Renewable energy is generated from natural resources such as the sun, wind and water, using technology to drive turbines and generate power, without releasing any harmful carbon emissions into the environment.
There are various technologies available for generating your own electricity in the home or workplace but the most common are solar panels and wind turbines. But if you have a stream or river flowing through your land you could install a micro-hydro power system to generate enough electricity to power your property.
As the power of natural resources is free, once you've paid for the installation of your system, the electricity it generates is free, although you still need to pay for any additional electricity you use from the grid and maintenance costs. As well as reducing your energy bills, renewable energy will help you reduce your carbon footprint and help the UK reach its 2050 net zero target.
Yes. The UK government has developed a range of grants and incentives to help the UK meet its climate change targets. These measures will help you and your business take action by adopting low carbon technologies such as renewable energy.
Community energy refers to local and community-led projects or initiatives to reduce, manage, generate or purchase energy. This covers anything from providing energy saving advice to installing solar panels, heat pumps and electric vehicle charging points.
Through a community energy project you can take control of how energy is generated and consumed in your area. You’ll also be doing your bit for climate change as community energy provides clean, efficient and affordable ways to power schools, hospitals, local government buildings, high streets and so on.
In the UK a south facing, south-east or south-west facing roof with a pitch of between 30° – 45° is ideal for solar panels, but east and west systems can also work, with research suggesting only a 14% drop in generation over the year compared to south facing systems.
You should also consider the space on your roof. The average solar panel system size is around 3.5kWp and this will typically take up around 20 square metres of your roof area.
Try the Energy Saving Trust’s solar energy calculator to help you decide whether a solar panel system is for you.
The cost of installing renewable energy at your home or business will vary depending on the size of your property.
According to the Energy Saving Trust, the average domestic solar PV system costs around £5,500 to install and can generate between 3,400 – 4,200 kilowatt hours of electricity a year. Savings could be greater if you can align your energy use with the times that power is generated. For more information, please contact our Pre-Application Customer Engagement (PACE) team
The most popular systems for businesses have a 5 – 9kW output for small offices costing around £8,000 but a larger commercial operation such as a factory may need a system with an output of 25kW – 200kW and cost significantly more.
In most cases, solar panels don’t need planning permission as they fall within permitted development but there are a few exceptions.
For solar panels installed on the roof or walls of your property, you won’t need planning permission providing the panels aren’t installed above the ridgeline and don’t project more than 200mm above the roof or wall space. But you’re likely to need planning permission if your property is a listed building, in a conservation area or a world heritage site.
Ground-mounted installations will need planning permission from your local authority, unless the array is less than nine square metres.
If your system is bigger than 50 kW you’ll need prior approval from your local planning authority to assess the design of the development and its potential impact on your neighbours.
In all cases, we recommend visiting the planning portal for more details and checking with your local planning authority before proceeding with any type of installation.
The amount of energy you can generate from your solar panels will vary depending on the location of your property, the size of your system and how and when you use energy.
Based on Energy Saving Trust estimates, a typical household with a 4.2 kilowatt-peak system can save between £210 and £514/year off bills using the October 2022 price cap rates.
You can also get paid via the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) for any excess energy you generate. The amount you earn will depend on the tariff offered by your supplier but on average this is around £110 per year.
Based on the above figures, it could take someone living in the middle of the country, in a typical home, between 11 – 15 years to recoup the costs of installing solar panels.
According to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), businesses who installed their own renewable electricity or heating on average made their costs back in 1 – 10 years. Solar power is the most common type of installation, which on average took businesses between 4 – 10 years to recover costs.
For a better idea of how long it will take to break even, try out the Energy Saving Trust's solar panel calculator or take a look at this case study.
For wind turbines the cost of a system will depend on the size and the mounting method. A 6kW pole-mounted system costs around £31,000. The size of turbine you need will depend on the size of your property and the amount of power you use.
Building-mounted turbines cost less to install than pole-mounted ones, but tend to be less efficient. A well-sited 6kW turbine can generate around 9,000kWh a year. This can save around 3.4 tonnes of CO2 a year and provide enough power to supply two average homes.
As wind turbines have moving parts, turbines need regular servicing; these costs should be factored into your investment decision.
A single standalone wind turbine or a turbine mounted on a building may be considered permitted development providing it meets a number of criteria.
Both types of turbine must meet the standard of the Microgeneration Certification Scheme. There should be no existing turbine or air source heat pump at the property and the bottom of the turbine’s blades must be at least five metres from the ground.
A building-mounted turbine must be on a detached building (not a block of flats) or on another detached building within the boundaries of your property. The top of the turbine’s blades must be no more than three metres above the top of the property, or 15 metres above the ground. The turbine must be at least five metres from the edge of the property.
For a standalone turbine the top of the turbine must be no more than 11.1 metres above the ground, and it must be at least 1.1 times its own height away from the edge of your property.
In all cases, we recommend visiting the planning portal for more details and checking with your local planning authority before proceeding with any type of installation.
Estimates for the time taken to recover your investment vary wildly from 6 – 20 years. Determining this is complicated because of the uncertainty surrounding the cost of electricity and other factors.
The amount of energy you can generate from your wind turbine will vary depending on the location of your property, the size of your system and how and when you use energy.
Your return will also depend on the proportion of electricity you export to the grid via the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) compared to the energy you use yourself.
A well-sited 6kW turbine can generate around 9,000kWh a year, which could save you around £610 a year on your electricity bills and could typically earn about £365 per year in SEG payments.
Yes. You should always use a reputable installer who is certified under the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) and uses MCS-certified products. This will help ensure the quality of your installation and the level of customer care you receive. To be eligible for payments from the Smart Export Guarantee, your system must be installed by an MCS-certified installer.
For all renewable energy systems, we recommend that you talk to more than one installer and obtain at least three quotes.
Electricity North West owns and maintains the electricity network in the North West. Each property is entitled to connect up to 3.68kW of generation at single phase, or 11.04kW of generation on a three-phase supply, as part of permitted rights (note: most houses and small business will have a single-phase supply). Where this is the case, your installer should carry out an assessment of the property’s current electrical supply and submit notification paperwork to us after they have completed the installation if there are no issues identified.
For larger installations or where your installer identifies potential issues with the current electrical supply to the property, you or your installer need to let us know or make an application to connect your system to the electricity grid.
It’s important that you talk to us first so that we can assess whether we need to carry out work to the local electricity network before you connect your new installation.
If you're installing a generator and/or storage at a single premises, it’s unlikely that we'll need to carry out work. For larger projects, we may need to build new infrastructure which will affect the time and cost of your project.
If your existing supply can’t support the installation, your installer will apply to us for an upgrade. For more information visit our connections page.
Yes. There will be times when the electricity you generate from your renewable energy system is more than you can use or store, so the surplus can be exported to the grid to be used by somebody else.
The Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) was introduced on 1 January 2020, to pay small-scale renewable energy generators for the electricity they export to the grid.
Under the scheme, all licenced energy suppliers with over 150,000 customers must offer an export tariff to small-scale electricity generators (homes and small businesses) for each unit of electricity they sell to the grid, as measured by your meter.
Unlike the previous Feed-in Tariff scheme, electricity suppliers determine the tariff they are willing to pay to small-scale generators, so you should shop around before choosing your supplier.
Some electricity supply companies now offer power purchase agreements (PPAs) which are long-term contracts for selling the renewable energy you generate to your supply company, who will sell it on to homes and businesses.
Yes. Storage systems such as thermal stores and batteries allow you to store excess power from your renewable system, buy cheap electricity at night and store it for use during the day. In some cases these storage devices can provide back-up supplies for use in a power cut, but this is not always possible and you should check with your installer if you would like this functionality.
The introduction of smart meters also enables a greater range of two-way metering of electricity (import and export) and time-of-use tariffs, allowing you to pay different rates for electricity purchased at different times of the day. Some of these tariffs are available for non-smart meter customers too.
Vehicle to grid technology (V2G) enables energy stored in electric vehicles (EVs) to be fed back into the electricity network. This means that you can charge your vehicles using excess energy produced from your generator and store the energy in your EV battery for later use.
You can benefit from time-of-use tariffs by charging your vehicles when energy prices are cheaper and discharging this energy to the grid when prices are high. This also helps reduce peak demand on the electricity network.