There we 57,000 certified rooftop solar installations in the United Kingdom in the first three months of 2025, the strongest first quarter for more than a decade. The last time Q1 installations were higher was in 2012, when the UK government’s feed-in tariff offer drove demand.
Certification body MCS recorded 21,000 solar PV installations in March alone, the highest for a single month since December 2015. It was followed by a new record for solar generation in the UK with 12.7 GW of power from PV on Sunday, April 6.
MCS is a voluntary certification scheme covering PV installations up to 50 kW, however using an MCS-certified installer is the only way households can guarantee access to the Smart Export Guarantee export tariff, the UK government’s successor to the feed-in tariff.
Revised building regulations requiring higher energy efficiency standards for new homes in England have been credited with driving some of the rooftop demand. Trade association Solar Energy UK estimated that more than four in ten new homes included solar panels in the last quarter of 2024. In March 2025, more than a third of all certified PV installations were on new-build homes.
Solar deployment in the United Kingdom now exceeds 18 GW, according to the latest statistics from the government’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ). DESNZ figures recorded 18.1 GW of solar at the end of March 2025 although these figures are provisional and likely to be revised upward as more data becomes available. There have now been more than 1.7 million MCS certified PV installations in the United Kingdom, the majority of them on homes.
In a press release, MCS CEO Ian Rippin said the latest figures “show that consumers are continuing to turn to solar panels to provide them with home-grown energy.”
“It’s really positive to see that installation figures continue to remain at a high level, demonstrating the maturity of the UK solar market,” said Rippin.
Gemma Grimes, director of policy and delivery, Solar Energy UK, added that the new build sector is becoming “more and more important as a driver for growth in smaller-scale solar energy installations.”
“But retrofitting panels to existing homes and other buildings remains the largest segment, showing that the public is increasingly confident in the benefits that solar technology brings to bills and the environment alike,” said Grimes.
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