The UK’s new solar deployment for 2024 is forecast to be down year-on-year compared to 2023, as installations remain relatively stable across residential, commercial rooftop and ground-mount segments, writes Solar Media analyst Josh Cornes.
The UK solar market is forecast to grow by about 1.5-2GW in 2024, similar to levels seen in 2023, maintaining a steady upward growth trajectory since the government removed incentives for investments in the sector back in 2017.
Final figures for 2023, compiled by the Solar Media Market Research team, put solar additions in the UK during 2023 at 1.9GWpdc, up almost 50% year-on-year compared to 2022.
About 30% of the 1.9GW deployed in 2023 came from residential rooftop installations, representing a huge boost to the sector and something that had not been expected at the start of the year. Commercial rooftops contributed 20% of installations in 2023, in what has now become a somewhat stable sub-segment of the market.
Large-scale ground-mount installations saw the largest growth in 2023, accounting for almost half of the annual capacity deployed. This uptick was in part driven by Contracts for Difference (CfD) rounds AR4 and AR5, which accounted for 360MW.
The annual UK solar deployment is shown in the figure below, going back to the ‘start’ of the UK solar industry in 2010, covering the incentive years (2010 to 2017) and – from 2018 onwards – the current combination of post-subsidy installations and CfD rounds.
Figure 1: The UK solar market is forecast to deploy about 1.5-2GWpdc in 2024, possibly down marginally year-on-year when compared to the 1.9GW added in 2023. Installations are seeing relatively stable contributions from the residential, commercial rooftop and ground-mount segments.
Nearing 500MWpdc of new ground-mounted solar farms were completed during the first half of 2024, close to levels seen during the first half of 2023. Similar volumes may come online during the second half of 2024, but with no specific year-end deadlines for investors, there is the chance of further push-outs to next year.
Commercial rooftop installations will likely remain stable this year, with the outlook here still healthy.
Residential deployment is trending down so far in 2024, closer to levels seen back in 2022. This may simply be due to a surge in deployment during 2023 from retrofit installations from homeowners rather than any indication of long-term slowness in demand.
Beyond 2024, the focus is certainly on the ground-mount sector, with an update on the pipeline coming on Solar Power Portal in the next few weeks. Currently, this is about 3GWpdc under construction in the UK, with about two-thirds of this capacity coming from sites of 50MWpdc or above.
