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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 · Source: Solar Power Portal

This site covered the application window closing on 7 August, with the solar strike price held at £75/MWh and Gate 1 projects barred from bidding for the first time. LCP Delta's report picks up where that left off: with bids now sealed and results due between November and February, the analysis models what the auction is actually worth. £51 billion in wholesale cost reduction, offset by £38 billion in CfD contract costs and £2 billion in balancing and capacity-adequacy costs, nets out to £11 billion in savings, which the report translates to roughly £5 off the average household electricity bill.

The number specific to solar is the clearing price, not the ceiling. £75/MWh was always the maximum a project could bid at; LCP Delta expects solar to actually clear around £68, undercutting onshore wind and offshore wind by a wider margin than the administrative strike prices alone suggest. That is the same story this site has tracked since AR7: solar keeps winning the government's own cost comparison, and the Gate 2-only eligibility rule from August should mean a higher share of what wins this round actually gets built rather than sitting on a speculative connection date.

The framing worth sitting with is the deadline pressure. Solar sits 14.8GW behind the 45-47GW Clean Power 2030 capacity target, and LCP Delta's note that AR8 may be the penultimate CfD round before that deadline means the gap has roughly one more auction cycle to close through this mechanism. None of this changes what a Kent homeowner or small business gets paid for exporting through the Smart Export Guarantee, that is a separate supplier-run market from utility-scale CfD contracts, but the same connection-queue logic from the August coverage still applies: a CfD round that clears cleanly with firm connection dates is fewer speculative utility-scale projects competing with domestic and commercial rooftop systems for the same DNO capacity.

Read the original: Solar Power Portal. Commentary is Sandwich Solar's own editorial view; the original reporting is credited to its publisher.

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