Britain’s summer solar boom has broken records… but not everyone is basking in the sunshine

According to Solar Energy UK, Britain has just had its best month yet for solar power.

With the country bathing in its sunniest month since records began, solar generated 14.4% of our electricity, producing 3.2 terawatt hours and comfortably beating the previous 12.4% record set in May.

Another record has seen more solar installations in the first half of this year than in any six-month period since the subsidy era ended, with more than 142,000 recorded across the UK.

At the same time, battery storage, which allows us to store solar power and use it after the sun goes down, has grown into a serious force in its own right when it comes to easing pressure on the grid. Home-grown clean power is having its moment in the sun, and, as Solar Energy UK suggests, it is a success story the whole nation should rightly be proud of.

Ministers are clear that the more clean power Britain generates at home, the less exposed our households will be to volatile global gas markets, with cheaper homegrown energy the best defence in shoring up our energy security.

A boom built on rooftops

The overwhelming majority of these new solar installations are on house roofs up and down the country: single dwellings with relatively straightforward installs thanks to easy access to roofs and meters. That’s good news for a lot of the UK, but not everyone is basking in the solar boom.

Traditionally, solar installs for flats have been cost-prohibitive, requiring access to a shared roof, individual inverters, and separate grid connections. That means there are millions of families living in flats that are being overlooked.

The scale of the missed opportunity

That technical challenge has created a ‘solar disparity’, with solar fitted on only 3.6% of flats, against roughly 7% of houses. That means more than 5 million flats are missing out on the benefits of solar altogether.

It’s certainly impacting our resilience and energy security, but it’s also hitting our wallets. Based on Allume’s data, if those flats were to benefit, residents could see savings of up to £2.4 billion a year between them.

The missed opportunity for flats:

Illustrative maximum potential, calculated as flats without solar multiplied by up to £600 of savings per flat per year. Source: Savings figure based on Allume’s solar and battery installation at Odet Court, Cardiff. ONS Census 2021 (table TS044), via Nomis. Figures are rounded and shown as ‘up to’ estimates, not measured or guaranteed savings.

Those regional figures cover England and Wales, but the gap between flats and houses runs right across the UK.

In Scotland, where tenements and purpose-built blocks make up almost a third of all homes, an estimated 780,000 flats are missing out, with tens of thousands more in Northern Ireland.

Taken together, an estimated 4.8 million flats have missed out on the summer solar boom.

Illustrative maximum potential, calculated as purpose-built flats without solar multiplied by up to £600 of savings per flat per year. Sources: ONS Census 2021 (table TS044, via Nomis) for England and Wales; National Records of Scotland, Scotland’s Census 2022 for Scotland; NISRA, Census 2021 for Northern Ireland. Figures are rounded and shown as ‘up to’ estimates, not measured or guaranteed savings.

Getting flats to bask in the solar boom

This ‘solar disparity’ is exactly the problem Allume has set out to solve. Our SolShare technology takes a single rooftop array and shares it directly across multiple homes, delivering solar electricity to each flat's own meter.

The opportunity is most immediate when it comes to social housing, where a single landlord can act for a whole block at once.

For the thousands of residents already using SolShare in the UK, the approach can slice up to 40% off their energy bills and deliver savings of up to £700 per year.

A record we can all be proud of

July's record is a real national achievement, and with warmer, sunnier summers the new normal for our climate, the momentum behind solar is only continuing to grow.

However, if we have a goal of delivering energy security and lowering bills for the whole country, the solar transition has to reach the homes that are being locked out.

Bringing flats into the boom is how a good news story becomes a more equitable one.

We look forward to continuing to work with the government, landlords and the wider sector to tackle the gap, making clean, affordable electricity standard for every home in Britain.