Solar panels can cut your electricity bills, your carbon footprint, and your reliance on the grid – but before you commit, you’ll want to know you’re making the best choice for your home.

This naturally includes checking whether solar panels have a positive impact on your property’s price.

In this article, we’ll run through the latest in-depth research on the subject, and explain how much you can therefore expect solar panels to add to your home’s value.

If you’re wondering how much you could save with a solar & battery system, enter a few details below and we’ll provide an estimate.

The impact of solar panels on UK property value

Can solar panels directly boost the value of your home?

A couple of studies from the past few years have found that solar panels have a direct impact on property value in the UK.

Given the many benefits of solar panels, including reduced electricity bills, export income, and a smaller carbon footprint, this makes a lot of sense.

And considering the prediction that energy bills will stay high until the late 2030s, the appeal of solar panels to homeowners is only likely to increase.

Here are the two studies.

Swansea University, 2024

According to this analysis, solar panels increase property values in the UK by between 6.1% and 7.1%, on average – a significantly larger uplift than the other studies we'll discuss.

Researchers used data from Zoopla to analyse around five million property listings from 2012 to 2018, looking for listings that mentioned 'solar panels' in their description.

These listings were then matched with the UK Land Registry's Price Paid Data (PPD) to obtain the official transaction prices.

If you took the average UK house price in March 2026, which was £268,132, and gave it a 6.6% boost, you'd have a property worth £285,829.

Solar Energy UK, 2021

Produced by the biggest solar trade association and Cambridge University, this study took the same approach of analysing five million property listings.

Its findings are a little more modest than those of Swansea University – but it's also three years older.

They found that solar panels increase home value by between 0.9% and 2%, on average.

With the average UK house price standing at £268,132 as of March 2026, this suggests that switching to solar could increase the average home's value by anywhere from £2,413 to £5,363.

If you’re wondering how much you could save with a solar & battery system, enter a few details below and we’ll provide an estimate.

Do solar panels increase your home’s EPC rating?

Solar panels usually increase a home's EPC rating.

An EPC report is necessary if you’re selling, building, or renting out a property – and it’s a great way for owners to find out how to cut their energy bills.

Here’s the scoring system:

Does EPC rating affect property value?

Your EPC rating does affect your property’s value, according to multiple studies that we’ll explain in more detail below.

These studies all find that increasing your home’s value by raising its EPC rating is a good idea – and proven to work – though they disagree about how much you can gain.

This is understandable, since the sheer number of variables – including the property’s location, size, and condition, as well as the state of the housing market – make it near-impossible to get the same result each time.

The best studies will give you a good idea of what to expect though – so let’s run through them.

The Sustainable Homes and Buildings Coalition, 2021

Rightmove, 2023

What affects how much value solar panels add?

It's not simply a case of: solar panel system = X% home value increase.

There's so much variety when it comes to solar panel systems, and this naturally shapes how they impact your property's value.

Here are six key factors that affect a solar panel system’s potential impact on home value.

Some of these will affect how much impact the system has on a home’s EPC rating, some will change how valuable the system seems to prospective buyers, and some will do both.

1. The size of the system

All things being equal, larger systems generate more electricity than smaller systems – and more electricity from your panels means importing less from the grid.

It also enables you to earn more export income by selling your excess electricity to the grid.

As well generating savings and revenue for the homeowner, a larger system will also usually add more points to an EPC score than a smaller installation.

To learn more about what size of system you should get, check out our guide to how many solar panels you need.

2. Whether the system has a battery

You can only use solar-generated electricity in that instant that it's created, otherwise it automatically gets sent to the grid.

But the average household's peak electricity usage is in the early evening, when solar panels have stopped generating electricity.

This mismatch can be solved by adding a battery, which helps you store up excess electricity during the daytime for use overnight.

A battery also gives you access to the best solar export tariffs, allows you to make the most of time-of-use tariffs, and lets you benefit from virtual power plants.

This means you could make lots of additional savings, and likely explains why 94% of new solar panel installations in the UK include a battery, according to data from Flexi-Orb and EPVS.

Batteries are also likely to raise your home's EPC score in the near future, thanks to new government guidelines.

The government is currently consulting on a new Home Energy Model, which it's said "will replace the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) for the energy rating of dwellings.”

According to the consultation paper, the Home Energy Model will see battery storage be "fully integrated into the electricity generation and consumption calculations."

This would allow batteries to have an impact on a property’s EPC score.

3. The quality of the hardware

Two households could have identically sized solar panel systems, but if one system has significantly higher efficiency and durability, it's going to produce a lot more electricity overall.

The typical efficiency of top-tier monocrystalline panels is between 20% and 25%, and you shouldn't accept any gear below that range.

To learn more, read our guide to solar panel efficiency.

4. The age of the system

Modern monocrystalline solar panels tend to last over 30 years, as they're tough bits of kit with no moving parts.

Most systems comprising these sleek, high-tech panels are unlikely to be anything more than five or so years old, meaning the great majority of their 30- to 40-year lifespan is still ahead of them.

They're also more powerful, efficient, resilient, and aesthetically pleasing than other types, including polycrystalline solar panels.

These blue panels were the most popular model in the world as recently as 2015, but made up 0% of global sales in 2025.

So any system using blue, polycrystalline solar panels could easily be over 15 years old, and may only last another decade or so.

This could include hundreds of thousands of systems, since more than 228,000 UK homes had installed solar panels by the end of 2011.

Unfortunately, a system with only a few years ahead of it may not be worth much to a prospective homebuyer.

However, if it was installed in the 2010s, it may still be receiving Feed-in Tariff income. This government scheme agreed to pay solar homes for all the electricity they generated or exported, for 20 or 25 years.

This can be appealing to buyers, who could get potentially hundreds of pounds per year without shelling out for an installation – and they're allowed to switch export tariffs while keeping their generation payments.

5. The appearance of the system

This is a bit of an obvious one. If the panels on the roof look terrible then this may dissuade even the most green-minded, money-conscious buyer.

Fortunately, it's rare to see bad-looking solar panels these days, now that sleek, modern monocrystalline panels rule the roost.

And recent developments have made them look even better, as manufacturers including AIKO and Belinus have started producing all-black panels, with no visible grid lines.

6. Whether you own the system

If you own your solar installation, it can boost your home's value, and handing over control to a buyer should be simple – but this may not be the case with a leased system (also known as a roof lease or rent a roof scheme).

Under these deals, the leasing company will usually install the panels on a home's roof for free, then hire them out to the household for around 20 or 25 years.

This often complicates matters. Some mortgage lenders won’t take on households with roof leases, and buyers may be put off or ask you to end the lease agreement before moving forward.

Anyone considering going solar with no upfront cost should make sure they understand the difference between a roof lease and a subscription like Sunsave Plus (which does not require a roof lease).

If you’re wondering how much you could save with a solar & battery system, enter a few details below and we’ll provide an estimate.

Is there more demand for solar homes?

There is more demand for solar homes than other types – and it's not even close.

75% of Brits would rather get a new build with solar panels than without, according to a 2026 E.ON-commissioned survey.

And 68% of respondents said they wanted solar panels to be a feature of all new houses, showing how popular this technology is now.

It could pay off for owners too, since 66% said they'd consider paying more for a newly built house that guarantees lower energy bills for the long term – which solar panels do.

Electricity prices are set to keep rising in the coming years, with demand for electricity increasing as heat pumps and electric vehicles become increasingly mainstream.

It’s therefore extremely likely that the popularity of solar panels – which can generate free electricity for their owners – will continue to grow.

It's certainly surging at the moment. A record-breaking 500,000 households made the switch between 2023 and 2025, and more UK homes went solar in 2025 than in any year since 2011.

And 2026 is set to be an even better year for domestic solar than 2025, as of June.

This means that however much of an EPC rating boost you get from your new solar panels, they’ll still make your property more appealing to buyers, allowing you to potentially sell it for a higher price.

Next steps

The research is clear: solar panels can increase the value of your home, although the exact size of the increase is still up for debate.

Naturally, the impact of solar on property value will also depend on many variables, such as the size of the system, how old it is, and its location in the UK.

Going solar is also the best way to protect your household against future energy crises and a national grid that’s struggling to meet the country’s rising needs.

If you’re interested in how much you could save with a solar & battery system, enter a few details below and we’ll provide an estimate.

Solar panels and property value: FAQs