Commercial solar power is set to proliferate – © iStock
Already benefiting from falling costs, the ease with which solar panels can be retrofitted and the rapidly rising costs of fossil fuels due to the war in the Middle East, commercial solar power is set to proliferate.
The swift scaling up of commercial solar power in the UK is taking place at an opportune time. Prices have fallen to an accessible level – around 90% since 2015 – while the conflict between the US, Israel and Iran threatens to drastically inflate oil prices and liquified natural gas.
In an attempt to control overheads, naturally, businesses are looking to renewables to bring costs down.
According to market intelligence outfit Solar Media Market Research, the total UK solar market is forecast to grow by 50% year-on-year for the second year in a row. 
“Costs have gone down, but not massively.” Says Solar Energy UK chief executive Chris Hewett. “It’s more the fact that the price of electricity has gone up – that’s what’s making it more cost-effective, and it’s likely to continue to increase with what’s happening in the Middle East.”
Commercial purposes are set to be a major element of that growth, with commercial new builds effectively set to come with solar-by-default to meet EPC requirements.
Retrofitting, too, has a major role to play, and thankfully, it is relatively straightforward in practical terms. Advances in panel efficiency, mounting systems, and battery storage mean that even older buildings with unconventional roof structures or limited space can often be adapted.
“I think the advent of more electric heating, more electric vehicles, is shifting businesses’ energy load into electricity,” Hewett says. “Essentially, the more electricity you consume, the more cost-effective it becomes.”
Car parks, too, are increasingly being used as sites for solar power generation, according to Hewett.
“We’re increasingly seeing solar being put in car parks,” he says. “So you have, in effect, a mini solar farm over the top of the car park, and as you’re shading the cars, you’re generating power across the top.”
Hurdles to retrofitting are decreasing, but one that persists is in the cases of tenants and leaseholders, who require the permission of freeholders.
“If your company is in a building, you may not own that roof,” Hewett explains. “You may want solar on the roof, but your landlord doesn’t, or you’re only staying there for five years, and so they don’t really think it’s worth it. There are complexities there, which is a problem.”
One issue which Solar Energy UK expects to see improvement in is commercial sector data quality around solar use. 
Small installations of up to 50kW are under the purview of the standards body MCS, and are tracked over time. 
However, that is not true for commercial-scale systems, which are also not subject to planning permission. As such, keeping track of how much power is generated in and delivered each year is much more difficult to track, as is the proportion of commercial buildings that have solar panels fitted.
“It’s a problem,” Hewett acknowledges. “I was recently on a call with Ofgem and UK Power Networks, and one of the top subject matters is improving data on connections. Once that data starts to be cleaned up and improved, we will get much more accurate. 
“It’s very accurate in 50kW and below, and it’s very accurate for sort of 5mW and above. But it’s that bit in the middle – the commercial, industrial rooftop market – which is a bit sketchy at the moment in terms of data, but that will get better.”
Although the case for solar is mounting among businesses, there are notes of caution from some quarters.
Solar panels may be durable and typically last 30 years or more reliably, with regular maintenance, but what happens later is less well-defined.
Professor Fiona Charnley specialises in circular innovation at the University of Exeter and researcher at the ReMake Value Retention Centre. She warns that renewable energy technologies are yet to make the shift to recyclability in the way commonly seen in other industries, such as automotive.
She explains: “The end‑of‑life pathway for solar panels remains underdeveloped. Disassembly is complex, material recovery is limited, and the UK currently lacks the dedicated infrastructure needed to manage the growing volumes of panels approaching retirement. Globally, solar photovoltaic waste could exceed 200 million tonnes by 2050, and without change, valuable materials such as silver and silicon risk being lost, shifting the environmental burden from carbon emissions to waste accumulation.”
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