Solar Energy UK

NESO records more than 18,000 GWh of PV generation for Great Britain in 2025. SolarEnergy UK welcomes new record and claims more will be broken each year as deployment accelerates.

Seventh allocation round (AR7) budget for onshore technologies assigned by the government, with enough cash for solar to support 4 GW of capacity. Success for solar at the next two contracts for difference (CfD) seen as key to achieving UK government’s 2030 clean power targets.

Solar & Storage Live UK 2025 took place over three days from September 23 to 25 at the NEC venue in the outskirts of Birmingham, the UK’s second largest city. pv magazine spoke to hundreds of industry players keen to optimize existing solar and storage capacity and be at the forefront of the nationwide rooftop PV expansion.

Cross-party human rights committee says legislation needed to combat forced labor in solar supply chains, in report urging the UK government to introduce mandatory due diligence measures. Solar Energy UK expresses disappointment in committee’s portrayal of the UK solar industry.

Building regulations in England support growth in demand for rooftop solar as new-build properties make up significant share of small-scale PV installations. Strong installations in first quarter of 2025 were followed by a new single-day record for UK solar generation in April.

Policies and targets confirmed in 138-page government plan to decarbonize Great Britain’s electricity generation by 2030. Solar and storage to play a key role alongside market reforms, changes to planning process, and a revamped connections queue.

British wholesale distributor Midsummer has teamed up with solar mounting system manufacturer Solarport to integrate ground-mounted arrays into its solar design tool.

Effective Feb. 1, the UK government has exempted retrofitted battery energy storage systems (BESS) from the 20% value added tax (VAT).

Recent data published by Great Britain’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) show the country’s solar PV cumulative capacity was 15,292.8 MW at the end of July, with newly installed capacity for the first seven months of this year reaching 643 MW. Although Gareth Simkins of Solar Energy UK said these figures were ‘relatively low’, he explained that several utility scale PV plants may have not been included in the statistics so far and there was cause for optimism.

With copper prices rising, inflation driving up the cost of living, and organized criminal gangs stepping up operations in the United Kingdom and across Europe, solar project owners need to be more conscious than ever of security.