Plug-in Solar South East

Britain's best light, and it is still not the main thing.

Of thirteen points queried across the United Kingdom, the one on this coast returns the largest annual figure for an 800 W device. That is worth knowing and it is worth roughly one paragraph, because the next table on this page beats it.

Ranked of 13 UK points1897 kWh

A year, on a south-facing pitch at 35 degrees with nothing in the way. PVGIS, 13 September 2026.

The table, since you will want to see it

An 800 W device on an ideal roof, one representative point per region, ordered by output. The bar is each point measured against the best of them.

PosRegion and point usedkWh a year
1South East, Brighton897
2South West, Exeter822
3East of England, Norwich802
4Wales, Cardiff798
5London, London795
6East Midlands, Nottingham760
7West Midlands, Birmingham752
8Yorkshire, Leeds736
9North East, Newcastle734
10Northern Ireland, Belfast714
11North West, Manchester689
12Scotland, south, Glasgow661
13Scotland, north, Inverness628

Queried from PVGIS on 13 September 2026 at 0.8 kWp with 14 per cent losses. These are ceilings for perfect conditions, not predictions for a particular house.

Now the comparison that matters

Take the best-placed point in the country and aim its panel badly. Take the worst-placed point in the country and aim its panel well. The order reverses, and it reverses by a long way.

Here, flat against an east wall

424kWh a year

Top of the national table, on the surface most people actually have available, facing the morning rather than the middle of the day.

Highlands, on a frame in the garden

623kWh a year

The lowest-scoring point of the thirteen, pointed due south on a 30 degree frame. It produces around 47 per cent more than the column beside it.

Which is why this site leads on aim

Living in the sunniest corner of the country buys you roughly 43 per cent over the dimmest, on identical mountings. Choosing the mounting well, rather than badly, is worth more than twice that. Geography is the smaller lever and it is the one you cannot pull.

What that means on a South East house

Four arrangements at this coast's figures, best first.

ArrangementOutput a yearAgainst the ideal pitch
Pitched roof, due south at 35 degrees897 kWh100%
Free-standing frame, due south at 30 degrees890 kWh99%
Vertical south-facing wall645 kWh72%
Vertical east-facing wall424 kWh47%
The frame is the quiet winner

A frame on the ground gives up about one per cent against a perfect roof pitch, needs no fixings, and sidesteps the surface the rewritten planning right refuses to cover. For a great many households it is both the best available option and the least trouble.

Generation is not the same as money saved

What lands on your bill depends on how much you are drawing at the moment the panel is producing. Batteries are excluded from the approved class, so there is no putting the afternoon aside for the evening. A household that is out all day keeps a good deal less of these figures than one that is in.

Your address, not a city centre point

Every figure above comes from a single point near Brighton. Yours is somewhere else.

Send a postcode and which way the surface faces, and you get the same calculation run at your own coordinates, the licence area we believe covers you with the means to confirm it, and a straight answer on whether the planning right reaches the surface you have in mind.

We do not fit these, sell them, or take a cut from anyone who does.

One email back. Nothing is sold from this site and no installer receives your address.