Solar panel cost in Yorkshire in 2026: real installed prices

Solar with a battery starts from £6,995 fitted in 2026, for a smaller system with a compact battery. The cost of solar panels for a 3 bedroom house is usually from £9,000, for our typical 4.8 kWp system with a 5.12 kWh battery. Swap the battery for a Powerwall 3 and it starts from £12,500. Those are our own installed prices, with scaffold, certificates and VAT in them.

Most of what follows is about why one house costs more than another, because that is the part nobody puts on a website. The kit and the packages are on the solar panels page.

The prices, up front

• A typical install here is 4.8 kWp: ten LONGi Hi-MO X10 panels and a Hanchu 5 kW hybrid inverter.
• Solar with a compact battery, from £6,995. The typical 4.8 kWp system with a 5.12 kWh battery, from £9,000. Solar with a Powerwall 3, from £12,500.
• That array makes between 4,500 and 4,800 kWh a year in South Yorkshire, on 950 to 1,000 kWh per kWp.
• Domestic solar is zero-rated for VAT until 31 March 2027, then it goes to 5% (HMRC, VAT Notice 708/6). On a job this size that deadline is worth real money.
• There is no grant for solar panels on an ordinary owner-occupied house. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.
• Scaffold, the DNO application, the MCS certificate and the electrical certificate are all in our price, not added after.

What does solar panel installation cost in 2026?

Three prices cover most of what we fit.

Solar with a compact battery, from £6,995. The entry price: a smaller array and a compact battery, for a smaller roof or a household that uses less. Mounting, DC and AC work, scaffold and certificates are all in it.

Solar and a 5.12 kWh battery, from £9,000. Ten panels, 4.8 kWp, a Hanchu hybrid inverter and the battery most households actually need rather than the one that sounds impressive. The hybrid inverter means more storage can be added later without replacing the main box.

Solar and a Powerwall 3, from £12,500. More storage, more power out at once, and a single unit doing inverter and battery together.

Those are starting prices for a straightforward job. A roof with two pitches, a tricky access, a rewire of the tails or a battery out in a detached garage adds to it. We price the house, not a category.

How much do solar panels cost for a 3 bedroom house?

Usually from £9,000, because a typical three-bed semi has the roof for about ten panels and the consumption to use them.

The size of the house matters less than three other things: how much roof faces somewhere useful, how much electricity you use while it is light, and whether the consumer unit and meter position are sensible. I have quoted four-bed detached houses that only took eight panels because of a hip roof, and two-bed terraces that took twelve.

If you are being quoted by kW without anyone measuring your roof, you are being quoted a guess.

What actually moves the price?

Scaffold. The single biggest variable and the one most often left off a cheap quote. A rear pitch over a conservatory or a garden with no side access costs more to make safe.

Panel count and panel choice. More panels is more money, but the price per panel falls as the array grows. Ten is usually the sweet spot on a semi.

The inverter. A hybrid unit costs more than a string inverter and saves you money if you add storage later.

Roof type. Concrete tile is straightforward. Slate is slower and needs more care. In-roof arrays, where panels sit flush in place of tiles, cost more than on-roof and look better.

The electrics. An old consumer unit, a meter on the opposite side of the house or a supply that needs a G99 application all add labour.

Optimisers. Only where there is genuine shading. Fitting them everywhere is a way of adding money to a quote.

What do solar panels and a battery cost together in the UK?

From £9,000 for solar with a 5.12 kWh battery, or from £12,500 with a Powerwall 3.

The honest question is not what a battery costs, it is whether yours will ever fill up and empty. A battery earns its money in two ways: it stores your own afternoon surplus for the evening, and on a time-of-use tariff it fills overnight on cheap units and carries you through the expensive part of the day.

If the house is empty from eight until six, the first of those is worth a lot. If somebody is home all day using the power as it is made, there is less surplus to store and you would often be better off spending the money on more panels.

What is not in the price?

Being straight about this saves arguments later.

A new consumer unit if yours will not take the circuit. Tile replacement if the survey finds cracked or delaminating tiles. Any tree surgery. A bird mesh, if you want one, and around here with the gulls I usually recommend it. Roof repairs are the one that surprises people, so we photograph the roof at survey and tell you before the scaffold is booked.

What will it actually save?

Do this sum with your own bill rather than a number from a website.

Take a 4.8 kWp array making between 4,500 and 4,800 kWh a year. Work out what share of that you use in the house rather than export: with no battery, for most working households, it is under half. Multiply those units by your own unit rate. Then add export payments on the rest, at whatever your supplier pays under the Smart Export Guarantee. Each supplier sets its own export rate and moves it, so compare the tariffs the week your MCS certificate arrives.

Two identical roofs in the same street can be years apart on payback purely because of what time the people inside them put the washing on.

A worked example: a 1960s semi in Wickersley

Here is the whole sum on one house, so you can see where the money actually goes. Everything in it is either our own price or a published figure, and I have said which is which.

The house is a three-bed semi built in the early sixties, south-west facing main roof, concrete interlocking tiles, no shading worth worrying about. Two adults, both out until half five, one electric car charged overnight. That last detail changes the answer more than the roof does.

What goes on it. Ten LONGi Hi-MO X10 panels, 4.8 kWp, on a single pitch. A Hanchu 5 kW hybrid inverter in the garage with the isolators next to it. Scaffold on one elevation, because everything is reachable from the back. Bird protection along the bottom edge, because there is a starling problem on that street and we have been back to enough houses that did not have it.

What it generates. South Yorkshire gives between 950 and 1,000 kWh a year per kWp on a well-placed roof, so call it 4,500 to 4,800 kWh a year. It is not spread evenly. May and June will each make more than November, December and January put together, and that seasonality is the thing people find hardest to believe until they have watched a year of it on the app.

Where that electricity goes. With no battery, this household uses somewhere under half of what it makes, because the big loads happen after dark. Say 2,000 kWh used in the house at the unit rate they would otherwise pay, and the rest exported at whatever their supplier pays under the Smart Export Guarantee. Export rates vary by supplier and move, so that half of the sum is worth checking the week the MCS certificate lands rather than the week you sign.

What the battery changes. A 5.12 kWh battery on this house does not make more electricity. It moves the evening off the grid and, on an off-peak tariff, lets them fill up overnight at the cheap rate and run the house through the next day on it. For a household out all day with a car to charge, that second job is usually worth more than the solar-shifting one.

The price. With the 5.12 kWh battery, this house starts from £9,000. With a Powerwall 3 instead, from £12,500. Scaffold, the DNO application, the MCS certificate and the electrical certificate are all inside those figures.

What would move it. Slate instead of concrete tile, and the stripping is slower. A second pitch, and that is scaffold on another elevation. An older consumer unit with no spare way, and that is a board change before anything else happens. A cable run from the roof to a garage at the bottom of the garden rather than straight down into a utility room, and that is a trench. None of those are upsells invented on the day; they are the reason two quotes for the same postcode come out different, and they are why we would rather look at the house than price it off a satellite photo.

Is it worth it, honestly?

For most houses, yes, and I would say so even if I did not fit them. Electricity is not getting cheaper, the kit is better than it was a decade ago, and the panels will still be generating when the mortgage is done.

But there are houses I would not sell to.

If you are moving in two years, you will not see the payback and you will not get the whole cost back in the sale price. If your roof is north-facing with nothing else to use, I will tell you no. If the roof needs stripping and re-tiling inside five years, do the roof first: taking an array off and putting it back costs more than waiting.

And if somebody has quoted you twelve panels on a G98 fudge to dodge the network application, be careful. Splitting or undersizing a system to avoid asking the network operator is not clever, it is a shortcut that catches up with you when the paperwork is checked.

What I would fit at my own house

Ten LONGi Hi-MO X10 panels, a Hanchu 5 kW hybrid inverter, and no battery on day one unless the household is out all day. Then a battery a year later, once you have twelve months of real data and know exactly how much surplus there is to store.

That order costs a little more in total than doing it all at once. It also stops people spending thousands on storage they never fill.

Getting a number for your own roof

Which solar panels are best covers the kit in the price above, and solar panel grants in the UK deals with what is and is not available to help pay for it.

When you want a real number for your roof, Get a quote with your postcode. We come out and look at the roof, the quote is in writing, and it includes the scaffold. Or ring 01709 278248.