Solar, sold the way it should be.

What’s broken about how solar is sold in the UK

Most UK homeowners researching solar end up talking to a national installer whose business model is closer to double-glazing sales than to engineering. The pattern is well-documented and, if you’ve been on the receiving end of a few quotes, immediately recognisable.

• Lead-form bait-and-switch.Pricing pages advertise “from £X” but no concrete number is shown until a salesperson is on the phone. The form exists to capture a phone number, not to give you information.
• Sign-today urgency.“If you sign tonight, we can include the battery” or “this price expires Friday” are pure pressure tactics. Solar hardware costs don’t move that fast and your roof isn’t going anywhere.
• Opaque kit choice.Quotes say “6.4 kW system with 10 kWh battery” but won’t name the panel manufacturer, the inverter brand, or the MPPT configuration until the contract is in front of you. Sometimes the named kit changes between contract and install.
• Inverter under-spec.To hit a sales price, the inverter is sized just under the panel array’s peak DC output. The headline kWp looks right; on a sunny May afternoon you clip output that you paid for.
• Battery over-spec.Conversely, batteries are routinely sized for the sales ticket, not for the household’s actual load profile. A 13 kWh battery on a 1,800 kWh/year household pays back over a decade you may not have the patience for.
• Inflated payback claims.Verbal “you’ll be back in profit in five years” promises rarely appear in the written quote. The maths assumes optimistic generation, optimistic export rates, and pessimistic electricity prices that — conveniently — are all moving the right way.
• Doorstep sales.Yes, this is still common. No, it shouldn’t be how anyone buys a multi-decade home asset.

None of this means the panels are bad or the installers can’t fit them. It means the sales process is optimised for a customer who wants the decision made for them, and is allergic to the customer who wants to make the decision themselves.

Our mission, in one sentence

To make UK solar buyable on the customer’s terms — transparent on price, honest about the maths, and configurable down to the component — for the people who want to understand what they’re buying.

Everything else on this page is the practical version of that commitment.

Our principles

1. Numbers before a phone call

The Solar Plannergives you a system size, an estimated annual generation, a battery recommendation and an indicative payback — before asking for anything more than your postcode and roof details. If the numbers don’t make sense for your house, you should be able to find that out on a Saturday afternoon without scheduling a call.

2. Itemised, component-level pricing

Whether you’re heading toward an install with our team or planning to source the kit yourself, you see a breakdown: panels (named brand and model), inverter, battery, mounting, cabling, install labour. If we recommend a different inverter than the cheapest option, the difference in cost — and the reason — is on the same screen.

3. Right-sized, not maximum-sized

More kit isn’t better; right-sized kit is better. The planner sizes the array to your usable roof, the battery to your daily load profile and tariff, and flags when something looks oversold. We’d rather recommend an 8 kWh battery than an 13 kWh one if 8 kWh is what your data supports.

4. The maths is auditable

Every estimate on the site comes from a published method. Generation uses irradiance data and roof orientation/tilt loss factors. Self-consumption is modelled against household load profiles. Payback assumes today’s electricity prices and the current Smart Export Guarantee tariffs, not optimistic projections. If you click into a number, you can see how it’s calculated. If our assumptions are wrong for your case, you can adjust them.

5. Education, not gating

Guides, comparisons, scheme explainers and product reviews are free, ungated, and never withheld in exchange for an email address. We’d rather you read everything, understand the choice, and decide for yourself — even if “for yourself” ends with you buying the kit somewhere else.

6. The install route is real, not a sales prop

We’re backed by an MCS-certified installation team operating under SABBA SERVICES LTD. If you want a full install, we can do it — SEG-eligible, grant-eligible where applicable, and with the same kit shown in your planner output. We don’t bait you with a planner and then swap the components at survey.

What we won’t do

These are concrete commitments. If you ever see us doing one of these, it’s a bug, tell us.

• We won’t hide pricing behind a phone call.
• We won’t use “sign today” or expiring-discount tactics. Solar hardware is a commodity; we don’t need to manufacture urgency.
• We won’t accept paid placements in product comparisons or scoring. Affiliate links exist (see the affiliate disclosure) but they do not affect rankings or scores.
• We won’t door-knock.
• We won’t quote one inverter and install a different one. The named kit in your plan is the kit we’ll fit.
• We won’t over-spec a battery to inflate the ticket. The recommendation comes from your load profile, not our margin.
• We won’t make payback claims we can’t show the maths for.
• We won’t lock the DIY route behind hoops. If you want to buy the kit and install it yourself (or with your own electrician for MCS sign-off), you can.

Who this site is for

If you recognise yourself in one of these, you’re who we built the site for.

• The researcher.You’ve already read the MoneySavingExpert thread. You’ve compared LG vs Aiko, SolarEdge vs GivEnergy, optimisers vs string. You want a planner that respects what you already know, lets you swap components, and shows the maths. You want to hire an installer — but on your spec, not theirs.
• The DIYer. You can read a wiring diagram, you know which end of a multimeter to hold, and you’d rather spend a weekend on the roof than £3,000 on install labour. You need a bill of materials, compatibility guidance, and a route to MCS sign-off if you want SEG eligibility. Our DIY install hub is built for you.

If, on the other hand, you genuinely want someone to handle every detail and don’t want to think about kilowatt-hours, we’re probably slower than a national chain that will be at your door this week. Our get-quotesform will get a real installer in touch, but we won’t pretend a fast-sale process is what we’re best at.

How we make money

Transparency about incentives matters because every recommendation we make is potentially shaped by them.

• Installation revenue. When customers choose our MCS-certified team to do their install, we earn a margin on the work. This is the largest part of how the business funds itself.
• Affiliate links. Some product pages and guides contain affiliate links to retailers (Amazon and specialist solar suppliers). If you buy through them, we earn a small commission — at no extra cost to you. These links are disclosed at the top of any page containing them. Affiliate relationships do not affect product scoring or which products appear in comparisons. The full policy is on our affiliate disclosure page.
• What we don’t do.We don’t take paid placements in “best of” lists. We don’t sell leads. We don’t run sponsored reviews. If a manufacturer asks us to push their product, the answer is no.

Editorial standards

Every guide and review on the site is written and approved by a named author. Scores come from a published, weighted methodology applied to manufacturer specifications — not from lab tests we didn’t run, and not from vibes. Long-form articles are AI-drafted and reviewed by a human before publication; factual errors are corrected; anything we can’t verify is removed. The full process is documented on the editorial policy page, and the person whose name is on the byline is Sepehr, co-founder of SmartSolarHomes.

Who’s behind this

SmartSolarHomes is a trading name of SABBA SERVICES LTD, registered in England & Wales (Company No. 12051689). The installation arm is MCS-certified, which is the legal prerequisite for accessing the Smart Export Guarantee and for Boiler Upgrade Scheme work on heat-pump installs. Sepehr is the site’s sole author and the co-founder; his profile, including how to get in touch, is at about Sepehr.

Where to start

If you’re new to the site, the most useful entry points are:

• The Solar Planner— a few inputs about your house and electricity use, an estimate-first system recommendation, and an itemised view of what you’d pay.
• The 8-stage solar guide— fit-check, sizing, kit choice, install, paperwork. The long version, structured.
• Compare products— head-to-head scoring on panels, inverters, batteries, EV chargers and heat pumps, using the methodology in our editorial policy.
• The DIY install hub— if you’re doing it yourself, this is where the bill-of-materials thinking, compatibility guidance and MCS-via-partner routes live.

And if you spot us falling short of any of the principles above — or anywhere on the site — tell us. The mission is only useful if we’re held to it.