The energy crisis triggered by conflict in the Middle East has caused a rush in solar panel and heat pump installations, with solar power being fitted on a rooftop about every three minutes.
There were more than 27,000 solar power installations in March, the highest monthly total for 14 years. The number of applications for heat pump grants also jumped to its second highest monthly level on record.
The disruption to oil and gas supplies caused by the conflict is forecast to increase a typical home’s energy bill from £1,641 a year under the current price cap to £1,843 in July. The energy shock appears to have led people to take steps to shield themselves.
The 27,607 solar installations completed in March was the greatest number in any single calendar month since 2012, a time when consumers were awarded generous inflation-linked payments for electricity from solar panels for 25 years. Between 2016 and 2021, the UK was seeing a median of only 3,000 installations per month.
The panels installed in March accounted for 121 megawatts of added capacity, with 85W on domestic rooftops and the rest in fields and elsewhere on the ground. There are now more than two million solar installations in the country.
A typical household solar panel installation costs about £6,100. In London, the annual savings can be as much as £650 a year, according to the Energy Saving Trust, a non-profit group. The payback period is usually between 9 and 15 years, depending on where in the UK the panels are installed and what times people consume electricity.
Renters and those put off by the upfront cost of a professional solar installation should also have the option this summer of buying plug-in solar panels. They work by plugging directly into mains sockets and can usually supply between 5 and 25 per cent of a home’s electricity.
The devices have been hugely popular in Germany, where some can sell for as little as €200. The government is moving to change regulations so they could be sold by Lidl, Amazon and other retailers.
The recent run of sunny weather has seen solar power hit two records for output nationally in the space of two days. The National Energy System Operator (Neso), the body responsible for keeping the lights on, said there was a peak of 14.8 gigawatts on April 22, beaten a day later 15.4GW.
Households will be offered free electricity to run their washing machines and other appliances to soak up surges in solar power, Neso said.
The number of people moving to replace their gas boiler with a heat pump also increased by almost a quarter last month. About 4,500 applied for a £7,500 government grant to fit a heat pump in March, making it the second highest month since the scheme started.
The 4,517 applications were up 24 per cent on February and 12 per cent on March last year. However, the devices still have an expensive upfront cost that is largely unchanged. The median cost for an installation was about £13,000, meaning a cost of roughly £5,500 cost even after the £7,500 grants.
Chris Norbury, the chief executive of energy supplier Eon, said combining heat pumps and solar panels offered people a significant opportunity to reduce their energy bills. He said consumers needed to trust the government would not make “knee-jerk” changes to policies supporting such technologies.
The figures come as the UK and almost 60 other countries wrapped up an international meeting on phasing out fossil fuels.
The talks in Santa Marta, Colombia, agreed that governments would draw up roadmaps on how they will curtail their use of coal, oil and gas. The US, China and major oil and gas producers in the Middle East were absent from the meeting, known as the First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels.
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