A Guide to Starting Your Community Solar Project

Author: Steve Fairless
Originally Published: 27th October 2024 · Updated: 28th August 2026

A successful community solar project starts with the organisation, not the panels. Before selecting hardware, a community group needs a clear ownership model, a building or site with suitable electricity demand, realistic funding, permission to install, a grid-connection route, a maintenance plan and agreement on what happens to the financial benefit.

At Sustainable Energy Engineering, we have installed solar and storage for community buildings in the North East, so we know the technical design is only one part of the project. A village hall, church, charity, social club or community centre may have trustees, grant conditions, public procurement, restricted funds, evening-heavy energy use or resilience goals that a standard residential proposal does not address.

Government policy has also moved quickly. The February 2026 Local Power Plan announcement committed up to £1 billion of new funding for local and community energy and set an ambition to support an initial 1,000 clean-energy projects. That creates opportunity, but it does not remove the need for a bankable project plan.

Updated: 28th August 2026 using the latest Community Energy Fund project list, Local Power Plan, MCS and grid-connection guidance.

First, Be Clear What “Community Solar” Means in the UK

In the UK, community solar can describe several models: a community-owned array on a village hall, solar on a church or social club that reduces the host building's bills, a community benefit society raising capital for local generation, a shared-energy project or a larger locally owned scheme that sells electricity and reinvests revenue.

That is different from the subscription-based “community solar” model common in parts of the United States. For a UK project, governance, site control, metering, electricity use and grid arrangements need to be designed around the actual legal and physical structure.

Why 2026 Is a Significant Year for Community Energy

The UK government's February 2026 announcement described the Local Power Plan as the biggest public investment in community energy to date, with up to £1 billion intended to support local and community projects through grants, loans, capability building and business-model development.

The announcement also stated that Great British Energy aims to support an initial 1,000 clean-energy projects and highlighted £5 million already allocated for 53 new community-energy projects in England.

Funding programmes have eligibility rules and can change. A community should not sign an installation contract on the assumption that a grant is guaranteed until an award is formally confirmed.

Step 1: Decide What Success Looks Like

A community centre may want to reduce daytime running costs. A church may use most electricity on evenings and weekends. A resilience hub may value backup capability. A community benefit society may be primarily interested in revenue and local reinvestment.

Step 2: Build an Energy Baseline

We want at least a full year of electricity data where possible. Monthly bills are useful; half-hourly smart-meter or AMR data are better for larger projects because they show when demand occurs.

A community building with 20,000 kWh annual use concentrated on weekday daytime hours can absorb solar differently from one with the same annual consumption concentrated in winter evenings. Annual kWh alone is not enough.

For community and non-domestic sites, our commercial solar design process focuses on the actual load profile and electrical supply.

Step 3: Confirm the Site Can Physically Take the System

Before funding applications become too detailed, confirm the basic engineering feasibility:

• roof age and condition;
• structural capacity;
• roof covering and fixing method;
• orientation and pitch;
• shading from trees, towers, chimneys or neighbouring buildings;
• usable area and fire/access routes;
• switchgear condition and spare capacity;
• location for inverters, batteries and isolators;
• cable routes;
• three-phase or single-phase supply.

MCS MIS 3002 Issue 6.0 sets current technical expectations for solar PV installation, including structural/weather-tightness considerations and commissioning.

Step 4: Understand Grid Connection Early

Community projects often reach sizes where the network application is more important than on a small domestic installation. The Energy Networks Association's current G98 framework covers fully type-tested microgenerators up to and including 16 A per phase. Larger or more complex generation commonly falls under G99 processes.

For a community building, we prefer to identify the likely connection route early rather than design a large array first and discover later that export capacity or network reinforcement changes the economics.

Step 5: Decide Whether Battery Storage Has a Clear Job

A battery can be valuable where the building wants backup, has evening loads, faces export limitations or can benefit from time-of-use electricity. But it should have a defined purpose.

For example, our Dipton Community Centre project combined an 8 kW solar array with 12.3 kWh of Fox ESS battery storage and a changeover arrangement because maintaining a community “hub” during a power cut was one of the client's priorities. That resilience requirement justified a different design from a simple bill-reduction system.

For organisations considering storage, solar battery storage should be modelled with usable kWh, charge/discharge kW, backup limitations and expected cycling rather than battery nameplate capacity alone.

Step 6: Build the Funding Strategy Around the Project — Not the Other Way Around

The May 2026 Community Energy Fund project list shows how broad the sector has become. In the North East Local Net Zero Hub region alone, listed projects include the Spennymoor Solar Array (£35,500), Community Owned Solar PV (£21,720), Sustainable Arts in Leeds CIC solar PV (£34,820) and a CERT CIC solar PV Stage 2 award of £86,619.20.

Those examples show that public funding can support feasibility and development, but the appropriate route for a new project might also be community shares, charitable funding, local-authority support, own reserves, borrowing, a power-purchase structure or a combination.

Step 7: Decide How Export Will Be Treated

If the project exports surplus electricity, the revenue model needs to be explicit. Ofgem's Smart Export Guarantee applies to eligible solar PV generators up to 5 MW in Great Britain, but suppliers set their own tariff rates and terms.

Community projects should avoid building a business case around one temporary export tariff without scenario testing. We normally separate the value of self-consumption from export income so trustees can see which part of the case is most robust.

Step 8: Put Governance and Decision Rights in Writing

Technical teams need to know who can approve a roof lease, grant condition, variation, payment, maintenance visit or future battery expansion. Community projects can stall when everyone supports the idea but nobody has clear authority to sign.

Step 9: Procure on Quality, Not Just Lowest Capital Cost

A community asset may be expected to serve multiple trustee boards over 20-30 years. That makes documentation and aftercare especially important.

Compare exact modules, inverter, storage, mounting, warranties, expected generation, grid assumptions, monitoring, commissioning, certification and maintenance. A cheaper proposal can be excellent — but only if it is genuinely the same technical scope.

Step 10: Measure the Result After Installation

Community solar is easier to defend and expand when the data is visible. Record generation, self-consumption, export, grid import and battery behaviour where applicable. Compare actual results against the design estimate over meaningful periods.

That data can support grant reporting, trustee decisions, member communications and future expansion.

Common Community Solar Mistakes

Our Practical Recommendation

Start with a one-page project brief: organisation, site, annual consumption, half-hourly data if available, roof/land ownership, main objective, rough budget, funding status and required completion date. From there, technical feasibility can be tested before the group spends months developing the wrong model.