The government has published a ‘Solar Roadmap’ for the UK that aims to rapidly accelerate of solar deployment, from 18GW to 45-47GW by 2030 and potentially more.
Launching the roadmap the government said “Every family and business in Britain is paying the price of the UK’s exposure to volatile fossil fuel markets. This underlines the importance of investing in solar now, to protect both families and businesses from the rollercoaster of fossil fuel prices that we do not control. Solar has a unique role here given the potential for deployment on rooftops to reduce consumer bills immediately.”
The Roadmap includes deployment of solar across multifunctional uses of space such as rooftops, car parks and water bodies “whilst maintaining planning protections for our best agricultural land”. It envisages a four-fold increase in ground-mounted solar from 0.1% to 0.4% of UK land, with solar and farming making shared use of land such as with livestock grazing. It will widen ‘permitted development’ regulations both for solar installations, such as removing the 1MW cap on installations on large buildings, and for pole-mounted local distribution network extensions that will allow more solar to connect.
The Roadmap also proposes to make changes to the way batteries are assessed alongside solar power for their effect on the network. Batteries are currently treated as additional generation and demand which means a much larger network connection is required. But in most cases, batteries co-located with solar do the opposite – reduce output when there is peak generation and contribute output at times of peak demand, benefitting the system.
The government is also proposing making it mandatory for developers of low carbon infrastructure (including solar) to provide community benefit funds.