Commercial Solar Installers in Andover

Installed prices in 2026 sit between about £700 and £1,300 per kWp depending on system size, roof type and how much electrical work your board needs. Bigger systems are cheaper per kW — a 200 kWp array on a Walworth-style portal-frame roof costs far less per panel than a 20 kWp office system. Central-southern England also gets more sun than the UK average, so Andover yields are at the better end of what a UK roof can do.

*Based on roughly 950 kWh per kWp per year for a well-oriented roof in central-southern England — we confirm the real figure for your building with shading analysis at survey. Budget separately for a possible G99 connection fee on larger systems (see below) and structural checks on older 1960s-built units at Portway.

One thing to price in correctly: the 0% VAT window that runs until 31 March 2027 applies to domestic installations only. Commercial installs are standard-rated at 20% — fully recoverable if your business is VAT-registered, so for most Andover firms it is cash-flow, not cost.

Solar PV is special-rate pool plant and machinery for capital allowances. That matters, because it means the widely repeated "full expensing" claim does not apply to solar (full expensing covers main-rate assets), and the 130% super-deduction ended in 2023. What you actually use is one of these:

• Annual Investment Allowance (AIA) — 100% of the cost written off against profits in year one, up to £1m of qualifying spend. This is the route almost every Andover SME should take.
• 50% First-Year Allowance — if your AIA is already committed to other plant, you can still deduct half the solar cost in year one, with the balance relieved at 6% per year.

Worked example — 50 kWp on a distribution unit, £50,000 installed:

• ~47,500 kWh generated per year; at 60% self-consumed against a ~26p/kWh import rate that's roughly £7,400/yr off your bills, plus ~£2,300/yr from exporting the rest at ~12p/kWh.
• AIA at 25% corporation tax returns £12,500 in year-one tax relief, taking the net cost to ~£37,500.
• Simple payback: around 4 years net of tax relief (roughly 5 gross), then 20+ further years of generation, with panels typically carrying 25-year performance warranties.

We put your actual half-hourly consumption data through this model at survey rather than quoting generic figures — a refrigerated warehouse on Andover Business Park and a 9-to-5 office on East Portway have completely different self-consumption profiles, and that ratio drives the payback more than the panel price does.

Andover sits in the Southern licence area of SSEN (Scottish & Southern Electricity Networks), so every commercial system here needs SSEN's permission to connect. We prepare and submit the application as part of the job:

• G98 — up to 3.68 kW per phase (16A). Too small for almost any commercial install.
• G99 — everything above that. For straightforward applications SSEN issues a connection offer within 45 working days, and smaller three-phase systems can qualify for its fast-track route with a response in around 10 working days. Connection offers are then typically valid for 90 days, so you have time to consider before accepting.
• Fees and export limits — systems above 50 kW can attract G99 application/connection charges (anywhere from a few hundred pounds to several thousand where network studies are needed), and SSEN may cap your export rather than refuse the connection. We design around an export limit with battery storage or an export-limiting device where that's cheaper than reinforcement.

On export income: the Smart Export Guarantee is mandatory for licensed suppliers with over 150,000 customers and is open to installations up to 5 MW, so most Andover commercial systems qualify. Rates as of mid-2026 span roughly 4p–15p/kWh — Octopus cut its Outgoing tariff to 12p/kWh on 1 March 2026, and default SEG rates are nearer 4p, so picking the tariff (or a PPA on larger systems) genuinely changes your return. We verify current rates with your supplier at quote stage rather than assuming.

Andover has an unusually deep stock of solar-ready commercial roofs for a town its size, and we survey all of it from Whiteley — about 30 miles away via the M3 and A34:

• Walworth Business Park — the town's biggest concentration of manufacturing and logistics roofs, east of the town, home to names like Twinings (which moved its tea production here from London in 1966), Le Creuset, Stannah and SSI-Schaefer, with Ocado and Abel & Cole using it for fulfilment. Big steel portal-frame roofs here take 100–500 kWp arrays with simple ballasted or trapezoidal-clamp mounting.
• Andover Business Park (A303 junction) — anchored by the Co-op's ~468,000 sq ft regional distribution centre, with occupiers including Westcoast, Rich Products and Berry Bros & Rudd. Refrigeration and materials-handling loads run all day, which is exactly the profile where solar self-consumption (and payback) is strongest.
• East and West Portway — industrial estates dating from Andover's 1960s town-expansion era, where we always include a structural check on older roof sheets before quoting.
• Town-centre offices and retail — smaller 10–30 kWp three-phase systems; note that street-facing roof slopes around the historic High Street and Guildhall can carry conservation constraints, which we check with Test Valley before design.
• Farms and rural units along the Bourne Valley and A303 corridor — barn roofs qualify for exactly the same AIA treatment as factory roofs.

The local planning picture helps too: Andover's planning authority is Test Valley Borough Council, which first adopted a Climate Emergency Action Plan in June 2020, refreshed it in November 2024, and has been putting solar on its own buildings — the 2024 retrofit of its Bourne House depot included rooftop solar — so rooftop commercial PV applications here are pushing at an open door. Most rooftop commercial solar in England is permitted development in any case, so the majority of Andover installs need no planning application at all.

One small team. Every install. Solent Solar isn't a sales office with subcontracted fitters — Tom and his team do the survey, the design, the SSEN G99 application, the installation and the handover themselves. For a commercial project that means the team who priced your payback model is the same team on your roof, and the same team who answers the phone in year five.

• MCS-certified installation — required for SEG export registration — and HIES member for consumer-grade protection on workmanship.
• EV chargepoints installed alongside, so staff and fleet charging can go in on the same visit under the same G99 application. The Workplace Charging Scheme currently contributes up to £500 per socket (rate from 1 April 2026, capped at 40 sockets, scheme open until 31 March 2027) — we confirm your eligibility at survey.
• Commercial battery storage from SigEnergy, Fox ESS and GoodWe — scalable three-phase systems that shift export into evening self-consumption or work around an SSEN export cap. We no longer specify GivEnergy hardware following the company's administration on 9 April 2026; existing GivEnergy batteries keep working (the monitoring app is run by a separate software company that is not in administration), and we can service and maintain them.
• Maintenance and monitoring — panel cleaning, inverter swaps and performance checks across our 30-mile patch, Andover included.

If you run a unit at Walworth, Portway or Andover Business Park — or a farm outside town — book a free site survey: call Tom on 07833 448687 or use the quote form and we'll come back with real numbers from your own consumption data, not a template quote.

How much does commercial solar cost in Andover in 2026?

Do I need planning permission for solar on my Andover unit?

How long does the SSEN grid connection take for a commercial system?

Can my business really write off the whole system in year one?

Does Solent Solar actually cover Andover?