Spirit Energy

29/05/2026

Electricity prices are going up 5% in July. If you have solar, that's worth understanding properly.

Every unit your panels generate and you use yourself is a unit you don't buy from your supplier. When the grid price goes up, the saving on each of those units goes up with it, without any change to your system. It just saves you more.

Spirit recently fitted a home in Reading with 22 panels and a Tesla Powerwall 3. The annual electricity bill dropped from around £2,040 to £171. The part of that saving that grows with future price rises sits at around £1,150 per year, and it compounds for the life of the system.

If you're still on full grid electricity in July, you'll just be paying more. Full breakdown on what this means for payback calculations is on the Spirit blog now:

Electricity prices are rising 5% in July 2025. If you have solar, that's not bad news — here's why rising prices increase what your system saves and what your home is worth.

27/05/2026

Most people assume their extension roof won't work for solar. It often does. 💡

This install had a narrow surface, a parapet edge, and tight access. Our team designed and built it from scratch, as they do for every property, because no two roofs are the same.

Extensions get overlooked all the time. But if the roof faces the right direction and gets reasonable light, it is worth considering. You might have more usable space than you think.

16 years. 6,000+ installs. We have seen most combinations of roof type, pitch, and layout. Get in touch for a free quote.

22/05/2026

UK solar is about to get more expensive in spring 2027. Three government changes and a stretched supply chain all hit the market in the same few weeks.

VAT on residential solar reverts to 5% on 1 April 2027. The Warm Homes Plan and Future Homes Standard will pull millions of grant funded and legally required installations into the same queue as everyone else.

Read our latest blog to find out more: https://hubs.ly/Q04hCGDt0

21/05/2026

One of our Reading customers just shared their first 12 months of data with us. Their combined 2024 gas and electricity bill was £2,491. Their net energy cost for the year just gone, with solar, a Tesla Powerwall 3, and a new heat pump, was just £14.

Same house. Same year of British weather. No gas anymore, an EV charging at home, and over 99% of grid imports landing in the cheap off-peak window.

Read the full case study here: https://hubs.ly/Q04hvt8g0

19/05/2026

Big thank you to Victoria for such a great review. Take a look below.

Amazing service from start to finish. Great advice, information and quote. Very speedy installation, completing in 1 day, including battery and mains going under the stairs in the middle of the house. The team were like clockwork. I was always kept informed about what was happening and they were neat and tidy.

My neighbour regretted not having them to install their panels!

15/05/2026

Tesla launched a solar and Powerwall 3 bundle in the UK on 8 May. Eight panels, fully installed, £199 a month over four years at 0% interest.

The finance structure is genuinely good. Spreading £11,299 over four years at zero interest removes the upfront cost barrier that stops most households from committing. That is not a small thing.

Where it falls short is bespoke design. A fixed eight-panel package cannot account for your roof orientation, your shading, your consumption profile, or whether you have an EV that needs charging. The difference between a system sized for your home and a standard template can be significant when you run the numbers over 25 years.

We install the Powerwall 3 and we have done since it launched in the UK. Check out our latest blog to see our thoughts: https://hubs.ly/Q04gMJdx0

14/05/2026

Great British Energy has now put solar on 100 schools, with around 250 expected by summer. It's a real programme with real funding, but it's targeted at specific deprivation areas, which means most UK schools won't qualify.

The good news: schools don't need the GBE list to make solar work. Large roofs, daytime use, and a six to eight week summer holiday install window. The numbers usually stack up.

If you're a governor, bursar or parent and your school hasn't looked at this seriously, it's worth raising.

12/05/2026

Ofgem announces the next energy price cap on 27 May. Forecasters expect a rise from July, driven by gas market volatility and Middle East tensions.

The cap fell 6.6% in April to £1,641 for a typical household. Even with that fall, UK energy bills are still around 35% above pre-crisis levels. The pattern is by now familiar: a quiet quarter, then another spike.

A roof full of solar takes part of your bill out of that cycle entirely. The kWh you generate yourself doesn't move with the cap.

What proportion of your annual energy bill would you fix today if you could?

08/05/2026

There is no "best" solar panel. There is the right panel for your roof.

A pitched tiled roof rewards the highest efficiency per square metre. A flat roof can use bifacial panels in an east west layout. A small two or three panel roof needs a high voltage panel, otherwise the inverter may not turn on at all in weak winter light. A shaded roof needs back-contact cell technology that does not lose a third of its output when a chimney casts a shadow across it.

If your quote is silent on roof type, ask why.

The best solar panel depends on your roof type, not a wattage chart. Spirit Energy covers pitched, flat, in-roof, shaded, ground mount and small roofs.

07/05/2026

58 solar panels, 40.5 kWh of Tesla battery storage, and a 7 kW EV charger, all installed on a new build flat roof in Surrey. The hybrid panel layout was designed specifically to extract the most generation from this roof, with the system forecast to deliver £3,994 in savings in its first year alone.

Read our latest case study here: https://hubs.ly/Q04fQWJ-0