Peer-to-Peer Energy Trading UK: Can You Sell Solar Power to Neighbours?

If your solar panels export more than your neighbours can use of their own generation, the Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) has been the only realistic way to get paid for it — you sell to your supplier, at a rate they set. A small but growing group of UK schemes offer a different model: sharing or trading that surplus directly with nearby homes and businesses at a locally agreed price, cutting out the supplier as middleman. None of them let you run a cable to next door and invoice your neighbour directly — UK electricity law doesn't allow that — but community energy clubs and licensed trading platforms have built routes that get close. Here's how the real UK examples work, why the licensing rules are stricter than people expect, and whether it's worth chasing over a normal SEG tariff.

Why you can't just sell power to next door

Supplying electricity to another home or business in Great Britain normally requires an electricity supply licence from Ofgem, and running one without an exemption is illegal. The main route around this for small-scale local schemes is the Class A licence exemption, which allows generators to supply a limited amount of electricity without holding a full supply licence, provided they meet Ofgem's conditions on scale and the type of premises supplied. This is why every UK peer-to-peer or community energy scheme is built around an intermediary — a community interest company, cooperative, or licensed exchange platform — that handles metering, billing, and regulatory compliance on members' behalf, rather than individual households trading directly with each other.

Energy Local: the community energy club model

Energy Local is a not-for-profit model that lets households with smart meters form a local "club" and buy locally generated renewable electricity at an agreed price when it's actually being produced. Each half-hour, a member's usage is matched against the club's local generation (solar, hydro, or wind) for that same half-hour, and any electricity used during a generation window is billed at the club's locally agreed rate rather than a standard tariff rate. The rate is set once a year and is typically higher than the generator would get from a standard export tariff, but lower than members would otherwise pay their supplier — a genuine win on both sides.

The clearest published example is Energy Local Roupell Park in London, where members buy electricity generated by the estate's rooftop solar for as little as 6.3p/kWh during generation windows, well below typical price-cap unit rates. A separate hydro-based club in Corwen, North Wales, prices local power at around 13p/kWh. Rates vary by club and by time of day — expect higher prices at breakfast and dinner peaks and cheaper rates overnight or at midday — and you need a smart meter to join, since half-hourly matching is how the model works at all.

UrbanChain: a licensed trading exchange

UrbanChain, founded in Manchester in 2017, is a licensed electricity supplier that runs a peer-to-peer style exchange matching renewable generators with consumers on a half-hourly basis using its own "eChain" software. Rather than every user needing their own exemption, UrbanChain holds the supply licence itself and settles trades between generators and consumers who place orders on its platform. Its customer base so far leans towards businesses, local authorities, housing associations, schools and hospitals rather than individual domestic solar owners, and it doesn't publish an open sign-up route for a single homeowner's rooftop array in the way Energy Local does for community-scale generation.

How this compares to the Smart Export Guarantee

For most solar households, the SEG remains the simpler default — your supplier pays a per-kWh export rate automatically, with no club to join, no separate smart-meter data-sharing agreement, and no dependence on living near enough other members to make local matching work. See our full breakdown in Smart Export Guarantee 2026: how to get the best rate for current supplier rates. Peer-to-peer and community models only make sense where a scheme already exists near you — typically a community-owned solar or hydro asset serving a specific estate, village, or block — because building one from scratch around a single household's rooftop panels isn't currently a realistic DIY option under UK electricity licensing rules.

Where a local scheme does exist, the appeal is less about a higher headline rate for solar owners and more about the whole community benefiting: generators get a fairer price than a standard export tariff, and consumers get cheaper power than their normal tariff, with the margin that would otherwise go to a large supplier shared between both sides instead. If you're weighing whether to sign up for aggregator-style flexibility payments instead, our guide to virtual power plants in the UK covers the alternative route of getting paid for battery flexibility rather than local power trading.

Is peer-to-peer trading coming to more UK homes?

Ofgem has an ongoing interest in local energy markets, and researchers including Nesta and the University of Bristol's Cabot Institute have run trials exploring how blockchain-style trading and local matching could scale beyond today's handful of community schemes. For now, though, coverage is patchy and opportunistic: Energy Local operates in a limited number of communities across Wales and England, and licensed exchanges like UrbanChain are still mostly focused on commercial and public-sector customers rather than individual homeowners. If there's no existing club or scheme near you, the SEG stays the practical option — but it's worth checking whether your council, housing association, or a nearby community energy project already runs one before assuming you're stuck with a standard export tariff.