Farms and rooftop panels contribute 14.4% to the grid – and figures reveal a surge in new installations
Solar energy supplied more power to Great Britain’s grid in July than in any previous month as households turned to rooftop panels to cut their energy bills.
Solar farms and rooftop panels provided 14.4% of the country’s electricity after some parts of the UK recorded almost twice the average sunshine hours for the time of year.
The long spells of cloudless weather helped solar to smash the previous monthly record of 12.4%, set in May. The July reading is 50% higher than a year ago, when only 9.6% of generation was from solar, according to data from the National Energy System Operator (Neso).
The surge comes after official figures for Great Britain recorded more new solar power installations in the first half of this year than in any six-month period since 2011. The data, which includes large, ground-mounted solar farms and rooftop panels, tracked 142,536 solar installations, putting 2026 on track to top last year’s record solar additions.
However, the lion’s share of the new solar installations recorded are on household rooftops, with these smaller solar systems making up slightly less than a third of the country’s total solar power capacity.
More households have fitted solar panels to their rooftops in recent years, hoping to cut their energy bills by generating their own low-cost electricity as fossil fuels have caused bills to rocket, according to energy companies.
Read more: The Guardian
