What decides a ground mount
When a Ground Mount Beats a Roof
The roof is the default because it is free real estate. A ground mount earns its keep when the roof is not available or not good: heavy shading from trees or a neighbouring building, a north-facing or broken roof plane, a listed building where an array on the slope will not get consent, a thatched or fragile covering, or simply a house too small to take a useful system.
On the ground you also get to choose the orientation and the tilt, rather than accepting whatever the builder chose in 1963. And the array is at head height, so cleaning, inspection and any later repair are quick and safe instead of a scaffold job.
The cases where it clearly wins are properties with land: smallholdings, paddocks, barn conversions and larger rural plots where the panels can sit well away from the house and out of sight of the road.
The case where it clearly loses is a small suburban garden. Not because of the engineering, but because of what permitted development allows there — which is the next section, and it is the part most people are surprised by.
What Permitted Development Actually Allows in a Garden
Stand-alone solar within the curtilage of a house sits under Class B of Part 14 of the General Permitted Development Order, and Class B is tight. Only one stand-alone installation is permitted. The surface area of the panels must not exceed 9 square metres, and no dimension of the array including any housing may exceed 3 metres. Height is capped at 4 metres in the general case, with lower limits close to a boundary, forward of the principal elevation, and in a conservation area nearer a highway than the house.
Translate 9 square metres into panels and the picture gets concrete. A typical modern domestic panel is roughly 1.75 m by 1.13 m, so very close to 2 square metres each. That is about four panels — call it 1.5 to 1.8 kW. It is a useful contribution to a hot water tank or an EV trickle charge. It is not a house-sized solar system.
So the honest position on most suburban gardens is this: a permitted-development ground mount is small, and a ground mount worth having is a planning application. Anyone who tells you otherwise has not read Class B.
None of it applies within the curtilage of a listed building or on a scheduled monument, where you are into consent rather than permitted development from the start. An Article 4 direction can also remove these rights, so your council’s list is worth checking before anything else.
When You Need Permission — and What the Officer Looks At
A householder planning application for a garden array is a routine piece of work, not an ordeal, and around here most of them turn on visual impact rather than on the technology.
What gets considered: whether the array is visible from the highway and from neighbouring windows, whether it sits forward of the house, how it reads against the landscape, and what screening exists or could be planted. Height and the reflectivity of the frame matter more than kilowatts.
Two designations change the conversation locally. Parts of this patch fall inside the New Forest National Park, where the Park Authority is the planning authority, and the South Downs National Park covers ground to the north and east. Both weigh landscape character heavily, which usually pushes an array down in height, back from boundaries and behind existing screening rather than refusing it outright.
Our Hampshire solar planning permission guide goes through which council decides what, and we will tell you at survey whether we think an application is likely to succeed before you spend the fee.
Frames, Foundations and Ground Conditions
The frame is straightforward engineering; the foundation is where sites differ. Driven ground screws are quick, need no concrete and can be taken out again, which suits agricultural land and anywhere you might want the ground back. Concrete pads or ballast blocks suit made ground, shallow soil over chalk, or anywhere piling is impractical. Which one you need is a question about your ground, not a house style.
Pitch is usually set steeper than a flat roof and shallower than a south-coast house roof, and rows are spaced so the front row does not shade the one behind in midwinter — the same geometry problem as a flat roof, with more room to solve it.
Clearance underneath matters more than people think. Enough height keeps the bottom edge out of long grass and splash, lets air move behind the panels, and means you can strim under the array without catching cables. Vegetation shading the bottom row is one of the commonest causes of a ground array quietly underperforming.
Exposure cuts both ways: an open field gives you unshaded sun and the full force of the wind, so the frame and its foundations are specified for the site rather than for a catalogue.
The Trench Is the Part People Forget
A ground array is only useful once its electricity reaches the house, and that means a buried cable run. It is the cost that surprises people, because it scales with distance while the panels do not.
Two things drive it. Voltage drop over a long run means larger cable, and larger cable costs disproportionately more. And the trench itself has to be dug to a sensible depth, with armoured cable and warning tape, routed around drains, soakaways, tree roots and anything else already buried.
Where the run is long, it is often better to put the inverter at the array and send alternating current back to the house, or to size the cable generously once rather than regret it. We work that out at survey with the actual route walked, not estimated off a map.
It is also the reason the nearest corner of a field is not always the right place for an array. Sometimes moving it thirty metres closer costs less than the cable it saves.
Living With an Array You Can Walk Up To
The great advantage of a ground mount is access. Cleaning, inspection, connector checks and any repair happen from the ground, so the work that costs real money on a roof — scaffold, access, working at height — mostly disappears.
What replaces it is groundskeeping. Grass and brambles grow into the bottom row, and a strimmer meets cables and connectors. A membrane, a gravel strip or simply keeping a mown margin around the array solves it for a few pounds and prevents the slow shading losses.
Theft and damage are worth a sentence rather than a scare. An array in a field away from the house is more exposed than one on a roof; sensible siting within sight of the house, decent fixings and adding the array to your insurance schedule are the usual answers.
Everything else is the same as a roof system, and we cover ground arrays on the same solar panel maintenance terms — which on a ground mount is a cheaper visit, because nobody has to climb anything.
Ground Mounted Solar: What the Order Actually Says
The Class B limits below are quoted from the statute, not from a rule of thumb. They are the reason most useful garden arrays need a planning application.
Planning: Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015, Schedule 2 Part 14, legislation.gov.uk, read 25 September 2026 (the amendment in force 27 August 2026 added restrictions on plug-in solar). Lower height limits apply within 5 metres of a boundary, forward of the principal elevation, and in a conservation area nearer a highway than the house — check the current text and your council’s Article 4 list before designing anything. Panel count assumes a typical domestic module of about 1.75 m × 1.13 m. Price cap: Ofgem, 1 Oct–31 Dec 2026 (Direct Debit). Export: Octopus OUTGOING-VAR-24-10-26, region H, from 1 March 2026. VAT: HMRC VAT Notice 708/6. Grid: ENA Engineering Recommendation G98/G99 — SSEN is the network operator here.
How a Ground Mounted Solar Installation Runs
Site visit and route walk
We look at where the array could go, what shades it through the year, what the ground is made of, and we walk the cable route back to the house. The trench is costed from the walk, not guessed from a map.
Planning check, before design
We measure the proposal against Class B and tell you plainly whether it fits permitted development or needs an application — and if it needs one, whether we think it will succeed.
Foundation and frame specification
Ground screws, pads or ballast, chosen on the ground conditions and the exposure of the site, with row spacing set so the array does not shade itself in winter.
Network paperwork
SSEN is the distribution network operator here. Systems up to 16 amps per phase (3.68 kW on a single-phase supply) are notified under G98 after commissioning; anything larger — including many battery add-ons — needs a G99 application approved before installation.
Installation and testing
Scaffolding goes up first. The array, inverter and any battery are then fitted, the circuits are tested, and the system is commissioned before the scaffold comes down.
Handover
You receive the MCS certificate — needed to claim Smart Export Guarantee payments — with the commissioning records and warranty documents.
Ground Mounted Solar FAQs
The planning limits and the practical ones, quoted from the Order and from the ground.
Often, yes. Permitted development under Class B of Part 14 allows one stand-alone installation with panels of no more than 9 square metres, no dimension over 3 metres including housing, and a height of up to 4 metres in the general case, with lower limits near boundaries, forward of the principal elevation and in conservation areas. Anything larger than roughly four panels is a householder planning application.
About four. The limit is on area rather than count: 9 square metres of panels. A typical modern domestic panel is roughly 1.75 m by 1.13 m, so close to 2 square metres each — which works out at four panels, somewhere around 1.5 to 1.8 kW.
A panel is a panel. What a ground mount gives you is control: you can choose the orientation and the tilt instead of inheriting the roof’s, keep the array clear of shading, and let air move freely behind it. Those things usually add up to more output per panel than a compromised roof — but not because the panels themselves are different.
More than the panel area, because rows have to be spaced so they do not shade each other in midwinter, and you need room to get around the array to maintain it. As a working figure at survey we allow roughly two to three times the panel area for a south-facing layout on level ground, then check it against the actual sun path on your site.
It depends entirely on the ground. Driven ground screws are quick, need no concrete and can be removed again, which suits agricultural land. Concrete pads or ballast suit made ground, shallow soil over chalk, or sites where piling is impractical. The exposure of the site sets how much foundation the wind loading demands.
Through a buried armoured cable in a trench, with warning tape above it, routed clear of drains and roots. Distance is what costs money: a long run needs larger cable to keep the voltage drop acceptable. On longer runs it can be better to put the inverter at the array. We price the trench from walking the actual route.
Physically yes, and it is a common way to expand. Two things to square first: Class B permits only one stand-alone installation within the curtilage, so a second array is a planning question; and the combined generation changes your grid connection position — above 3.68 kW per phase you are into a G99 application to the network operator, approved before installation rather than notified after.
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Related services and guides
Solar panel installation · Solar planning permission in Hampshire · Conservation area solar rules · Flat roof solar panels · Solar panel maintenance · Hampshire solar panel costs