Solar panels across the UK produced an estimated 13.6 percent more electricity than in an average summer. Gains were biggest in the south, led by London, the Southeast and the Southwest, all more than 18 percent up, and shrank further north. Scotland and Northern Ireland, where sunshine was close to average, were barely up, at 1.3 percent and 0.9 percent.
The report is the first edition of the company’s quarterly UK Solar Report. It combines Met Office sunshine data, official solar capacity figures and modelling of the company’s customers' homes to show how solar performed in each region of the UK, and what the solar homes modelled could have saved by switching tariff.
The figures in the report are modelled, not metered. Savings figures come from 1,281 MakeMyHouseGreen customers with solar in Great Britain, using typical summer weather and tariff data from Switchd, which MakeMyHouseGreen also runs.
The report found that:
UK solar panels produced an estimated 13.6 percent more electricity than in an average summer. Every region beat its long-run average, led by London and the Southeast at 19.2 percent.
On a south-facing roof, each kilowatt of panels produced an estimated 394 kilowatt hours in the Southeast, the most in the UK, and 289 in Scotland, the least. London, the Southwest and Wales were close behind the Southeast.
Three regions, the Southeast, Southwest and East of England, produced an estimated 44 percent of the UK's small-scale solar electricity.
The typical solar home modelled could have saved £63 over the summer by switching from the standard price cap tariff to the cheapest tariffs we compared, assuming spare electricity on the price cap sells at 8p a unit. Every home would have paid less.
On those tariffs, more than a third of the homes (35.4 percent) would have earned more from selling electricity than they spent buying it. On the price cap, fewer than one in five would have.
“This was a great summer to own solar panels” said Llewellyn Kinch, CEO and Founder of MakeMyHouseGreen and Switchd. “Across the UK, they produced an estimated 13.6 percent more electricity than in an average summer. What a solar home gets back also depends on its tariff. We modelled 1,281 of our customers in Great Britain using typical summer weather, and every one of them would have paid less on the cheapest tariffs we compared than on the standard price cap tariff. The typical home could have saved £63 over the quarter.”
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