How much do solar panels for industrial units cost?

The honest answer to what solar panels cost on an industrial unit is that it depends on the size of the system, and on an industrial roof the system can be large. Most industrial unit installs land between 200 kW and 3 MW, which puts typical project values in the range of roughly £150,000 to £2.4 million. Smaller units and last-mile depots start lower, often around £90,000 for a 100 kW system, while the biggest distribution sheds and port warehouses run into the millions. The cost per kilowatt falls as the system grows, so a large array is far better value per unit of capacity than a small one.

As a working guide for 2026, expect to pay around £700 to £900 per kW installed for a typical industrial unit array, and below £700 per kW on the largest projects where economies of scale kick in. A 500 kW system on a mid-sized warehouse, for example, commonly sits around £350,000 to £450,000 all in, covering panels, mounting, inverters, cabling, the grid connection works, and commissioning. The figures on the sub-vertical cards below come from real project data across distribution centres, fulfilment centres, cold-chain warehouses, last-mile depots, and port warehouses, so you can see how the numbers shift with building type.

What drives the variation

Two industrial units of the same floor area can carry quite different price tags, and the reasons are usually practical. Roof condition is the big one. A modern profiled steel roof in good order takes solar straightforwardly, but an older unit with an asbestos cement roof cannot be retrofitted and needs a combined re-roof first. The good news is that the solar business case often pays for the re-roof, so it is worth pricing both together rather than ruling out an older building.

Electrical infrastructure matters too. If your existing switchgear and incoming supply have headroom, the connection is simpler. If the array is large relative to your supply, you may need upgraded switchgear or, for megawatt-scale systems, contestable grid works. The other cost drivers specific to industrial units are sprinkler clearances and insurer requirements. We design every layout to LPC sprinkler clearance standards and obtain insurer sign-off before anything is fabricated, which is built into our pricing rather than charged as an extra later.

Financing: cash, asset finance, or a PPA

There are three main ways to fund an industrial solar install, and the right one depends on whether you own or lease the building and how you treat capital. Buying outright with cash gives you the full benefit: you own the asset, claim the tax allowances, and keep every kilowatt-hour of saving. Most industrial installs qualify as plant and machinery, so a limited company can expense the system under the 100% Annual Investment Allowance, which is available up to £1 million of qualifying spend. For a company paying corporation tax, that translates to an effective saving of around a quarter of the install cost in the first year. There is more detail on this in our grants and funding guide.

Asset finance spreads the cost over five to ten years. For a daytime-occupied industrial unit, the monthly energy saving usually exceeds the finance repayment from month one, so the project is cash-flow positive without any upfront outlay. A power purchase agreement, or PPA, goes a step further: a third party owns and operates the system on your roof, and you simply buy the electricity it generates at a rate below the grid price, with no capex and nothing on your balance sheet. PPAs are particularly useful for tenants on shorter leases, where ownership of a fixed asset is awkward, while ownership tends to suit owner-occupiers who want the full long-term return.

A worked example

Take a 500 kW system on a distribution unit with an annual electricity bill of around £200,000. At roughly £700 to £900 per kW, the install costs in the region of £350,000 to £450,000. A system that size on a daytime-occupied unit typically generates around 460,000 kWh a year, and with self-consumption of 80% or more, most of that displaces grid electricity at the full retail price. The annual saving commonly lands near £90,000 to £100,000, which puts simple payback at roughly five to six years. Apply the Annual Investment Allowance and the effective payback shortens further. Over a 25-year panel life, the same system can return several times its original cost.

How to read payback figures

Simple payback, the number of years for cumulative savings to equal the install cost, is the easiest figure to grasp and the one most people ask for. It is useful but blunt, because it ignores what happens after payback and treats a pound saved in year ten the same as a pound saved in year one. For a fuller picture we model the internal rate of return and the net present value over the system's life, which account for the time value of money and the long tail of savings after the system has paid for itself. For most industrial installs the IRR lands comfortably in the mid-teens or higher, and cold-chain warehouses with their round-the-clock refrigeration load often do considerably better.

The costs people forget

A fair quote includes the items that catch people out. The structural survey confirms the roof can carry the array and the wind loading at your site. The DNO connection, applied for under G99 for anything above 17 kW per phase, carries its own fees and timescale, and for large systems the connection can be the most significant single cost and the longest item in the programme. Scaffolding or access equipment, cable runs from roof to switchgear, metering, and monitoring are all part of a complete install. We set all of this out line by line in a fixed-price proposal, so there are no surprises once work starts. If your roof needs replacing first, we price the re-roof transparently alongside the PV rather than discovering it mid-project.

Cost against the grid

The reason industrial solar stacks up so well is the gap between what you pay the grid and what your own roof costs to run. Once installed, the electricity from your panels has effectively no marginal cost for 25 years, while grid electricity has risen sharply and network charges with it. Every kilowatt-hour you generate and use on site avoids the full retail tariff, including the network and policy costs bundled into it. That is why the units with the strongest daytime or round-the-clock loads, cold chain, fulfilment, high-throughput distribution, see the fastest returns. The more of your own power you use, the better the maths.