Sunlight Salary: Report Says UK Homes Could Save £946 a Year

A new study says the average UK home could save £946 a year with an optimised solar and battery system — a figure its authors call the "Sunlight Salary". The GreenSketch UK Rooftop Valuation Report, launched on 21 September 2026, is the first nationwide attempt to model solar-plus-battery returns for more than 15 million individual UK addresses. Here is what it found, how it got there, and how to read the headline number sensibly.

What the Sunlight Salary report found

The headline: the report puts the average home analysed at £946 a year in bill savings, and adds up to a national figure of £14.2 billion a year that households could be missing by leaving their roofs unused. GreenSketch is a solar software platform that has already rolled out in Australia and Germany, and this is its UK debut.

Regional spread: south-west Wales came out highest at around £1,001 a year, with south-east England close behind at around £991. According to the report, homes in all four UK nations cleared £800 a year on average, and Northern Ireland's best returns were in its eastern areas. That makes the north–south gap smaller than most people assume — a point we cover in more depth in our regional solar cost breakdown.

How the numbers were modelled

Rather than applying a regional average, GreenSketch used satellite imagery to model each rooftop individually, taking in roof slope, orientation, local electricity use and hourly solar generation. Every home was paired with a battery storage system. The researchers say returns depend on local electricity prices, roof angle and direction, when you use power, whether you have a battery, and what your supplier pays for exports.

That last point matters. Export income is set by your tariff, not by the roof — see our guide to Smart Export Guarantee rates for how much that can swing the result.

How to read a £946 headline

This is a vendor-published modelling exercise, not an independent audit, and the launch materials do not spell out several inputs that drive the answer: system and battery size, the electricity tariff assumed, or the up-front cost. So treat £946 as a ceiling for a well-designed system on a suitable roof, not a promise for your house. Three practical cautions:

• Savings are not profit. A saving of £946 a year says nothing on its own about payback. You still need the installed cost — see our current solar panel cost guide and battery cost guide.
• Your usage decides it. A home that is empty during the day, or has a shaded or north-facing roof, will land well below a modelled average.
• Tariffs move. Bill savings scale with the unit price you avoid, so they change every time the price cap or your supplier's rates change.

For context, coverage of the report cites the Energy Saving Trust's estimate that a typical system reaches financial break-even in roughly 10 to 12 years. Our own solar payback period guide works through that maths with current prices.

Why the report is landing now

The launch comes in a record year for rooftop solar. Trade body Solar Energy UK says installations have already passed the previous annual record, as households react to higher energy bills — we covered that in UK solar installations hit a new record in 2026. A study that quantifies what a roof is worth, address by address, fits neatly into that demand.

What to do with this as a homeowner

Use the report as a prompt, not a quote. Get a like-for-like estimate from at least two MCS-certified installers using your own bills and roof, check which export tariff you would be on, and compare the result with our are solar panels worth it guide. If a quote shows savings far above what your usage could plausibly support, ask to see the assumptions.