Pubs, Restaurants & Hospitality Venues: Solar panels for dealerships

Why a pub or restaurant suits solar much as a dealership workshop does

A pub or restaurant carries a steady daytime-into-evening electrical load: cellar cooling, kitchen extraction, refrigeration and lighting run for most of the trading day, building toward the lunch and early-evening peaks. That demand sits under the generation curve through the daytime, so a rooftop array is largely consumed on site rather than exported cheaply, and self-consumption drives the return, much the way a dealership's workshop and showroom load anchors its solar case. The payback is a little longer than the very fastest commercial sites because the peak is in the evening, with a typical simple figure near 6.5 years, but a system sized for the daytime kitchen and cellar load plus EV charging usually beats over-sizing.

Energy is now one of the largest controllable costs in hospitality, alongside staff and stock, and a fixed slice of the bill for two decades is valuable in a thin-margin sector where a bad quarter can wipe out a year's profit. Managed pub and restaurant estates can roll a single design across dozens of similar units, the same repeatable-template logic that lets a dealer group standardise across its sites and gives portfolio pricing, a phased capital plan and one point of contact, with the engineering done once and reused across the estate rather than redrawn for every house. On-site generation also gives independents and groups alike a credible local sustainability story, the kind of thing a community pub can put on its wall and a group can put in its annual report, and improves the EPC of a leased or tied house against the MEES standard expected to rise to EPC B by 2030, which is increasingly why landlords support or fund installs.

What a typical install looks like and how we size it

For a pub or restaurant we usually design a system in the 10 to 100 kW range, which is roughly 18 to 185 panels across about 60 to 600 square metres of roof. A system that size generates in the region of 9,000 to 92,000 kWh a year and saves between 2 and 21 tonnes of CO2 annually. Sizing in this sector is driven by daytime baseload rather than roof area, so it comes from at least twelve months of half-hourly meter data, because a wet-led pub has a very different load to a food-led restaurant with heavy kitchen extraction. We size a modest rooftop to the daytime kitchen and cellar load plus any EV charging rather than chasing roof fill, since the evening peak is better served by a sensibly sized array than by over-sizing. A food-led restaurant with heavy lunchtime extraction and refrigeration will justify a larger daytime system than a wet-led community pub whose trade is mostly in the evening, so the two designs can look quite different even on similar roofs, which is why the meter data, not the floor plan, sets the size. Where roof area is limited, beer-garden canopies and car-park solar carports add capacity, the same move a dealer makes over a forecourt, turning otherwise dead surface into generation and shaded, EV-ready parking. We assess the full range of roof types: profiled and standing-seam metal on kitchen extensions, single-ply membrane and felt on flat roofs taking a ballasted system, and concrete. Asbestos cement roofing, common on older pubs and outbuildings, cannot be retrofitted and needs replacement first, which is why we confirm the build-up before quoting rather than discovering it on the day. Where the roof genuinely cannot take an array, whether for heritage, structural or asbestos reasons, the car park and beer garden usually can, and a carport or canopy keeps the project viable on a site that would otherwise be ruled out.

Costs, payback and tax relief

A pub or restaurant project typically lands between £10,000 and £90,000 depending on roof and whether a canopy or carport is added, with a simple payback near 6.5 years. Solar PV is a special-rate plant and machinery asset, so the 100% Annual Investment Allowance lets the business write off the first one million pounds of qualifying spend in year one, up to a 25% effective tax saving; solar does not qualify for full expensing, so we use the AIA or the 50% First-Year Allowance above the cap, with managed-estate rollouts splitting across the two. The Smart Export Guarantee pays for any surplus, which matters most for sites quieter in the daytime. Capital is rarely the obstacle: a power purchase agreement delivers the array with zero capex at a per-kWh rate below grid from day one, asset finance spreads cost over 7 to 15 years and is typically cash-positive from year one, and an operating lease suits estates wanting a predictable per-site monthly cost. Our cost guide works through single-site and estate scenarios.

Funding routes in detail

The 100% Annual Investment Allowance is the headline route, fully expensing a single install within the one million pound cap, with managed-estate rollouts splitting across the AIA and the 50% First-Year Allowance where total spend exceeds it. Where a pub adds staff or customer charging, the Workplace Charging Scheme, administered by the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles, pays £500 per socket and up to £20,000 per applicant from 1 April 2026, covering up to 75% of charger cost across up to 40 sockets, and it closes permanently on 31 March 2027, so apply early. The Smart Export Guarantee covers exported units, supplier-set and typically 4 to 15p per kWh in 2026, which suits seasonal hospitality that exports out of season. For tied or leased houses, the structural question is who funds and who benefits: with MEES EPC B coming in 2030, many landlords now want PV because it protects the value and lettability of the asset, and some fund it directly and recover through the service charge or a green-lease rent share. We model both tenant-funded and landlord-funded routes, provide the consent and wayleave templates, and run the brewery or landlord conversation for you.

Compliance and sector considerations

Two points are specific to hospitality. First, heritage: many pubs are listed or in conservation areas, so Listed Building Consent and conservation-officer engagement are often required, and we use roof slopes hidden from public view, low-profile all-black panels, or a car-park carport that avoids the protected frontage entirely. Second, supply: tied and leased houses in pubco estates need brewery or landlord consent and a wayleave, and smaller single-phase supplies common in older premises may cap system size without a DNO upgrade. Rooftop PV is otherwise generally permitted development under Class A Part 14 of the GPDO 2015 within size limits, listed buildings excepted, while carports and canopies need planning permission. A G99 application is required above 17 kW per phase, and a structural survey precedes any roof loading, with the SPF1981 v3 fire-safety standard increasingly an insurer requirement and a CDM 2015 plan applying above 30 person-days. A particular point for hospitality is timing: rooftop installs almost never require a closure, but the work has to fit around service, so we schedule the noisier and more disruptive tasks for daytime gaps and quieter days and keep the kitchen and bar running throughout. We hold MCS commercial certification for SEG eligibility, NICEIC or NAPIT, RECC, TrustMark and OZEV-approved status for charging works.

How we approach this kind of project

We size from your half-hourly meter data so the system matches the real daytime kitchen and cellar load rather than the evening peak, and we model EV-charging growth. We assess beer-garden canopies and car-park carports alongside the roof where space is tight. We engage the conservation officer early on listed sites, and for tied and leased houses we handle the brewery or landlord consent and wayleave and model who funds what. We check the supply capacity early, since older single-phase premises may need a DNO upgrade, and we confirm the roof build-up and any asbestos cement before quoting. We submit the G99 application early, alongside the structural survey, because the DNO connection is the longest item. We work around service times so trading is not disrupted, install in zones, and limit the only real outage to the final grid connection of four to eight hours, booked for a quiet period such as a Monday morning or a planned closure day. For a managed estate we agree the rollout sequence and a standard install window per house in advance, so each site knows when its days of work fall and can plan its bookings around them. You receive a fixed-price proposal backed by an insurance-backed warranty, and after commissioning we provide annual operations and maintenance and 24/7 remote monitoring; for a managed estate a single standardised design and one monitoring dashboard cover every site.

An illustrative example

As an illustrative composite, not a real named operator or project: picture a managed pub-and-restaurant group piloting solar on a flagship roadside dining pub with a large flat-roofed kitchen extension and a sizeable car park, running heavy kitchen extraction, cellar cooling and lighting, where the group wanted a repeatable template before committing its wider estate. Working from the meter data, a design in the region of 90 kW on the rooftop, with a design option for a beer-garden canopy, would generate roughly 85,000 kWh a year. A single standardised design, rooftop plus optional canopy plus EV charging and one monitoring dashboard, would then be signed off for a wider rollout, with a brewery wayleave template agreed once and reused, portfolio pricing and a phased multi-year capital plan in place, and the qualifying cost written off under the Annual Investment Allowance. On a tied or leased site within the same estate the route would differ only in the funding split, with the landlord-funded option modelled alongside the tenant-funded one so the group could see, house by house, who pays and who keeps the saving. Every figure here is illustrative and depends on the sites, trading pattern and tariff.

When you are ready, see our cost guide, map the schemes on the grants and funding page, request a free feasibility, or read the solar FAQs. Operators with mixed estates may also want supermarket and convenience solar or golf and country club solar.