Rooftop Solar Market PV Market: Capacity Exceeded 3 GWp in 2022

Recent research shows that cumulative rooftop solar power capacity exceeded 3 GWp in 2022 although this remains well short of market potential.

Rooftop Solar PV Installations Booming

Key factors driving up installations are a combination of:

• ESG policies rising up the corporate agenda and business initiatives such as Climate 100+
• The wide availability of purchase power agreements, that mean no up-front costs to users
• And a significant decrease in the cost of solar panels.

Warehouse & Factory Roof Space for Solar PV

By far the largest number of installations are on warehouse and factory roofs, these also offering the greatest opportunities for further expansion.  

For larger premises of 1,000 m² existing warehouse roof space is estimated at 165 million m², allowing for a potential installed capacity in the region of 25 GWp.

Continuing expansion in the roll-out of online distribution centres will further add to are house roof space so increasing potential capacity for rooftop solar PV. 

The number of very big installations is also on the rise not just on warehouse roofs but also on factory building rooftops. Seven sites with arrays of upwards of 5MWp, are covering an area equivalent to 25 acres.

At 6.7MWp, an approved scheme at Don & Low Nonwovens manufacturing site at Forfar would be the largest rooftop installation to date. It’s bigger than the array at the port of Hull owned by ABP Ports, at 6.5MWp which became operational in 2020.

Rooftop Solar PV Market Expanding for Commercial and Industrial Rooftop

While the potential for expanding commercial and industrial rooftop solar PV is considerable, problems for renewables projects connecting to the grid and a shortage of rooftop PV installers  could slow down the rate of growth over the short-medium term.

That said, rooftop solar PV on commercial and industrial buildings is the quickest way of the UK increasing renewable energy capacity, in no small part because most schemes meet little opposition unlike ground mount solar and wind farms.