Solar Panels in Derby

A south-facing roof in Derby generates about 980 kWh per kWp a year on the EU's PVGIS model, and every unit you use saves 25.36p at the East Midlands price cap rate, the lowest unit rate of the 14 price cap regions in Great Britain. A typical 4.5kWp system would make about 4,410 kWh a year, and the swing is steep: about 116 kWh per kWp in June against 34 kWh in December.

How much electricity solar panels make in Derby

A south-facing 1kWp system at 35 degrees in central Derby generates about 980 kWh a year, according to the EU's PVGIS model. That ranks 20 of the 31 areas we cover, which run from 850 kWh in Glasgow to 1,177 kWh in Sussex. East and west roofs still work, at roughly a fifth less.

PVGIS is a modelled figure for an unshaded roof with 14% system losses, and it runs higher than the MCS method installers must use for your written estimate, which gives roughly 800 to 950 kWh per kWp for a well-oriented UK roof. Use PVGIS to compare places and the installer's MCS estimate to plan your budget. Our guides to which direction panels should face and how much electricity solar panels produce go further.

What that electricity is worth in Derby

Every unit you use yourself saves 25.36p, the Ofgem price cap rate for direct debit customers in the East Midlands region from 1 October to 31 December 2026. The Great Britain average is 26.32p. Every unit you export earns whatever your Smart Export Guarantee tariff pays, which the Energy Saving Trust puts at around 12p typically.

Take the Energy Saving Trust's typical 4.5kWp home system. On the PVGIS figure for Derby it would generate about 4,410 kWh a year. If you used all of it, that would be worth about £1,118. If you exported all of it, about £529. Real homes sit between the two, and a battery or daytime use pushes you towards the higher figure. The Energy Saving Trust prices that typical system at around £7,600. See our solar panel cost guide and current export rates.

The World Heritage Site runs into Derby, and it changes the paperwork

The Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site is the only World Heritage Site in the East Midlands, and it does not stop at the city boundary: it runs 15 miles down the river from Masson Mill at Matlock Bath to the Industrial Museum in Derby, the building that was Lombe's Silk Mill. Derby City Council says the site within the city also takes in Darley Abbey's mill complex, the historic village and its church, Darley Abbey Park and the flood plain of the river Derwent. If your home is inside those lines, the planning route for panels is not the standard one.

A World Heritage Site is article 2(3) land under Part 1 of Schedule 1 to the permitted development order, alongside conservation areas and National Parks. Two things follow for solar. Panels on a flat roof on article 2(3) land need an application to the council before work starts, for a determination on whether prior approval is required for how the equipment will look. A ground-mounted array needs the same determination if any part of it would sit within 5 metres of the boundary of your curtilage. Panels on an ordinary pitched roof are still usually permitted development, subject to the national conditions in our guide to permitted development for solar panels.

The heritage designation is not a refusal, though. The Derwent Valley Mills Management Plan for 2026 to 2031 says developments incorporating renewable technologies including solar power will be viewed favourably, so long as they do not negatively affect the site's Outstanding Universal Value or its buffer zone. What it does mean is paperwork and time: the council requires a Design and Access Statement with every planning permission and listed building consent application inside the site, and may consult Historic England. Build that into your timeline before you take a deposit off anybody.

Sixteen conservation areas, and ten with an Article 4 on roof coverings

Derby City Council has designated sixteen conservation areas, and in ten of them an Article 4 direction means planning permission is required for alterations to doors, windows or roof coverings facing a highway. Those ten are Allestree, Arboretum, Darley Abbey, Hartington Street, Highfield Cottages, Little Chester, Markeaton, Mickleover, Spondon and Strutt's Park. The direction does not name solar panels, so whether a panel on a highway-facing roof slope counts as altering the roof covering is a question for the council and not one to guess at. Ring the development control team before you order the kit, not after.

The council is explicit that permitted development is tighter inside a conservation area generally, and names solar panels on houses among the works subject to special controls there. Nationally, the rule for a house in a conservation area bites on walls that front a highway rather than on roof slopes, which our guide to solar panels in a conservation area works through. Derby's adopted Local Plan also records 390 statutorily listed buildings in the city, 9 of them Grade I and 39 Grade II*. A listed building needs consent whatever the roof faces: see solar panels on a listed building.

Derby's Warm Homes grant is open, and it can pay for panels

Derby City Council says the government-funded Warm Homes: Local Grant is running in the city with funding allocated for the next two years, and the scheme provides up to 30,000 pounds per property for measures that include solar panels. The allocation is 1.6 million pounds over three years from November 2025. It is aimed at low-income, privately owned homes with an EPC rating of D to G, and the council says it is targeting specific areas of the city that the government has identified, so your postcode matters as much as your income. Nothing on the council's pages says the scheme is closed or waiting-listed, which is not the case everywhere in the East Midlands: compare solar panels in Lincolnshire, where the same grant is shut or waiting-listed across the county.

The council also points residents at the government's Warm Homes Loan Scheme, which it says covers solar panels and battery storage. That is finance rather than a grant: the loans come from participating lenders, subject to their own affordability checks, and the government does not provide them directly. Our guide to solar panel grants in the UK covers the national picture, and solar battery storage covers whether adding a battery is worth it.

Two practical warnings. First, the council has approved a single managing agent for ECO4 Flex in Derby and says no other organisation has been approved, so treat a cold call about ECO4 Flex or the Great British Insulation Scheme as something to check with the council before you let anyone into your home. Second, the grant route and the quote route are different things. If you are paying for the system yourself, the grant schemes are irrelevant to your price and what matters is the installed cost.

Good roofs, low uptake: Derby has less solar than the region around it

The government counted 6,840 solar installations in Derby at the end of 2025, about 64.7 per 1,000 households by our count, which is below the UK average of about 68.6 and well below the roughly 80 per 1,000 we count across the East Midlands. That puts Derby 193rd of the 361 local authorities in the table. Nottingham, along the A52, runs at about 84.1 per 1,000, Derbyshire Dales at about 106.8 and South Derbyshire at about 76.9. Derby grew 10.5% on the year, from 6,190 installations, and the government warns its 2025 council figures undercount because a large number of installations could not be assigned to a local authority yet.

The odd part is that Derby's housing should be good for this. Census 2021 found 39.1% of the city's 105,653 households in a semi-detached house, against 31.5% across England, with another 24.1% detached. Only 12.2% are in a purpose-built block of flats, against 17.1% nationally. A semi has exactly the kind of large unbroken roof slope that suits a domestic array, so the gap between Derby and its neighbours looks like uptake rather than roof shape. If you are in one of the city's flats, solar panels for flats covers where you stand.

What Derby does have is small systems rather than solar farms. The city's 6,840 installations carried 27.05 MW between them at the end of 2025, an average of about 3.95 kW each, which is household size. Derbyshire Dales, by contrast, averages about 23 kW per installation and South Derbyshire about 11.5 kW, which points to large ground-mounted arrays in their totals rather than roofs alone. Derby's number is almost all roofs, so it is a fair guide to what your neighbours have actually done. Our guide to how many solar panels you need sizes a system for your own usage.

Cheap electricity, and one network operator to notify

At 25.36p per unit the East Midlands has the lowest electricity unit rate of the 14 price cap regions in Great Britain, against a Great Britain average of 26.32p. That is welcome every month and awkward for a solar payback sum, because solar saves you the price of the unit you did not buy. The penny or so you are not paying in Derby shifts payback by months rather than years, but it does change the strategy: with a Smart Export Guarantee tariff at around 12p, exporting a unit is worth less than half what using it is worth, so moving the washing, the hot water and the dishwasher into daylight hours does more for you here than it would in Merseyside. Our guide to whether solar panels are worth it runs the maths.

Derby is also a heavily gas-heated city, which matters when an installer starts talking about heat pumps alongside the panels. Census 2021 found 81.3% of households on mains gas only, against 74.0% across England, and only 36 households in the whole city heating with oil. There is no off-grid oil story in Derby of the kind you get in rural Lincolnshire, so the heating case here is a straight gas-versus-heat-pump comparison rather than an escape from expensive oil.

On the network side there is only one operator to deal with. Derby is in National Grid Electricity Distribution's East Midlands licence area, which covers about 16,000 square kilometres. A normal domestic array under 16 A per phase goes in on the G98 fit-and-notify route, and the notification has to reach National Grid within 28 days of commissioning, so nobody has to approve the job first. Above 16 A, which National Grid puts at 3.68 kW per phase, you are into G99 and an application before the work, though there is a fast track for a single-phase system with a G100 export limitation scheme capping export at 16 A. See our G98 and G99 guide. If an installer raises export limits, it is worth knowing that National Grid's East Midlands network reports cover 204 constraints in total and record one for the Derby and Derby South 33 kV area, three for Spondon and Heanor and eleven across the Willington 132 kV group that feeds this part of Derbyshire. Compare with solar panels in Nottingham.

Getting solar quotes in Derby

Get at least three written quotes from MCS-certified installers, each with a performance estimate for your roof and a full breakdown of what is supplied. The Renewable Energy Consumer Code recommends quotes from at least 3 different companies, limits its members to a deposit of no more than 25% of the contract price, and says a reputable company will never make you feel pressured into signing. Our guide to choosing a solar installer covers what to check.

Sources for this page

Local sources checked on 4 November 2026. Solar yields: PVGIS 5.2, EU Joint Research Centre, modelled October 2026. Electricity prices: Ofgem price cap by region. System cost and export rate: Energy Saving Trust. Local sources:

• Derby City Council: home energy advice, grants and loan schemes
• Derby City Council: Derby gets 1.6m pounds for warm homes
• Derby City Council: conservation areas
• Derby City Council: conservation area FAQs and Article 4 directions (PDF)
• Derby City Council: planning constraints, including the World Heritage Site
• Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site Management Plan 2026 to 2031 (PDF)
• Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015, Schedule 1: article 2(3) land
• DESNZ: Renewable electricity by local authority, 2014 to 2025 (XLSX)
• Nomis: Census 2021 accommodation type (TS044)
• National Grid Electricity Distribution: micro generation G98