How much do solar panels for dealerships cost?

The cost of a solar installation on a car dealership depends far more on your daytime electricity load than on the size of your roof. A single franchised showroom with a busy workshop and forecourt usually lands somewhere between 50 kW and 400 kW, which puts the indicative project value in the £45,000 to £350,000 range. Smaller hospitality and leisure sites start lower, around £10,000 for a 10 kW pub roof, while a supermarket or shopping-centre array can run past £1m. The number that matters is cost per kW, and that falls as the system grows: budget roughly £750 to £950 per kW for installs above 250 kW, dropping toward £600 per kW once you pass 1 MW. A 200 kW dealership system therefore sits at an indicative £160,000 to £190,000 before any tax relief. All of these are indicative planning ranges, not quotes.

Dealerships are a strong commercial case because the load profile lines up almost perfectly with generation. Glazed showrooms need cooling and lighting through the working day, ramps and compressors in the workshop pull power when the bays are busy, and forecourt and signage lighting run from first light. Add demonstrator and customer EV charging and you get a daytime demand curve that self-consumes a high share of what the panels make. Self-consumed electricity is worth far more than exported electricity, because every kilowatt-hour you use on site offsets the full retail grid price you would otherwise pay. That is why a sound design is sized from half-hourly meter data rather than from roof area, and why EV-charging growth should be modelled into the load before settling on a final system size.

How to read the figures on this site

The cost, size and payback ranges on this site are indicative planning assumptions, not market data and not quotes. They are not taken from a published price index, they vary widely with roof condition, grid connection and the scope of the job, and a real figure needs half-hourly meter data, a roof survey and a written proposal from an installer you appoint.

What you actually pay, and what drives the variation

The price an installer quotes normally covers panels, mounting, inverters, cabling, AC and DC protection, commissioning, and the certification paperwork that a grant or the Smart Export Guarantee may require. Several things move the figure up or down. Roof condition is the big one: older workshop and showroom roofs sometimes need strengthening or a re-roof before they can carry an array, and any asbestos cement roof has to be replaced first because you cannot retrofit panels onto it. Electrical infrastructure matters too. A dealership with an existing three-phase supply and spare capacity at the board is cheaper to connect than one that needs a DNO upgrade. Planning for a rooftop array in England is usually straightforward under permitted development, although above 50 kW the roof case needs the council's prior-approval decision. Check whether your franchise agreement or the manufacturer's retailer standards set any requirements for renewables, EV-charger provision or signage; if they do, agree panel and charger positions with the manufacturer before design, so the franchise sign-off is not a surprise at the end.

Costs people forget to budget for include the DNO connection (a G99 application is needed above 16 A (3.68 kW) per phase, and the connection itself can take many months on a constrained network), the structural survey, scaffolding or mobile access, and, where the car park is the best surface, the steel for a solar carport. Carports cost more per kW than rooftop because of the frame, but they turn dead parking into generation and give shaded, EV-ready customer bays, which has its own brand value on a forecourt. A solar carport is a structure in its own right, so check planning with the council before design.

Payback and how it is measured

A typical dealership payback is indicated at around 5.5 years on a simple basis, on the assumptions on this page. Refrigeration-heavy retail next door can be faster, nearer 5 years, because the load runs 24/7. Simple payback is the easiest figure to grasp, but it ignores the time value of money and the 25-plus year life of the panels, so it helps to model alongside it the internal rate of return (IRR), the net present value (NPV) over the system life, and the levelised cost of energy (LCOE), which is the price per kWh your own solar generates. For most daytime-occupied dealerships the LCOE can come out well below the grid tariff, which is the real reason the investment can work. Ask any installer to show all four numbers in their proposal rather than leaning on the one that flatters the project.

Financing without touching your capital budget

You do not have to buy the system outright. Three routes are common in this sector. A capital purchase paired with the 100% Annual Investment Allowance lets a limited company write off spend up to the £1m limit against tax in year one (solar is a special-rate asset, so it uses the AIA or the 50% First-Year Allowance, not full expensing). Asset finance spreads the cost over several years and can be cash-positive from year one for a daytime-occupied site, which keeps your capital free for the customer-facing parts of the business. A power purchase agreement (PPA) needs no capex at all: a funder owns the system and you simply pay per kWh consumed at a rate below your current grid tariff, so the saving can start from day one. Model the capital, finance and PPA routes side by side so you can see exactly who funds the system and who keeps the saving.

Real benchmarks against your grid bill

Electricity is now one of the largest controllable costs a dealership carries, sitting alongside stock and staff. Against a typical fixed-contract rate, a well-sized rooftop array generating 46,000 to 370,000 kWh a year removes a large slice of that bill while the panels are working. Combine that with the export income the SEG pays for anything you do not use, the year-one tax relief, and the Workplace Charging Scheme grant toward staff and fleet EV chargers, and the combined business case can be a strong one. The figures in the table below are indicative planning ranges for the sector, not quotes or guarantees.