Portsmouth sits on one of the sunniest stretches of coastline in the UK, and it has some of the tightest roof space. Terraced streets across Fratton, North End and Southsea, 1930s semis through Copnor and Drayton, and a conservation area boundary that catches more properties than most people expect.
That combination is what a good solar design has to solve for. This page covers how CRG Direct installs solar panels in Portsmouth: what your roof can realistically generate, what planning rules apply on Portsea Island, what battery storage and EV charging add, and what it costs.
CRG Direct is MCS-certified and NICEIC-approved, and has been designing and installing solar, battery and hybrid systems across Hampshire and the South Coast since 2017. As local solar panel installers we survey every Portsmouth property in person before quoting.
Book a free Portsmouth survey or call 0333 253 3531.
CRG Direct Portsmouth office & local support
We're based on the seafront at Hayling Island, about 25 minutes from Portsmouth city centre. That matters more than it sounds: our engineers are local, our vans don't come down from the Midlands, and if something needs looking at after handover we can usually be there the same week.
CRG Direct 172 Sea Front, Hayling Island, PO11 9HP Phone: 0333 253 3531 Email: info@crgdirect.co.uk
Areas we cover from the Hayling Island base:
Portsmouth, Southsea, Fratton, North End, Copnor, Cosham, Drayton, Farlington, Hilsea, Portchester, Port Solent, Havant, Emsworth, Waterlooville, Fareham, Gosport, Hayling Island, Chichester and the surrounding villages.
Everything is handled by our own installation team — design, install and commissioning. We don't subcontract the work out.
Why installing solar panels in Portsmouth helps cut your carbon footprint
Portsmouth averages in the region of 1,900 hours of sunshine a year. Figures vary depending on the weather station and reporting period, but the south coast of the UK consistently sits at the top of the national table, and Portsmouth benefits from being a low-lying coastal city with little in the way of hills or tall buildings casting shade.
A well-sited south-facing array in Portsmouth will typically produce a little more per installed kilowatt than the same system in the Midlands or the north. It isn't a transformational difference, but across a 25-year system life it's real money.
What that means for a typical Portsmouth household:
- A 4 kWp system on a south-facing roof generates roughly 3,600–4,000 kWh a year in this part of the country
- That covers a substantial share of a typical household's electricity use, with the rest either exported or stored
- Every kWh you generate and use yourself is a kWh you don't buy at retail price, and one that doesn't come off a grid still partly fired by gas
On carbon, the arithmetic is straightforward. Displacing several thousand kWh of grid electricity a year takes a meaningful slice off a household's carbon emissions, and it does it for decades rather than for the length of a behaviour change. Panels carry performance warranties out to 25 years and frequently keep running well beyond that.
The bill side and the carbon side move together. Cutting your electricity bills and cutting your carbon footprint aren't two separate projects — with solar power they're the same one. Against rising energy costs, generating your own cleaner energy on site is the only lever most households control outright, and it's why a growing number of Portsmouth homeowners are treating solar as protection against future energy bills rather than as a green add-on.
CRG Direct renewable energy solutions in Portsmouth
We install four things, and they work best when designed together rather than bolted on one at a time.
Solar PV installation. Full design and install of solar energy systems for homes and businesses, including scaffolding, mounting, inverter, isolation, MCS certification and DNO notification. Domestic installs start from £6,300 including the MCS certificate, mounting kit and HIES guarantee. We work with pitched tile, slate, flat roof and ground-mount, and specify panels to suit the roof rather than to suit the warehouse.
Battery storage. New installs and retrofits to existing solar systems. AC-coupled, DC-coupled and hybrid inverter setups, sized against your actual half-hourly consumption rather than a rule of thumb.
Air source heat pumps. Modern air source heat pumps run at efficiencies of roughly 300–400% — for every unit of electricity in, three to four units of heat out — and keep working in outdoor temperatures well below freezing, down to around -15°C. They pair well with underfloor heating and with solar plus battery, since the electricity they run on can partly come from your own roof.
EV charging points. 7 kW home chargers, smart-scheduled to charge from your own generation where possible, plus workplace and multi-bay commercial installations.
How we install solar panels: process, planning permission and safe hands
1. Free site survey and roof assessment. An engineer visits, measures the roof, checks the structure and covering, assesses shading across the day and year, and looks at your consumer unit and existing wiring. On Portsmouth terraces this is also where we work out access and scaffolding, which is frequently the constraint rather than the roof itself.
2. Bespoke system design and yield estimate. We model expected annual generation for your specific orientation, pitch and shading profile — not a generic figure — and set that against your actual electricity use to show self-consumption, likely export, and what a battery would change. You get a fixed, itemised quote.
3. Planning permission and DNO applications. We handle the paperwork. That means the DNO application to your network operator (SSEN across most of Portsmouth) under G98 or G99 depending on system size, and any planning or heritage application where one is needed. You don't chase it; we do.
4. Installation, commissioning and handover. Most domestic installs are a one to two day job once scaffolding is up. We commission the system, register it with MCS, set up monitoring on your phone, and walk you through it before we leave.
5. Aftercare. Monitoring, warranty support and maintenance — covered further down this page.
Planning permission, heritage guidance and local regulations
Most Portsmouth homes don't need planning permission. Rooftop solar on a domestic property is usually permitted development, provided the panels don't project more than 200mm from the roof plane, don't sit above the highest part of the roof, and are removed when no longer needed. Ground-mounted arrays have their own size and siting limits.
Conservation areas are the exception, and Portsmouth has a lot of them. Old Portsmouth, several parts of Southsea, the Historic Dockyard and Spice Island all fall within designated conservation areas. Inside one, permitted development rights are restricted — panels on a wall or roof slope fronting a highway generally need planning permission, while a rear-facing slope out of public view is often still permitted development.
Listed buildings always need listed building consent for solar, regardless of where the panels go. Portsmouth's conservation team has approved arrays on listed properties where the design keeps panels off principal elevations, so it's rarely a flat no — but it is a formal application, and it needs to be made properly.
Flats and maisonettes need freeholder consent, and shared roofs on converted terraces need agreement between owners.
We check all of this at survey stage. If your property is in a conservation area or listed, we'll tell you before you've spent anything, and we'll advise on a pre-application enquiry to Portsmouth City Council where that's the sensible route.
Battery storage and reliable energy for Portsmouth properties
Solar generates at midday. Most households use electricity in the morning and evening. Without storage, a typical UK home exports around half of what it generates and buys it back later at three or four times the export rate.
Battery storage closes that gap. It stores your surplus energy for when you actually need it, which lifts self-consumption substantially and gives you a far more reliable energy supply through the darker months and through peak-price evening windows.
Sizing. For most Portsmouth households, storage in the 5–10 kWh range covers evening use without sitting idle. Larger properties, home workers, heat pump households and small businesses need more. The right number comes from your half-hourly consumption data, not from your system size — we work it out at survey.
Paired with solar PV. A battery on a hybrid inverter is the tidiest arrangement for a new install. Retrofits to an existing array are usually AC-coupled and don't require touching the panels.
Paired with EV charging. This is where it gets interesting. A battery lets you soak up cheap overnight import on a low-rate tariff, run the house from it during the day, and charge the car from surplus solar at the weekend. For households with an EV and a heat pump, storage stops being optional.
Batteries also give you a route to greater energy independence and a degree of genuine energy security — less exposure to price volatility, and continued supply through short outages if you specify backup.
EV charging and electric vehicle integration
Home charging. We install 7 kW smart chargers with load management, tethered or untethered, sited to suit your parking. On Portsmouth terraces without off-street parking this often isn't viable, and we'll say so rather than sell you one.
Solar-synced smart charging. A smart charger that talks to your inverter can prioritise surplus solar, topping up from the grid only when generation drops. Charging the car on your own generation rather than at 25p+ a unit is one of the fastest paybacks in the whole setup.
Workplace charging. Multi-bay installations for Portsmouth businesses, with load balancing across the site, access control and usage billing. These pair naturally with commercial rooftop solar — the cars charge during the working day, which is exactly when the roof is generating.
Commercial solar panels Portsmouth: business energy solutions
Commercial solar in Portsmouth works because of the shape of business demand. Warehouses, offices, retail units and light industrial sites use power between 9 and 5, and that's when a rooftop array produces. High self-consumption is what drives commercial returns, which is why commercial properties with steady daytime load see better numbers than almost any domestic install.
Rooftop and ground-mount. Large flat roofs on industrial and distribution units around Farlington, Hilsea and the Airport Service Road corridor suit ballasted flat-roof systems that don't penetrate the membrane. Sites with spare land can take ground-mount.
Feasibility and structural surveys. Before anything else, we check whether the roof can carry the load, what the covering has left in it, and what the half-hourly consumption profile actually looks like. A structural survey is non-negotiable on flat commercial roofs.
Financials. Commercial payback depends almost entirely on how much of the generation you consume on site. Businesses with high daytime demand see the shortest paybacks.
Businesses can also earn on surplus energy exported to the grid, and capital allowances may apply. Speak to your accountant on the tax treatment — we'll give you the generation and consumption modelling they'll need.
Turnkey project management. Feasibility, design, structural sign-off, DNO application, install, commissioning and O&M, managed as one project with one point of contact.
Grants, funding and energy efficiency support
0% VAT. Residential solar panel, battery and heat pump installations currently carry 0% VAT in the UK. This runs until 31 March 2027, after which the rate is scheduled to rise to 5%. It covers the whole install when supplied under a single contract — panels, inverter, battery, scaffolding, cabling and labour.
Smart Export Guarantee. All licensed suppliers of a certain size must offer an export tariff, so you get paid for surplus energy you send to the grid. Rates vary enormously between suppliers, and choosing well is worth a few hundred pounds a year to a typical household. We cover current rates in our SEG tariff comparison.
Local and national grants. Portsmouth City Council has led a consortium delivering the Warm Homes: Local Grant across Hampshire and neighbouring authorities, funding solar with battery storage, insulation and heat pumps for eligible households. Broad eligibility is an EPC rating of D–G plus a household income under £36,000 or receipt of qualifying benefits, with funding running to March 2028. ECO4 and GBIS also operate in the city. Eligibility criteria change, so check current terms directly with Portsmouth City Council or with us before assuming.
We help with applications. If you might qualify, we'll tell you at survey and support the paperwork rather than leaving you to work it out.
Maintenance, warranties and our safe hands promise
Solar PV systems are low-maintenance, not no-maintenance. A well-installed system will run for 25 years and more, but the inverter is an electronic component with a finite life and the monitoring needs to be watched.
Monitoring. Every system we install comes with app-based monitoring so you can see generation, consumption and export. We can flag underperformance before you'd notice it on a bill.
Maintenance plans. Periodic inspection, panel condition and cleaning checks, electrical testing, inverter health and battery state of health.
Warranties. Panel performance warranties typically run to 25 years, inverters 10–12 years with extension options, and batteries carry their own manufacturer warranty on cycles and capacity retention. On top of the product warranties, our own workmanship warranty covers the installation itself.
Safe hands. We're MCS-certified, NICEIC-approved and HIES-registered. MCS certification is what makes your system eligible for the Smart Export Guarantee, and it's the scheme that holds installers to a quality standard — check it on any quote you receive, from us or anyone else. Our aftercare is handled by the same local team that installed the system.
FAQs: costs, roof suitability and cloudy days
How much do solar panels cost in Portsmouth? Domestic installations start from £6,300 including MCS certification, mounting kit and HIES guarantee. What moves the number: system size, whether you add battery storage, roof type and access, scaffolding requirements, and whether the consumer unit needs upgrading. You get a fixed, itemised quote after survey — not a range.
Is my roof suitable? South-facing is best, but east and west-facing roofs are perfectly viable and produce a flatter generation curve that often suits household use better. What matters more is usable roof space, structural condition, and shading. Chimneys, dormers, neighbouring buildings and trees all cost output — we assess shading properly at survey rather than eyeballing it.
Do solar panels work on cloudy days? Yes. Panels run on daylight, not direct sunshine, so they generate through overcast conditions at reduced output. UK annual yield figures already account for our weather — the 3,600–4,000 kWh a 4 kWp Portsmouth system produces is a real-world figure from a real UK climate, not a best-case one.
Do I need planning permission? Usually not. Most domestic rooftop solar in Portsmouth is permitted development. Conservation areas and listed buildings are the exception — see the planning section above.
What if I'm in a terraced house with a small roof? Smaller arrays still work, and higher-efficiency panels get more out of limited roof space. We'll tell you honestly if the numbers don't stack up.
How long does installation take? Most domestic installs are one to two days on site once scaffolding is up.
Get a quote and how to install solar panels with CRG Direct
Three steps.
1. Book a free survey. Online at crgdirect.co.uk/quote or by phone on 0333 253 3531. We can do an initial consultation over the phone or online if that's easier.
2. Send us photos. A few pictures of your roof from the garden and street, plus a photo of your consumer unit and a recent electricity bill, let us give you a useful preliminary assessment before anyone visits.
3. Get a fixed, itemised quote. After the site survey you get a written quote broken down by component, with a modelled yield figure for your specific roof and an honest payback estimate. No pressure, no expiring discounts.
MCS Certified | HIES Certified | NICEIC Approved | Installing across Hampshire and the South Coast since 2017
Book your free Portsmouth survey or call 0333 253 3531.