Questions people ask us

On our working map, Electricity North West covers North West England and SP Manweb covers Merseyside and Cheshire along with North Wales. Check it on that operator's own postcode checker, or ring 105 free and you will be put through to the right one.

A short online form within 28 days of installing the device. It wants your name, your email address and the address the panel is at. It applies in Great Britain.

No. G98 allows one per household. The product specification allows one per final ring circuit, and the network rule is the tighter one.

Yes. The permitted development right as rewritten on 27 August 2026 does not cover wooden walls, balconies or timber cladding for plug-in solar, on houses or on blocks of flats. A transitional period runs to 27 August 2027, and until then you can follow the rules as they stood before the change. Ask your council which route applies to you.

On a house, 200 mm where the wall abuts a highway and 400 mm elsewhere. On a pitched roof it has to stay below the ridge and within 200 mm of the roof. A flat roof allows 600 mm of height.

Then a panel on a wall that fronts a highway falls outside the right, and the same goes for a World Heritage Site. Scheduled monuments are out, and so is anywhere inside the grounds of a listed building. The listed building itself needs planning permission and listed building consent.

If you rent, or the building is leasehold, or a management company looks after the outside of it, you need their permission as well as the planning position. Ask before you buy, because the regulations did not change any of that.

Modelled at a point in Manchester for an 800 W device with 14 per cent system losses and nothing shading it: 689 kWh a year on a south facing roof pitch, 684 kWh on a frame on open ground at 30 degrees, 505 kWh on a south facing wall and 359 kWh on an east facing wall. They are ceilings for one point in the region, not a promise for your address.

Yes. On an ideal roof it is the lowest of the English regions. A frame on open ground in Manchester still models above an ideal roof in Inverness, which comes out at 628 kWh.

No. You keep the part you are using while it is being generated. You cannot store the rest, because plug-in batteries and solar kits sold with a battery are not part of the approved class.

It has to be type tested and entered on the ENA Type Test Register before anyone can sell it, so look at the register. The device must not exceed 800 VA of apparent power and the panels must not exceed 2000 W in total. Above 960 W of panel capacity the specification asks for a professional view on whether the installation is suitable.

No. Extension cables are out, and so are multi way adaptors, RCD adaptors and travel adaptors. A plug and socket fitted outside need an IP55 rating at least.

It might. The instructions that come with a compliant device have to tell you to check. Speak to your insurer before the device arrives.