Josh Cornes, analyst at Solar Media Market Research, looks at what 2025 might hold for the solar industry.

The UK is forecast to add between 3-3.5GWp-dc of capacity in 2025, just shy of the huge numbers seen in 2015 and huge growth on 2024.

The UK added around 2.3GWp-dc in 2024, exceeding original expectations with the help of a push in ground mounted projects toward the back end of the year. This equates to around 20% growth on the 1.9GW that was added in 2023.

Approximately 20% of the 2.3GW deployed in 2024 came from residential rooftop installations, continuing the boost in this sector, first highlighted by the near 200% year-on-year (YoY) increase from 2022 to 2023. Commercial rooftops also contributed 20% of installations in 2024 with a slight increase of 10% YoY.

Large-scale ground-mount installations in 2024 saw the largest growth, making up 60% of the annual capacity. This uptick has continued to be driven by projects with Contracts for Difference (CfD), with rounds AR4 and AR5, and even AR6, accounting for nearly 850MW of the 1.3GW added.

AR4 has now passed 900MW of operational capacity, with another 950MW under construction. The above highlights the importance of government backing and the potential the market has if CfD rounds continue to grow.

Annual UK solar deployment is shown in the figure below, going back to the ‘start’ of the UK solar industry in 2010. The graph below highlights the boom of 2014-2016 alongside the continued rise in deployments since incentives were phased out in 2019.

Figure 1: Solar continues to grow YoY since 2018, with 2024 becoming the third best year seen since the ‘start’ of UK solar in 2010.

As mentioned previously, a large reason for the strong 2024 was the back-end of the year, with close to 500MW being completed in the last three or four months. There is also a continued focus on larger scale projects with over 60% of the capacity built out being projects greater than 50MWp. To put into context, projects greater than 50MW made up 25% of the capacity built in 2022 and 35% in 2023.

The outlook for this year is very positive, with ground-mount continuing to lead the charge. With almost 4GWp-dc currently under construction in the UK, it’s possible for a good chunk of this to be completed over the next 12 months.

One project is the well-known nationally significant infrastructure project (NSIP) Cleve Hill, which is close to completion and expected to go live in the coming months. This project alone will make up a similar level to the capacity we saw installed in the entire first six months of 2024. Taking all this into account, ground-mounted solar projects have the potential to reach anywhere between 2-2.5GW in 2025.

Commercial rooftop is expected to continue to show growth, hitting the 500MW mark in installations for the year. NESO recently announced the removal of certain parameters, detailed here, required for larger-scale rooftop projects, with a capacity of greater than 1MW, increasing the threshold to 5MW, a welcome change that represents a huge opportunity for this market moving forward.

Residential deployment calmed down in 2024 from the surprise jump in 2023, however is still up on 2022 and expected to remain stable.

The focus continues to be ground-mounted solar projects in the UK with large-scale projects now making up well over half of the capacity being built each year. The NSIP era has truly begun with the first project over 200MW soon to be completed and another six approved, awaiting construction.

All the data and analysis shown above are taken from Solar Media Market Research’s analysis, which can be accessed here.