UK could require solar panels on most new homes by 2027

[Daniel Sims]

Forward-looking: Recent studies indicate that the widespread adoption of solar panels worldwide could significantly reduce carbon emissions and slow climate change. The United Kingdom plans to take a major step toward that goal with upcoming legislation that mandates panels on the roofs of almost all new homes.

The Times has seen plans indicating that the British government will soon announce a roadmap for installing solar panels on virtually all newly-built houses. If the legislation passes this year, the requirements might come into force in 2027.

According to experts, the plan will require 80% of new homes to cover 40% of their ground area with solar panels. Another 19% of new builds would have lower requirements due to factors such as roof angle, orientation, and shade. About one percent might be exempt from including panels.

Although the plans would make building new properties up to around £4,000 more expensive, the panels could help families save up to £1,000 on energy bills annually, potentially paying off the extra building costs in four years.

If implemented, the initiative would bring the UK closer to its goal of decarbonizing its electric grid by 2030.

Part of the strategy involves installing up to 47 gigawatts of solar power capacity by the end of this decade. The government is also expected to announce government loans for installing solar panels on existing homes, but building scaffolding and rewiring old buildings for solar is far more expensive than building it into new structures.

Although panels can dramatically reduce (and sometimes erase) energy bills, mass adoption can also throw power grids off balance.

Although panels can dramatically reduce (and sometimes erase) energy bills, mass adoption can also throw power grids off balance. In Australia, which has adopted solar energy with remarkable speed over the last two decades, the technology sometimes generates more power than grids can withstand.

Particularly sunny spring days produce excess energy during times of low demand because air conditioners aren't running as much as they do during the summer. This forces states to either export or waste power, highlighting the need for more flexible grids in the future. Britain's National Energy System Operator recently warned that excess solar energy might force power stations to shut down during periods of low demand.

Meanwhile, the US significantly increased its solar investments last year, contributing 60% of new energy capacity. Late last year, Oregon approved the construction of a 1.2 gigawatt station that could power around 800,000 homes a year, making it one of the country's largest.

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UK could require solar panels on most new homes by 2027

 

[themastergoose]

The cynical side of me just sees this as another opportunity to up the price of a house or rental property. Basically, it will be price gouged - £4000 additional cost to the builder? That will be £15000 added to the purchase price of the house.

Speak from experience with my own older house. It was built in 1994, has large south facing roof and a staggering £11K to 19K install cost for solar depending on whether or not I want batteries. I'd save £240 a year off my electricity bill as the array would never fully displace grid supply with the UK's climate (It rains A LOT here).

Hardly an incentive with a 45 year break even point on outlay at £11K. This is why uptake is so low here.

 

[VaRmeNsI]

The biggest doner to the UK's current ruling communist (Labour) party is Ecotricity.

I'm sure it's just a coincidence...

 

[Theinsanegamer]

The UK, known for its.....sunny disposition. LOL.

Just build nuclear power already!

The cynical side of me just sees this as another opportunity to up the price of a house or rental property. Basically, it will be price gouged - £4000 additional cost to the builder? That will be £15000 added to the purchase price of the house.

Speak from experience with my own older house. It was built in 1994, has large south facing roof and a staggering £11K to 19K install cost for solar depending on whether or not I want batteries. I'd save £240 a year off my electricity bill as the array would never fully displace grid supply with the UK's climate (It rains A LOT here).

Hardly an incentive with a 45 year break even point on outlay at £11K. This is why uptake is so low here.

It's worse when you consider the average PRE tax wage in the UK is only 37,200 per year. The costs just make no sense. I get why they want solar, but this is only going to lead to further affordable housing shortages in the future.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

The cynical side of me just sees this as another opportunity to up the price of a house or rental property. Basically, it will be price gouged - £4000 additional cost to the builder? That will be £15000 added to the purchase price of the house.

Speak from experience with my own older house. It was built in 1994, has large south facing roof and a staggering £11K to 19K install cost for solar depending on whether or not I want batteries. I'd save £240 a year off my electricity bill as the array would never fully displace grid supply with the UK's climate (It rains A LOT here).

Hardly an incentive with a 45 year break even point on outlay at £11K. This is why uptake is so low here.

Don't forget to factor in the cost of replacement batteries over that 45 year span. I hear the current lithium batteries that are used last 10-15 years, so figure in the cost of replacing them 4 times in that 45 year span. Also, it is possible the panels themselves might need to be replaced. The life span on them tends to range from 30-50 years.

 

[m4a4]

Don't forget they just gave the go-ahead to spray chemicals into the air to help block the already "abundant" UK sun.

What a bunch of clowns.

 

[Vulcanproject]

The UK should focus on accelerating new generation capacity rather than increasing cost of already very expensive housing.

Marginal pricing means the most expensive generator required at any given moment sets the pricing for every unit generated. Relying on imported gas subject to massive price hikes to cover the gaps when renewable generation is insufficient has lead to huge spikes in consumer energy prices.

I think the UK has done incredibly well at installing offshore wind capacity. The North Sea is one of the best places on the planet for wind power and they are taking advantage of that. It has produced a grid where as much as half of the entire required power is now generated by renewables. Cheap renewables.

The issue is this is still not enough and they have to keep building a lot more mixed capacity, including nuclear. They have to eliminate gas and when that day comes in theory they will have an abundance of cheap renewable energy. But not until ALL of it is eliminated from the electrical grid. That is at least a decade away at a minimum, realistically a lot more.

 

[pnntmp]

The UK is becoming more dystopian by the day.

If "the panels could help families save up to £1,000 on energy bills annually", why not leave it to the families to decide?
Why should the government stick its nose into that? Why impose such idiocy on people?

I have no idea what's going on in the UK, but it seems truly horrifying.
The government will not save your kids from being raped, but will put you in jail for posting about that on social media. While gangs of primitive savages are roaming the streets, you should be on your roof installing solar panels.
Seriously?

 

[brucek]

Limited upside at mass scale without storage to match.

 

[pnntmp]

Cheap renewables.

Renewables are cheap for the same reason last minute flights are cheap - they are extremely unreliable. Making it a bit more reliable requires serious storage capacity (so scratch 'cheap') and it still remains far less reliable than the stable sources.
The recent power outage that affected a sizable part of Europe was anything but cheap. The more 'cheap' renewables are installed, the more of that will happen.

 

[NumberNine]

UK is surrounded by ocean... Tidal energy... waves... constantly. It doesn't ever stop.
Hint hint.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

UK is surrounded by ocean... Tidal energy... waves... constantly. It doesn't ever stop.
Hint hint.

Environmental committees would restrict the space and add decade to their construction. There's a good reason they have never truly left the experimental phase and entered mass use.

 

[NumberNine]

Environmental committees would restrict the space and add decade to their construction. There's a good reason they have never truly left the experimental phase and entered mass use.

We can only hope for them to run out of excuses before they run out of electricity.

 

[Vulcanproject]

Renewables are cheap for the same reason last minute flights are cheap - they are extremely unreliable. Making it a bit more reliable requires serious storage capacity (so scratch 'cheap') and it still remains far less reliable than the stable sources.
The recent power outage that affected a sizable part of Europe was anything but cheap. The more 'cheap' renewables are installed, the more of that will happen.

It's a bit of a myth that these renewables are extremely unreliable. It is about selecting suitable sources and proper grid balance.

Regards the UK, the likes of wind power being ideal for that country lie in the fact that it is typically windiest in the winter. That is when the electrical demand is also highest.

For other parts of the world this scenario does not uniformly apply, including many parts of the United States where notably there is major reliance on air conditioning. Something Europe in general does not have and thus it is far better adapted to the renewable technology available.

It's also somewhat misleading to attempt to attach what happened recently in Spain to renewable energy without yet understanding precisely the cause of the outages in that case. The earliest data so far points to poor grid management, rather than some inherent generation problem. These things happen from which you learn. Nobody said a continent wide, transnational networked grid is an easy thing to manage.

 

[Tantor]

Ridiculous nonsense.

"... widespread adoption of solar panels worldwide could significantly reduce carbon emissions and slow climate change. The United Kingdom plans to take a major step toward that goal...."

UK solar panels are NOT a major step towards slowing climate change. England is notorious for overcast weather.

It reminds me of the US mandates to install 'low water usage' toilets. Save a gallon per flush.

 

[pnntmp]

It's a bit of a myth that these renewables are extremely unreliable. It is about selecting suitable sources and proper grid balance.

Regards the UK, the likes of wind power being ideal for that country lie in the fact that it is typically windiest in the winter. That is when the electrical demand is also highest.

For other parts of the world this scenario does not uniformly apply, including many parts of the United States where notably there is major reliance on air conditioning. Something Europe in general does not have and thus it is far better adapted to the renewable technology available.

It's also somewhat misleading to attempt to attach what happened recently in Spain to renewable energy without yet understanding precisely the cause of the outages in that case. The earliest data so far points to poor grid management, rather than some inherent generation problem. These things happen from which you learn. Nobody said a continent wide, transnational networked grid is an easy thing to manage.

You don't really have the option to select sources with renewables.
A strong wind may get rid of the clouds over enormously big areas literally in minutes. Then you have a huge surge in solar supply, but there's nothing on the demand side to match/ balance it. We're in a part of the year that we don't need energy neither for heating nor for cooling. The industry demand is more or less stable throughout the year.
So in the absence of a sufficient buffer / battery capacity to absorb a sudden excess in supply, you have grid imbalances. The same for a sudden drop in supply.

As we're nowhere near being able to reliably forecast the extremely volatile supply (and even if we were, I'm not sure how that would help), we're in for an ever increasing number of such accidents as the volatile supply grows.
So more 'cheap' energy we can't control is not not cheap, it's a problem that's pretty expensive to solve, providing we can solve it. As we currently can't, it may only lead to disasters that are very expensive to handle overall.

 

[Tantor]

It's also somewhat misleading to attempt to attach what happened recently in Spain to renewable energy without yet understanding precisely the cause of the outages in that case. The earliest data so far points to poor grid management, rather than some inherent generation problem.

Poor grid management = lack of conventional backup. Otherwise known as Net Zero.

"REE said it had identified two incidents of power generation loss, probably from SOLAR plants, in Spain’s southwest that CAUSED INSTABILITY in the electric system and led to a breakdown of its interconnection with France. Spain is one of Europe's biggest producers of renewable energy, and the blackout sparked debate about whether the VOLATILITY of supply from solar or wind made its power systems more vulnerable. Redeia, which owns Red Electrica, warned in February in its annual report that it faced a risk of "disconnections due to the HIGH PENETRATION of RENEWABLES without the technical capacities necessary for an adequate response in the face of disturbances." Investment bank RBC said the economic cost of the blackout could range between 2.25 billion and 4.5 billion euros, BLAMING the Spanish government for being too complacent about infrastructure in a system dependent on solar power with LITTLE BATTERY STORAGE."

- https://www.reuters.com/world/europ...l-after-monday-blackout-says-grid-2025-04-29/

 

[Megalomaniac]

The answer is simple: we need technology that integrates solar power generation into the tiles themselves so that every roof is a solar roof. The benefit: save energy, lasts considerably longer than a regular roof, creates energy, reduces foreign oil reliance...

Downside: expensive, expensive to repair, expensive to maintain if necessary.

 

[Vulcanproject]

Poor grid management = lack of conventional backup. Otherwise known as Net Zero.

"REE said it had identified two incidents of power generation loss, probably from SOLAR plants, in Spain’s southwest that CAUSED INSTABILITY in the electric system and led to a breakdown of its interconnection with France. Spain is one of Europe's biggest producers of renewable energy, and the blackout sparked debate about whether the VOLATILITY of supply from solar or wind made its power systems more vulnerable. Redeia, which owns Red Electrica, warned in February in its annual report that it faced a risk of "disconnections due to the HIGH PENETRATION of RENEWABLES without the technical capacities necessary for an adequate response in the face of disturbances." Investment bank RBC said the economic cost of the blackout could range between 2.25 billion and 4.5 billion euros, BLAMING the Spanish government for being too complacent about infrastructure in a system dependent on solar power with LITTLE BATTERY STORAGE."

- https://www.reuters.com/world/europ...l-after-monday-blackout-says-grid-2025-04-29/

Poor grid management does not automatically mean the problem is a lack of conventional backup. It just means the grid has to be managed better.

Unfortunately it is not precisely clear of the exact reasons for the failure yet. This looks like a cascade of circumstances. It can happen when these grids are as stupendously complex as they are.

There appears to have been a spike in wind power generation which scrammed out several nuclear plants that had been operating at modest power levels, balancing demand. This being an interconnected grid the French end which was importing power at the time also appears to have disconnected because of a detected surge.

Then there was a massive drop in solar production. This wasn't because the sun went in, it was because an interconnect may have sent an automatic shutdown instruction to multiple facilities. Hydropower ran out of capacity to pick up the slack, nuclear base load had gone, solar had partially disconnected = total grid failure.

A little nuance and analysis should make it clearer. If it was synchronisation issue, slow response to a surge, faulty software or just human decisions we will have to wait and see. Overly simplistic explanations for a complex issue are not what is required at the moment.

 

[pnntmp]

The answer is simple: we need technology that integrates solar power generation into the tiles themselves so that every roof is a solar roof. The benefit: save energy, lasts considerably longer than a regular roof, creates energy, reduces foreign oil reliance...

Downside: expensive, expensive to repair, expensive to maintain if necessary.

The answer is anything but simple.
Who is "we" that "need" that???

I'm perfectly capable of determining my own needs myself, and I certainly don't need any government thinking on my behalf.
If I think I need solar panels, I can install them on my roof, without any government intervention. If I don't think I need solar panels, then I need the government sticking its nose in my affairs even less.

 

[Vulcanproject]

You don't really have the option to select sources with renewables.

You have an option to diversify, which is the same thing. This is why despite the UK not exactly being Kuwait, solar panels contribute, wind, hydropower. Tidal would be nice but it is very geography dependent. Diversification is a positive thing, but also has negative consequences, such as complexity of management.

These are really just technical questions that can be understood and overcome. There is no doubt renewable energy needs to be backed up with adequate legacy solutions- for now. Ultimately it is going to be a better future where we don't dump loads of carbon into the atmosphere from our strictly finite fossilized energy sources. No matter what political bias you have.

There will be a refinement of these renewable technologies and more experience that will not be without bumps in the road. That doesn't mean those legacy solution also didn't need decades of development to be reliable as they are. Grids occasionally failed all the same before anyone ever thought about attaching a windmill to one. New York has seen several historic black outs. There is no going back, because everyone should know there is no way forward when the oil and gas is gone.

 

[manowar51]

The UK government is a complete laughing stock right now. They have just given the go ahead to try and dim the sun and the country is overcast for 90% of the year. How much solar energy are they expecting?
To make things worse, housing in the UK is already in extreme demand and costs way more than most people can afford. This will make it even more expensive.

Remember the best thing to fight against climate change is wealth. Poor people will screw the climate to eat, wealthy people are the ones who can afford to care. So, if your actions to fight climate change have a side effect of making people poorer, it could be having a backwards effect.

Also don't look into who is funding the current UK Labour party. Definitely no conflict of interest there at all.

 

[Baldrickalpha1]

In Scotland we have a good mix of renewable energy that on many days of the year we already produce 100% of our electricity demand with them. More solar capacity is a good thing, especially when directly attached to homes meaning it doesn't matter if the grid goes down, we still have power. (side note, I have solar and battery storage in my home, I've been covering the house plus electric car almost entirely free nearly 2 years now, as we are paid for the electricity we export that we don't use ourselves, covering the extra demand from the grid for my car at night once or twice a week, for example.)

What this article doesn't mention is whether they're is also legal requirement for provision of battery storage in that same new build or not, but it is a total no brainer as it spreads the demand to not need sun or wind at the moment of need.

Without sufficient storage this alone won't cut it. And to those who decry this approach because of nanny state nonsense, or affordability, this is saving me money, both short and long term, as well as adding to the value of my home already. I'm already considering removing my natural gas boiler to replace it with an electric heat pump system to save even more money.

 

[daffy duck]

The cynical side of me just sees this as another opportunity to up the price of a house or rental property. Basically, it will be price gouged - £4000 additional cost to the builder? That will be £15000 added to the purchase price of the house.

Speak from experience with my own older house. It was built in 1994, has large south facing roof and a staggering £11K to 19K install cost for solar depending on whether or not I want batteries. I'd save £240 a year off my electricity bill as the array would never fully displace grid supply with the UK's climate (It rains A LOT here).

Hardly an incentive with a 45 year break even point on outlay at £11K. This is why uptake is so low here.

Hmm my bill with 13.3kW of solar has been neagtive for the last three years - no battery. I'm saving around $1600 per year. But I don't live where the sun don't shine ie the UK.

 

[toooooot]

The most hypocritical thing about it is that a lot of Brits can only dream about a home even at current prices.
So, what should we do? Make them more expensive!
The only justification is that when people allow their government to hate them,
they deserve it. That is a clear example of pure hate and attempt to further drive
millions of people into literal slavery where most of their money goes on paying for rent.