Commercial Solar for Manufacturers UK
A practical, manufacturer-focused guide to specifying rooftop solar around your process loads and shift patterns, slashing 28-32p/kWh grid bills, claiming capital allowances, and producing clean Scope 2 and SECR numbers your customers now demand.
Why manufacturers are different solar buyers
Manufacturing is one of the most electricity-intensive activities in the UK economy, and that single fact changes how a solar system should be designed. A retail shed or office spreads a modest, flat load across opening hours; a factory typically runs heavy, continuous process loads — compressors, extruders, ovens, presses, CNC lines, chillers, conveyors and motors — that pull tens or hundreds of kilowatts whenever the line is running. With UK industrial electricity sitting at roughly 28–32p/kWh, every kilowatt-hour you can self-generate is a kilowatt-hour you no longer buy at that price.
That is the core economic case. Commercial solar is installed at around £700–£1,000 per kWp, falling as the system grows: a 250kWp+ array typically lands at £700–£800/kWp and a 500kWp–1MW system at £650–£750/kWp. Combine that falling unit cost with high self-consumption against expensive grid power and most manufacturers see payback in 3–5 years, then 20+ years of near-free generation across a 25–30 year panel life that degrades only 0.3–0.5% a year.
This page is written for the people who buy and run factories — operations directors, energy managers, finance leads and owners. If you are instead researching which panel brands to specify, see our separate guide to UK solar panel manufacturers. Here, the focus is your business as the customer: how to size, fund and report a system that fits how you actually make things.
Matching solar to your process loads and shift patterns
The single biggest driver of solar economics for a manufacturer is self-consumption — the share of generation you use on site rather than export. Power you consume directly displaces electricity at 28–32p/kWh. Power you export earns a Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) payment that is far lower, often a few pence per unit. So the design question is not simply “how big a roof do we have?” but “how well does our daytime demand line up with daytime sunshine?”
Day-shift operations: the ideal fit
A single day shift — say 7am to 5pm, Monday to Friday — maps almost perfectly onto the solar generation curve. Output ramps up through the morning, peaks at midday and tails off in the late afternoon, exactly when your lines, lighting and HVAC are at full draw. Day-shift factories routinely achieve 70–90% self-consumption with no battery at all, which is why their payback is usually the fastest of any commercial sector.
Two, three and continuous shifts
If you run a back shift, night shift or 24/7 process, a large slice of your demand falls outside daylight hours. Solar still has strong value — the daytime base load is met cheaply — but raw self-consumption against total demand is lower because you keep drawing from the grid at night. The right response is usually to size the array to the daytime base load rather than the headline peak, and then consider battery storage (covered below) to time-shift midday surplus into the evening and overnight periods.
A proper feasibility study starts with half-hourly (HH) meter data. Overlaying twelve months of HH consumption against a modelled generation profile for your roof reveals the true self-consumption figure, the export volume, and the point at which adding more panels stops paying for itself. Beware of oversizing: panels that mostly export at SEG rates earn a fraction of what self-consumed panels save.
| Operating pattern | Typical self-consumption | Design priority |
|---|---|---|
| Single day shift, Mon–Fri | 70–90% | Maximise roof coverage |
| Two shifts (e.g. 6am–10pm) | 55–75% | Size to base load; consider battery |
| 24/7 continuous process | 40–60% | Battery + load-shifting essential |
| Seasonal / campaign production | Varies widely | Model against actual HH data |
High-energy manufacturing sub-sectors
Different industries have very different load shapes, roof types and constraints. We have built dedicated guidance for the highest-energy sub-sectors, because a one-size-fits-all spec rarely survives contact with a real factory floor.
- Automotive & component manufacturing — the West Midlands automotive cluster runs paint shops, robotic welding, presses and machining at high, steady daytime loads, with large flat roofs ideal for solar. See solar panels for automotive manufacturing.
- Food & drink manufacturing — refrigeration, chilling, ovens and CIP washdown run hard, often across extended or continuous shifts; cold storage in particular pairs well with both solar and battery. See solar panels for food manufacturing.
- Chemical & process manufacturing — pumps, reactors, distillation and ATEX-zoned environments demand careful electrical design and DSEAR-aware installation. See solar panels for chemical manufacturing.
- General light & heavy industrial — fabrication, plastics, packaging, textiles and engineering. Our overview of solar panels for industrial buildings in the UK covers roof structure, asset condition and large-format array design.
Across all of these, the recurring engineering questions are the same: can the roof structure carry the additional dead and wind load, is the roof covering near end of life (better to re-roof first), where will the inverters and isolation sit, and how will the new generation tie into your existing LV distribution and metering.
Scope 2, SECR, CBAM and embodied carbon: the reporting drivers
For a growing share of manufacturers, the trigger to install solar is no longer only the energy bill — it is the carbon report. Three regulatory and commercial pressures are converging, and on-site renewable generation is one of the few measures that improves all of them at once.
Scope 2 and SECR reporting
Scope 2 emissions are those associated with the electricity you buy from the grid. Every kilowatt-hour you self-generate from rooftop solar directly reduces your reported Scope 2 footprint — it is the cleanest possible reduction because it removes the emission rather than offsetting it. Larger UK companies and groups already report energy use and carbon under SECR (Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting), where solar both cuts the absolute number and demonstrates a tangible, capital-backed efficiency action of the kind SECR narratives are expected to describe.
CBAM and supply-chain carbon
The EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) places a carbon cost on imports of carbon-intensive goods such as steel, aluminium, cement, fertiliser, chemicals and hydrogen, and the UK is introducing its own CBAM. For manufacturers who export into the EU or who feed into EU-bound supply chains, the embedded carbon of your product — including the electricity used to make it — increasingly carries a financial cost. Cutting the carbon intensity of your own electricity through solar is a direct lever on your product's embedded emissions and therefore on its competitiveness under these regimes.
Embodied carbon and customer requirements
Beyond regulation, large customers are pushing carbon requirements down their supply chains. Original equipment manufacturers, retailers and public-sector buyers increasingly ask suppliers for Scope 2 reduction commitments, product carbon footprints or evidence of renewable electricity. Visible, on-site solar is a credible, verifiable answer in tenders and ESG questionnaires — and unlike a green tariff or unbundled certificate, it is physically present on your own roof. For many manufacturers this turns solar from a cost-saving project into a contract-winning one.
Battery storage for continuous and multi-shift loads
If your factory only runs in daylight, you may not need a battery at all. Where storage earns its keep is in multi-shift and continuous operations, and in any site where midday generation regularly exceeds on-site demand. A commercial battery captures surplus solar that would otherwise be exported at low SEG rates and releases it when it displaces expensive grid import — in the evening, overnight, or during the morning and afternoon demand peaks.
For manufacturers, batteries unlock several additional value streams beyond simple solar time-shifting:
- Peak-shaving and triad/capacity avoidance — trimming the half-hourly peaks that drive capacity and network charges on an HH-metered supply.
- Time-of-use arbitrage — charging from the grid at cheap overnight rates and discharging during expensive day periods, on top of storing your own solar.
- Resilience for critical loads — keeping essential process control, refrigeration or safety systems alive through short grid interruptions.
- Grid services — larger systems can earn revenue from flexibility and balancing markets, though this is secondary to self-supply for most factories.
Battery economics are site-specific and depend heavily on your tariff structure and load profile, so they should always be modelled against your real HH data rather than assumed. As a rule of thumb, the more of your demand that sits outside daylight, the stronger the storage case.
How manufacturers fund factory solar
There are three common routes to a system, and the right one depends on whether you want to own the asset and how you treat capital.
Outright capital purchase
Paying for the system upfront delivers the strongest lifetime return and full ownership of every kilowatt-hour generated. With payback typically in 3–5 years against a 25–30 year asset life, the internal rate of return comfortably exceeds most alternative uses of cash for a manufacturer. It also gives you the cleanest position on Scope 2 and customer carbon questions, because the asset is unambiguously yours.
Capital allowances and tax treatment
UK businesses can use the Annual Investment Allowance (AIA) to claim 100% first-year tax relief on qualifying plant and machinery up to £1m of expenditure in the year. Solar PV is a special-rate asset, so for spend above the AIA limit the relief falls to a 50% first-year allowance with the balance written down over time. Please note that solar does not qualify for the “full expensing” main-rate regime — it sits in the special-rate pool — so any modelling should use AIA and the 50% FYA, not full expensing. Always confirm the current position and your specific entitlement with your accountant before relying on the tax case.
Asset finance and lease
Asset finance, hire purchase and operating leases let you install with little or no upfront capital and repay from the energy savings, often producing a positive cash position from day one. Ownership transfers to you at the end of a hire-purchase term; a lease keeps it off your balance sheet but reduces lifetime return.
Power Purchase Agreement (PPA)
Under a PPA a funder owns and maintains the system on your roof, and you simply buy the solar power they generate at an agreed unit rate — usually below your grid price — with no capital outlay. PPAs suit manufacturers who want savings and carbon benefits without owning the asset, though the long-term saving is shared with the funder.
Whichever route you choose, a credible quote should be backed by detailed costings. Our guide to factory solar panel costs in the UK breaks down price per kWp by system size and what drives the variation, so you can sanity-check any proposal.
Grid connection, compliance and accreditation
Any commercial array above 50kWp requires a G99 application to your Distribution Network Operator (DNO) before it can be energised. The G99 process confirms the grid can accept your generation and sets any export limit. Timescales vary by region and the available capacity at your local substation, so the application should be started early — for larger systems it can become the critical path of the whole project. Across South Wales, the Midlands and the South West, the regional DNO is National Grid Electricity Distribution (NGED), and an experienced installer will manage the G99 submission and any export-limitation or curtailment scheme on your behalf.
On the contractor side, look for the accreditations that signal both quality and the ability to work safely in an industrial environment: MCS, NICEIC, RECC, NAPIT and TrustMark, alongside ISO 9001 (quality) and ISO 14001 (environmental management) for larger commercial projects. For high-energy and hazardous-area manufacturing — particularly chemical and some food processes — confirm your installer is experienced with the relevant electrical and area-classification requirements before work begins.
Finally, treat the roof itself as part of the project. Solar adds 20–25 years of asset life on top of the structure beneath it, so it makes little sense to mount a new array on a covering that has only a few years left. Where the roof is ageing, combining a re-roof with the solar install is usually far cheaper than removing and refitting panels later.
Frequently asked questions
How much does commercial solar cost for a manufacturer?
Commercial solar is typically installed at £700–£1,000 per kWp, and the rate falls as the system grows: a 250kWp+ array is usually around £700–£800/kWp, and a 500kWp–1MW system around £650–£750/kWp. With UK industrial electricity at roughly 28–32p/kWh, most manufacturers see payback in 3–5 years against a 25–30 year panel life.
Does solar make sense if we run night shifts or 24/7?
Yes, but the design changes. Daytime production maps perfectly onto solar generation and gives the highest self-consumption, so single-shift factories often reach 70–90% self-use with no battery. For multi-shift or continuous operations, the array is sized to the daytime base load and paired with battery storage to time-shift midday surplus into evening and overnight demand, which keeps the economics strong.
How does solar help with Scope 2, SECR and CBAM reporting?
Every kilowatt-hour you self-generate directly reduces your Scope 2 (purchased-electricity) emissions, which lowers your SECR figures and provides a verifiable efficiency action for the report narrative. By cutting the carbon intensity of the electricity used in production, solar also reduces your product's embedded carbon — an increasingly important factor under the EU and UK Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) and in customer supply-chain carbon requirements.
What tax relief can a manufacturer claim on solar?
UK businesses can use the Annual Investment Allowance (AIA) for 100% first-year relief on qualifying spend up to £1m per year. Solar PV is a special-rate asset, so expenditure above that limit attracts a 50% first-year allowance with the remainder written down over time. Solar does not qualify for “full expensing” — always confirm the current rules and your entitlement with your accountant.
Do we need DNO approval to install solar on our factory?
Any commercial system above 50kWp needs a G99 application to your Distribution Network Operator before it can be energised, confirming the grid can accept the generation and setting any export limit. In South Wales, the Midlands and the South West the regional DNO is National Grid Electricity Distribution (NGED). The process can take time, so it should be started early; a good installer manages the submission for you.
Should we install a battery as well as solar?
It depends on your load shape. Day-shift factories often need no battery because they use most of their generation as it is produced. Multi-shift and continuous operations benefit from storage to shift midday surplus into evening and overnight periods, and batteries can add peak-shaving, time-of-use arbitrage and resilience for critical loads. Battery economics are site-specific and should always be modelled against your half-hourly meter data.
What accreditations should our solar installer hold?
Look for MCS, NICEIC, RECC, NAPIT and TrustMark, plus ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 for larger commercial projects. For high-energy or hazardous-area manufacturing such as chemical or some food processes, confirm the installer is experienced with the relevant electrical and area-classification requirements before work begins.
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