August 2026 · Solar Power Portal

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Regulation

Plug-in solar becomes legal to install on 27 August, but the Smart Export Guarantee still can't pay you for the electricity it exports, because SEG registration currently requires MCS certification and DIY plug-in kits cannot be MCS-certified

Ofgem is expected to introduce a simplified SEG registration route built specifically for plug-in systems, but the industry timeline points to around 2027, which means anyone buying a plug-in kit at legal launch this month will be exporting for free for at least the first year or more.

5 August 2026 · The Eco Experts

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Market

Solar generated a record 14.4% of Great Britain's electricity in July, smashing the previous monthly record of 12.4% set only two months earlier in May and up 50% on the 9.6% solar delivered a year ago

The UK, England and Wales all recorded their sunniest July on record, but the scale of the year-on-year jump also reflects how much rooftop and farm-scale capacity has been added since last summer, meaning even an ordinary sunny month next year is now likely to generate more than this record-breaking one did.

5 August 2026 · Solar Energy UK

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Export income

EDF's Export Exclusive tariff pays a fixed 24p/kWh for 12 months, a penny below Good Energy's headline 25p but with a guarantee Good Energy's variable rate doesn't offer, which is the trade-off worth understanding before chasing the top number

On a typical 2,400 kWh annual export, the fixed rate works out to roughly £576 a year, and because it can't be cut mid-contract the way a variable tariff can, it's a genuinely different product to compare against Octopus Intelligent Flux's higher but battery-dependent peak rate.

4 August 2026 · EnergyPlus

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Grid connection

Ofgem has formally named the problem behind years of solar grid-connection delays an "asymmetry of risk": network operators face weak penalties for missing deadlines while developers absorb cost overruns that have run up to 200% on delayed projects

The reform package proposes standardised connection processes, stricter enforceable milestones, real-time visibility into queue positions and grid capacity, and materially higher penalties for distribution network operators, extending accountability that currently applies mainly to distribution networks onto transmission operators too.

4 August 2026 · Ofgem

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Market

Switch Together's council-backed group-buying model, now live in Solihull, Wiltshire, Medway, Sandwell, Eastleigh and several other councils, runs pre-vetted installers through a reverse auction against each other rather than asking residents to shop around individually

The previous Solihull round put over 1,600 panels and 150-plus home batteries into more than 160 homes and businesses; the 2026 relaunch adds battery-only options for existing solar owners and EV charge points, run by iChoosr, which has coordinated 137 similar group-buying campaigns and over 1.8 million panel installations across the UK since 2012.

4 August 2026 · Solihull Council / Switch Together

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Market

142,536 new solar systems went in across Great Britain in the first half of 2026, the highest six-month total since the second half of 2011, and fossil fuel costs rather than any single new scheme are what's driving it

E.ON Next reported a 151% rise in its own home solar installations over the same period, and Octopus Energy saw a single-month sales jump of more than 54% in March, both pointing at the same underlying driver: rising energy bills making the payback case obvious without needing a new subsidy to explain it.

3 August 2026 · The Guardian

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Grants

DESNZ published updated Warm Homes: Local Grant funding allocations to local authorities in July, with individual council pots ranging from roughly £1 million to nearly £70 million, meaning what you can actually get in Kent depends entirely on which council administers it

Unlike the Consumer Loan Scheme covered on this site before, which doesn't open until April 2027, the Local Grant is live now, fully-funded (not a loan) for eligible low-income households with an EPC rating between D and G, and delivered through local authorities whose individual allocations vary by a factor of nearly 70 to one.

3 August 2026 · Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (GOV.UK)

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Market

E.ON Next's solar installations rose 151% in the first half of 2026 versus the same period last year, well ahead of the market it operates in, which government figures put at 142,536 new installations for the same six months

The supplier ties the surge to households wanting more direct control over their energy costs, and is pairing it commercially with Next Optimise, a tariff and automation product it says can save solar-plus-battery households more than £600 a year by charging on cheap wholesale windows and exporting when prices rise.

2 August 2026 · E.ON News

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MCS standards

MCS is moving every certified solar installer onto a redeveloped scheme through 2026 into 2027, replacing annual paperwork-heavy audits with a risk-based model that can drop clean-record installers to a site assessment once every three years

Certification bodies are contacting installers in a phased rollout rather than a single cutover date, NICEIC has been approved to deliver the new scheme since February 2026, and every new applicant since March 2026 has been assessed under it automatically, with the practical change being what gets assessed rather than whether installers stay certified.

2 August 2026 · MCS

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Market

UK solar capacity hit 22.8 GW at the end of June, and the 27,391 installations that month were the second-highest monthly total on record, just behind March's 28,782

Government deployment data shows the UK added 2.2 GW of solar capacity, up 10.9%, in the 12 months to end of June 2026, taking total UK installations past 2,076,000, with the growth arriving just as plug-in solar's 27 August legalisation opens an entirely new, uncounted installation category.

1 August 2026 · pv magazine

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Grants

ECO4 has been given a final nine-month extension to 31 December 2026, but the government has confirmed there will be no successor supplier obligation scheme after it closes

Following last year's consultation, ECO4 now runs to 31 December 2026 instead of closing this spring, giving eligible households a final window for free or subsidised solar, battery and insulation measures before the scheme winds down for good and support moves to the publicly funded Warm Homes Plan.

31 July 2026 · Energy Trust

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Export income

The highest SEG export rate on the UK market right now, Octopus Intelligent Flux at up to 32.17p per kWh, is only available if you have a battery and an Octopus import tariff, which tells you where export income is actually heading

July 2026's best flat SEG rate without a battery requirement is 25p per kWh from Good Energy, but the genuine ceiling, Octopus Intelligent Flux's 32.17p peak, is locked behind owning a battery, which is no longer an edge case in how export tariffs are being designed.

31 July 2026 · EnergyPlus

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Market

The UK has passed 2.5 million MCS-certified installations across solar, battery storage and heat pumps combined, half a million more than the solar-only two million milestone we covered in May

Segen's milestone counts every MCS-certified renewable technology together rather than solar alone, and the gap between the two figures is itself informative: battery storage and heat pump attachment rates are climbing fast enough to add half a million certified installs on top of solar in a matter of months.

31 July 2026 · Segen UK

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Grants

The government opened a call for evidence on community battery storage on 4 June 2026, asking whether shared street-level batteries could let renters and flat-dwellers benefit from solar-style savings without installing anything themselves

The call for evidence, which closes on 30 July 2026, covers bill savings and system benefits, technical and financial barriers, safety frameworks, and what government support could scale community batteries up to help households, including low-income ones, who can't access a domestic battery for technical or financial reasons.

30 July 2026 · GOV.UK

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Grid connection

Grid connection delays, not installer availability, are now the real bottleneck for UK solar, with some South East England DNO applications taking 20 to 24 weeks instead of the standard 4 to 8

Installer waiting lists have stayed manageable at one to four weeks even through the busy spring period, but Distribution Network Operators in constrained areas including South East England and suburban zones around major cities are processing record volumes of larger G99 connection applications, pushing approval times to five to six months in the worst cases.

30 July 2026 · OpenSolar

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Export income

British Gas cut its Smart Export Guarantee rate for systems above 15kW from 15.1p to 8p per kWh, a change aimed at larger commercial installs that still shows why every SEG rate is a variable business decision, not a fixed promise

From 6 July 2026, British Gas pays 12p per kWh for exported solar up to 15kW and just 8p above that threshold, a cut that turns 100,000 kWh of annual export from roughly £15,100 into about £8,000, hitting manufacturing sites, warehouses, farms, schools and other larger operations hardest.

29 July 2026 · Flame Energy

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Regulation

Solar panels on new-build homes stop being a developer's choice from 24 March 2027, when Requirement L3 makes rooftop solar a legal building-control obligation rather than one option among several

The Future Homes Standard's new Requirement L3 demands on-site renewable electricity generation equivalent to 40% of a dwelling's ground-floor area, effectively rooftop solar PV, with token or trade-off compliance no longer accepted, and a 12-month transitional window for schemes already under construction before 24 March 2027.

29 July 2026 · GOV.UK / Future Homes Standard

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Market

UK solar output topped 16 gigawatts for the first time ever during the late-June heatwave, 50% above the 2022 energy-crisis peak, and roughly 1.9 million home installations did real work absorbing the demand surge

Over four consecutive heatwave days combined domestic and utility-scale generation reached 483.6 GWh, a 45.9% jump on the previous week, at times pushing wholesale electricity prices negative and triggering Demand Flexibility Service reward events for households that cut consumption during the peak.

29 July 2026 · HeatPumpsAndSolar

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