Solar Power in Brighton & Hove — CRG Direct Renewable Solutions

Overview of renewable energy solutions for Brighton and Hove

CRG Direct designs and installs solar PV systems, battery storage, air source heat pumps and EV chargers across the South Coast. We've been doing it since 2017, we're MCS certified and NICEIC approved, and our own installation team does the work rather than a subcontracted crew.

Brighton sits in one of the sunniest parts of the country. East Sussex records around 1,030 kWh per kWp per year against a UK average nearer 920, which puts it among the highest county-level yields in Britain. The economics start from a better place here than they do almost anywhere else.

The complication is everything the sunshine sits on top of. Brighton and Hove has 34 conservation areas, a Regency and Victorian building stock dense with listed frontages, Article 4 directions that in some conservation areas require planning permission for solar on an ordinary house, and, the part most installers miss, two separate planning authorities.

Heritage sensitivity doesn't rule solar out. The city council publishes its own guidance on improving energy efficiency in conservation areas and listed buildings, PAN 09, and it is worth reading before you commission anything. What the constraints mean in practice is that the design has to be led by them rather than dropped onto a roof and argued about afterwards.

We work with homeowners, landlords and businesses across the city, from bow-fronted terraces in Kemptown and Brunswick to flat-roofed blocks in Hollingbury and commercial units on the Lewes Road corridor.

Get a free quote or call 0333 253 3531.

Solar panel installation and local solar panel installers

Free survey and bespoke system design. An engineer visits, measures the roof, checks the structure and covering, and assesses shading across the year rather than on the day. We model expected generation for your specific orientation, pitch and shading, set it against your actual electricity use, and quote a fixed itemised price. No charge, no obligation.

Mounting options:

• Pitched tile and slate. In-roof or on-roof mounting. On-roof is standard. In-roof sits the panels flush within the roof plane and is frequently the design that gets consent in a conservation area, because the array reads as part of the roof rather than as something added to it. On Brighton's terraces that distinction does a lot of work.
• Natural slate. Slate hooks rather than standard hooks, and a slater's approach to lifting and re-dressing. Standard on the city's Victorian stock.
• Flat roofs. Ballasted tilt frames that don't penetrate the membrane, or east-west racking to fit more capacity onto the same area. Common on the post-war blocks and on rear extensions across the city.
• Ground-mount. Rare inside the city, more relevant on the downland fringes, and subject to its own planning rules.

Coastal exposure is a real design input, not a footnote. Salt-laden air and sustained wind loading off the Channel are harder on a mounting system than anything inland. That means marine-grade fixings, correct wind-load calculation for an exposed site rather than a default, and attention to edge and corner zones on flat roofs where uplift is highest. A ballast scheme sized for a sheltered Hampshire industrial estate is not the same scheme you want on a seafront roof.

Certifications. MCS certified, NICEIC approved, HIES registered. MCS certification is what makes your system eligible for the Smart Export Guarantee and it's required for grant-funded work. Check any installer on the public MCS register before signing, us included.

Warranties. Panels typically carry a 25-year performance warranty and a properly installed array will run well past that. Inverters are usually 10 to 12 years with paid extensions available. Batteries carry a manufacturer warranty on cycles and capacity retention, commonly around ten years. Our own workmanship guarantee covers the installation itself, backed by HIES.

What to expect from a Brighton installation

1. On-site survey. Roof measurement, structural check, covering condition, shading assessment, consumer unit and earthing inspection, and confirmation of which planning authority covers the property and whether an Article 4 direction applies. On period stock we also check the roof covering can take fixings before anything else gets discussed.

2. System modelling. We combine the survey measurements with satellite and aerial imagery to build an accurate array layout and a shading profile across the year. The imagery gets us the geometry. The site visit gets us everything imagery can't see: rafter condition, tile type, access down a terraced street, and the neighbouring block that shades the rear slope from three o'clock in winter.

3. Installation day. Scaffolding goes up first, usually the day before, and on a terraced street that means sorting access and any pavement licence in advance rather than on the morning. The crew fits the mounting system, lays the panels, runs DC cabling to the inverter position, installs the inverter, isolators and any battery, and connects into the consumer unit. Most domestic installs are one to two days on site.

4. Commissioning and handover. Full electrical testing to BS 7671, generation verification, inverter configured to the correct DNO grid settings, MCS registration, and monitoring set up on your phone. You get the test certificates, the MCS certificate, DNO paperwork and a walkthrough before we leave.

Battery storage, EV chargers and system integration

Why storage matters. Solar generates around midday. Households use electricity morning and evening. Without a battery you export roughly half your generation and buy it back later at three to four times the export rate. Storage lifts self-consumption from around 35-50% to 70-85%, and that gap is where the money is.

Sizing. Size against your actual half-hourly consumption, not against your array. Rough guide:

Space is the constraint here more often than budget. A lot of Brighton housing has no garage, no loft worth the name once it's been converted, and a plant location that has to be agreed rather than assumed. We'd rather find the position at survey than discover it on install day.

EV chargers. 7 kW smart chargers that talk to your inverter and prioritise surplus solar, topping up from the grid only when generation drops. Off-street parking is the limiting factor across much of the city; where there's a driveway or an allocated bay this is one of the quickest returns in the whole setup, and where there isn't we'll say so rather than sell you one.

Hybrid setups with heat pumps. A heat pump raises electricity demand substantially, which strengthens the case for both a larger array and storage. Designed together this works well. Bolted on one at a time over five years, it usually means paying twice for the same electrical work.

Landlords, HMOs and rented property

Brighton and Hove has an unusually large private rented sector for a city its size, and a lot of it is period stock with poor fabric. Two things follow.

Minimum energy efficiency standards. A rented property's EPC rating is a compliance question, not just a running-cost question, and the cheapest route to a better rating is usually fabric before plant.

Split incentive. The landlord pays for the work and the tenant sees the bill saving, which is why so much of this stalls. Grant funding narrows the gap, and the Warm Homes: Local Grant covers privately rented property as well as owner-occupied.

We work with portfolio landlords and letting agents on multi-property assessments rather than one address at a time, which is both cheaper per property and easier to schedule. More on that on our landlords page.

Heat pumps and the wider retrofit

Air source heat pumps run at efficiencies of roughly 300-400%, meaning three to four units of heat out for every unit of electricity in, and they keep working at outdoor temperatures well below freezing. Brighton's mild coastal winters are, if anything, better for heat pump performance than most of the country, because seasonal efficiency depends on how cold it actually gets.

The Boiler Upgrade Scheme currently pays £7,500 towards an air source heat pump, rising to £9,000 for homes currently heated by oil or LPG between 21 July 2026 and 31 March 2027. Your installer claims it and takes it off the price.

The honest constraint in a conservation area is where the outdoor unit goes. It needs airflow, it needs to not be a noise problem for a neighbour three metres away across a terraced garden, and on a listed building or a protected frontage its position is a consent question. This is solvable on most properties and genuinely difficult on some, and it's the first thing we look at.

Fabric first. A heat pump into a poorly insulated house is an expensive mistake. Loft and cavity insulation, draught-proofing and adequate ventilation come first, ventilation particularly, because tightening a period property without addressing airflow causes condensation and damp. That risk is higher than average on Brighton's solid-wall stock and we'll tell you at survey if the fabric needs work before the plant does.

Costs, savings, payback and grants

Generation. A well-sited Brighton roof produces in the region of 1,020-1,080 kWh per kWp per year, so a 4 kWp array generates roughly 4,080-4,320 kWh annually depending on orientation, pitch and shading. That's a genuine advantage over most of the country and it shortens payback accordingly.

Worked example, 4 kWp system:

System costs. Domestic installations start from £6,300 including the MCS certificate, mounting kit and HIES guarantee. What moves the number: array size, battery capacity, roof type and covering, scaffolding and access, and whether the consumer unit needs upgrading. Access is more often the swing factor here than elsewhere, because a mid-terrace with no side return is a different scaffolding job from a detached house with a drive. All residential installs currently carry 0% VAT, running until 31 March 2027 before rising to 5%.

Grants.

• Warm Homes: Local Grant. Funds insulation, heat pumps, solar PV and battery storage for eligible households, and Brighton and Hove is a participating authority. Broad eligibility is EPC D-G plus a household income or vulnerability condition. Owner-occupied or privately rented, running to March 2028, and the installer must be MCS certified.
• ECO4 and GBIS. Insulation and heating measures for eligible households. ECO4 runs to the end of 2026.
• Boiler Upgrade Scheme. £7,500 towards a heat pump, £9,000 for oil or LPG-heated homes, until 31 March 2027.

How we help. We check eligibility at survey rather than after you've committed, and we support the application paperwork rather than handing you a leaflet.

Planning permission, listed buildings and grid connections

Which authority covers you? This is the first thing to establish and it catches people out. Around 44% of Brighton and Hove sits inside the South Downs National Park, and the National Park Authority is the planning authority for all of it. The boundary runs from north of Mile Oak across to parts of Saltdean, taking in Stanmer Park. Brighton and Hove City Council covers the rest. Two authorities, two sets of local policy, and noticeably different weight on landscape and visual impact. We confirm which one applies at survey.

When you don't need planning permission. In most cases, roof-mounted solar on a house is permitted development, including within a conservation area, provided the panels project no more than 200mm beyond the roof plane, don't sit above the highest part of the roof, and aren't on a wall fronting a highway.

When you do.

• Article 4 directions. In some of Brighton and Hove's conservation areas an Article 4 direction means planning permission is always required for solar panels on a dwelling house, regardless of the permitted development limits. Which areas, and which properties within them, is checkable in advance and we check it before quoting.
• Wall-mounted panels on a wall fronting and visible from a highway need permission, which on the seafront and the squares is a live question rather than a theoretical one.
• Listed buildings always need Listed Building Consent, wherever the panels go.
• Flats and maisonettes don't get the same permitted development rights as houses, which matters in a city with this much converted stock.

Listed Building Consent, briefly. It's a separate application from planning permission and it needs a heritage statement that engages properly with what makes the building significant. Consent is achievable. The approach that works is keeping panels off principal elevations, using rear or concealed slopes or a secondary building, and specifying all-black frames and rails rather than silver. Determination typically takes eight weeks or more, and pre-application advice is usually worth the fee on a sensitive property. The council's PAN 09 guidance on energy efficiency in historic houses is the document to read first.

Grid connections, G98 and G99. Every system has to be notified to the DNO. Across Brighton and Hove and the rest of Sussex that's UK Power Networks, not SSEN as it is on our Hampshire patch. Different operator, different portal, different queue.

• G98 is a connect-and-notify route for small systems, up to 16A per phase, roughly 3.68 kW on a single-phase supply. Notification goes in after commissioning.
• G99 applies to anything larger, and to most solar-plus-battery combinations, because the battery's inverter output counts. This one is apply and wait. Approval must be in place before the system energises and it commonly takes four to eight weeks on a straightforward domestic job, longer where the local network is constrained.

We handle the paperwork. Planning applications, Listed Building Consent submissions, heritage statements, G98 notifications and G99 applications. You don't chase any of it.

Process: from free quote to installation

1. Free, no-obligation quote. Start online at crgdirect.co.uk/quote or by phone.

2. Initial phone consultation. We discuss your property, your current energy use, what you're trying to achieve, and whether there are obvious constraints worth flagging before anyone travels. If solar doesn't make sense for your property we'd rather say so on the phone than after a survey.

3. On-site survey and design approval. Engineer visit, then a fixed itemised proposal with a modelled yield figure for your roof, self-consumption modelling with and without storage, and a payback estimate. You approve the design before anything is ordered.

4. Installation and commissioning. Roughly four to six weeks from approval to a commissioned system on a straightforward domestic project. Most of that is DNO approval and scaffolding scheduling rather than install. Add eight weeks or more where planning or Listed Building Consent is needed.

5. Aftercare. App-based monitoring from day one, warranty support, and optional maintenance covering electrical testing, mounting integrity, inverter health and battery state of health. Coastal sites benefit from a slightly shorter inspection interval, because salt exposure works on fixings faster than it does inland.

Commercial solar and B2B solutions

Proposals built around your energy profile. Commercial returns are driven almost entirely by self-consumption, meaning how much of the generation you use on site rather than export. A unit running machinery from 8 to 5 gets a very different answer from a warehouse that's mostly lit and heated. We start from your half-hourly consumption data, not from your roof area.

Site energy surveys and ROI modelling. Structural survey on the roof first, which is non-negotiable on flat commercial roofs because load capacity and covering condition decide what's possible. Then consumption analysis, array design, and a model showing generation against demand hour by hour, with payback and return over the system life.

Brighton commercial context. Hospitality and retail across the city and the seafront, where summer demand for cooling lines up almost exactly with peak generation and self-consumption is unusually high. Trade and light industrial units along the Lewes Road and towards Hollingbury. Offices and the city's sizeable digital sector, where the load is flat and daytime. Student accommodation and managed blocks, where the operator pays the communal electricity and the case makes itself.

Funding. Commercial solar is normally purchased outright or through the business's own lending arrangements, and capital allowances may apply. Speak to your accountant about the tax treatment; we provide the generation and consumption modelling they'll need.

FAQ: solar panel installation in Brighton and Hove

How much does a solar installation cost in Brighton? Domestic systems start from £6,300 including MCS certification, mounting kit and HIES guarantee. Adding battery storage increases it, and roof type, access and scaffolding all move the figure, access particularly on a terraced street. You get a fixed itemised quote after survey rather than a range.

Do I need planning permission in a Brighton conservation area? Sometimes yes, which is different from most of the country. Several of the city's 34 conservation areas carry Article 4 directions that require planning permission for solar panels on a dwelling house even where permitted development would normally cover it. We check your specific address before quoting rather than assuming.

My building is listed. Is solar off the table? No, but it's a Listed Building Consent application and the design has to start from the heritage constraint. Rear slopes, concealed elevations, all-black hardware and a properly argued heritage statement are what get consent. Expect eight weeks or more for a determination.

Is my roof eligible? South-facing is best, but east and west roofs are perfectly viable and produce a flatter curve that often matches household use better. What matters more is usable area, structural condition and shading. In a terrace, the neighbouring roofline is usually the thing that decides it, and we measure that at survey rather than estimating it from an aerial photo.

Does the sea air damage panels? Panels themselves are sealed and rated for it. The parts that need attention are the mounting system and fixings, which is why we specify marine-grade hardware on exposed sites and recommend a slightly shorter inspection interval.

Can I sell electricity back to the grid? Yes. All larger licensed suppliers must offer a Smart Export Guarantee tariff, so surplus generation earns money rather than being given away. Rates vary enormously between suppliers and switching to a better one is often worth a few hundred pounds a year. We keep a current comparison in our SEG tariff guide. You need an MCS-certified installation and a smart meter to qualify.

How long do panels last? Over 25 years. Performance warranties typically run to 25 years and panels commonly keep producing beyond that at slightly reduced output.

Why choose CRG Direct in Brighton and Hove

Heritage and coastal experience in the same job. Most Brighton properties present both at once, a protected frontage and an exposed site, and they pull the design in different directions. Getting a consentable array that's also specified for wind and salt is the actual problem here.

Residential and commercial. We work across both, which matters more than it sounds. The same team that sizes a battery for a two-bed terrace also models half-hourly consumption for a hotel, and the domestic work stays sharp because of it.

Grant and retrofit experience. We check eligibility for the Warm Homes: Local Grant, ECO4, GBIS and the Boiler Upgrade Scheme at survey stage and support the application. Local schemes change from year to year and we track what's currently live rather than working from last year's leaflet.

Guarantees. MCS certified, NICEIC approved, HIES registered. Product warranties on panels, inverters and batteries, plus our own workmanship guarantee on the installation, backed by HIES deposit and guarantee protection.

Honest advice. If your roof doesn't suit solar, if the fabric needs attention before a heat pump, or if a battery won't pay for itself on your consumption pattern, we say so. Compare quotes line by line on panel and inverter specification rather than on headline price, and we're happy to be judged on that basis.

Contact, coverage area and free quote

CRG Direct 172 Sea Front, Hayling Island, PO11 9HP Phone: 0333 253 3531 Email: info@crgdirect.co.uk Free quote: crgdirect.co.uk/quote

Book a no-obligation site survey. No charge, no pressure, and an engineer rather than a salesperson. Bring twelve months of electricity usage in kWh if you have it, or better, half-hourly data from your smart meter account. That's what lets us size storage properly and give you a realistic saving figure instead of a generic one.

Areas covered: Brighton and Hove and the surrounding area, including Kemptown, Brunswick, Preston Park, Hollingbury, Patcham, Withdean, Portslade, Hangleton, Rottingdean, Saltdean, Woodingdean and Moulsecoomb, plus Shoreham-by-Sea, Lewes, Newhaven, Burgess Hill and Haywards Heath, and the wider Sussex and South Coast region.

MCS Certified | HIES Certified | NICEIC Approved | Installing across the South since 2017

Get your free quote or call 0333 253 3531 to discuss your project.