The UK Solar Postcode Lottery: Why the Same System Costs £724 More to Install in London Than the North East

Where you live in the UK changes what solar costs to install — and how quickly it pays back. We took one fixed system (10 × Canadian Solar TopHiku6 445W panels, 4.45 kWp, a Fox F3-6000 3.6kW inverter and standard pitched-roof mounting) and priced it across all 12 UK regions and nations, varying only the two things that genuinely change with location: installation labour (scaled by ONS 2025 regional pay data) and sunlight (PVGIS v5.2 irradiance for a representative city in each region). Everything else is held identical.

The result: the install cost ranges from £2,976 in the North East to £3,700 in Greater London — a £724 gap on an identical system — and payback runs from 3.9 years (South West) to 5.1 years (Greater London). This is the UK solar postcode lottery, in numbers you can trace to the source.

First, an important caveat: this is the cost base, not a typical quote

The figures here are the underlying cost of the system — components priced at trade rates from our own product database, plus installation labour. They are deliberately not a typical installer quote. A homeowner buying this system from an MCS-certified installer would usually pay £5,500–£8,000 (MCS installation data put the average UK system at around £7,800 in early 2026; the Energy Saving Trust and Which? quote similar ranges). The difference between our roughly £3,000 cost base and a ~£6,500 quote is installer margin, scaffolding, VAT handling, surveying, DNO paperwork and overheads.

Showing the cost base is the whole point. It separates the part of your quote that is fixed everywhere (hardware) from the part that genuinely varies by region (labour) — so you can see exactly where a postcode premium comes from.

The headline findings

• Cost spread: £724 on a like-for-like 4.45 kWp system — all of it labour, since the £1,196 of hardware costs the same everywhere.
• Payback spread: 1.2 years between the fastest region (South West, 3.9 yrs) and the slowest (Greater London, 5.1 yrs).
• Cheapest to install: the North East at £2,976 — the UK's lowest regional pay feeds straight into lower labour.
• Most expensive: Greater London at £3,700 — London full-time pay runs about 25% above the UK median, and labour tracks it.
• Best payback: the South West (3.9 yrs) — strong irradiance and below-average labour.
• Average annual saving across all 12 regions: £705.

Solar-only regional league table

Ranked by payback (fastest first). All figures assume a south-facing roof, 14% PVGIS system losses, 45% self-consumption without a battery, an electricity price of 24.5p/kWh (in line with the Ofgem Q2 2026 price cap) and a 15p/kWh Smart Export Guarantee rate for exported power.

Greater London's 3,786 kWh of annual generation is mid-table — its slow payback is the labour premium, not a lack of sun. And the cheapest region to install (North East) isn't the fastest payback: the South West wins on the combination of stronger sunlight and below-average labour.

Browse the solar panels used in this study — including the Canadian Solar TopHiku6 445W — or see the full products catalogue for inverters and batteries.

Adding a battery: does it change the picture?

A Pylontech US5000 5kWh battery adds £788 to the cost base in every region (the hardware is the same everywhere) and lifts self-consumption from 45% to 78% — using more of your own generation rather than exporting it at the lower SEG rate. It improves the cash position in every region, and narrows the regional payback spread slightly.

You can see the Pylontech US5000 and other options in our battery catalogue. Whether a battery is right for you depends on your tariff and usage — see are solar batteries worth it? for the full picture.

Why labour varies by region

The entire £724 cost spread is labour. To estimate it without guessing, we took a national install-labour rate of £450/kWp (£2,003 for this system) from our Solar Planner cost model and scaled it for each region by median full-time pay relative to the UK median, using ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2025 figures (and NISRA's equivalent for Northern Ireland). Trade labour broadly tracks the local cost of employing skilled workers, so regional pay is a transparent, citable proxy for what installers charge.

That puts London labour at about 1.25× the UK median (median full-time pay of £958 a week, against £767 nationally) and the North East at about 0.89× (£681 a week) — a real spread of roughly 40%, not the doubling sometimes claimed. The structural drivers are familiar: stronger demand for MCS-certified installers across London and the South East, higher business overheads where the cost of living is higher, and tighter installer capacity in high-demand areas.

The practical implication: in higher-pay regions, the labour line is where a quote inflates — so comparing at least three MCS-certified installers matters most there. Comparing quotes carefully is how you claw back a regional premium.

What this means for your decision

If you are in the South West, the South East or Wales, the maths are strong: payback under about 4.2 years on a system with a 25-year design life, and the best annual savings in the dataset thanks to higher irradiance.

If you are in Greater London, Scotland or the North West, payback is longer (around 5 years) but still excellent over a 25-year life — just be especially diligent about comparing quotes, because labour is where overpayment hides. Get at least three quotes and check MCS certification for each.

Wherever you are, the Smart Export Guarantee pays you for every unit you export. At the 15p/kWh rate modelled here, exported power materially shortens payback in every region — see our guide to the Smart Export Guarantee for how to register and which suppliers pay the best rates.

Want this for your own roof and postcode? Our Solar Planner uses the same PVGIS irradiance data and component pricing as this study, then applies a labour estimate to give an indicative installed cost — confirmed after a site survey.

Methodology

We model a fixed specification — 10 × Canadian Solar TopHiku6 445W panels (4.45 kWp), a Fox F3-6000 3.6kW inverter and standard pitched-roof mounting — across all 12 UK regions and nations. Hardware is priced at £1,196 from our product database and held constant nationally. Installation labour starts from a national rate of £450/kWp (£2,003) and is scaled for each region by median gross weekly full-time earnings relative to the UK median of £766.6 — ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2025 (Great Britain, workplace-based) and NISRA Employee Earnings in Northern Ireland 2025.

Annual generation uses PVGIS v5.2 for a representative city in each region (Plymouth, Brighton, London, Norwich, Leicester, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast) with 14% system losses. Savings use an electricity price of 24.5p/kWh — in line with the Ofgem Q2 2026 price cap (24.67p/kWh incl. VAT, GB average) — and a 15p/kWh SEG export rate, with 45% self-consumption for solar-only and 78% with a battery (Energy Saving Trust benchmarks). The battery add-on is £788 (Pylontech US5000 5kWh). Payback is total cost base ÷ annual saving; no panel degradation or tariff escalation is applied, so real-world payback will differ. These are modelled component-and-labour costs, not installer quotes — see the caveat above.