Solar Panels Doncaster: MCS-Certified Installation from Our DN4 Base

What the survey checks on a Doncaster roof — and where the battery ends up

A satellite estimate can tell you roughly how much roof you have. It cannot tell you whether that roof will take the fixings, whether the timber underneath is sound, or where the equipment is going to live. These are the things that decide whether a quote survives contact with the property, and they are the reason we survey before we price rather than after.

The covering decides the fixing kit. Natural slate needs slates lifted and hooks set against the batten, often with lead work on reinstatement — it is slower and it is not a job for a standard tile hook. Concrete interlocking tile is the most straightforward. Plain clay tile is more brittle and breaks more readily during handling, so allow for replacements. Metal or profiled sheet on a garage or outbuilding is a different system again. Any installer who has not asked what is on your roof has not priced your roof.

Roof condition, before the panels not after. The panel product warranty on the systems we fit runs to as long as 30 years. If the covering or the flashing is close to the end of its life, the honest answer at survey is that the roof wants attention first — because the alternative is stripping an array off to do work that was needed anyway. We would rather tell you that on the day than after a deposit has changed hands.

Shading, and the tree you may not be allowed to cut. Chimneys, dormers, neighbouring gables and mature trees all matter more than compass direction. Where a property sits inside a conservation area the council also protects the trees in it, and works to them need notice to the council before they start — so a shading problem that looks like a quick pruning job can carry a lead time. We check the designation for your address at survey and design around the shade rather than assuming it can be removed. We design around the shade rather than assuming it will go away.

Where the inverter and the battery go. City of Doncaster Council's own climate page states the borough has already experienced heavy rainfall leading to local flooding that has affected housing and farmland, and that the Met Office expects such events to increase. Inverters and batteries are electrical equipment on a wall and they are not designed to be stood in water. If your garage or ground floor has taken water before, tell the surveyor how high it reached — mounting position is free to change on survey day and expensive to change afterwards.

0% VAT, export payments, and what happened to the South Yorkshire group-buy

0% VAT runs until 31 March 2027. Domestic solar and battery storage currently carries a zero rate of VAT. That relief is dated: it applies until 31 March 2027, so the date on your quote and the date the work is done both matter. Check that any quote you are given shows zero VAT on the eligible domestic elements rather than adding it and describing it as a discount.

Export payments: why we do not print a pence figure. Under the Smart Export Guarantee every large supplier has to offer an export tariff, but the rates differ by supplier and by tariff and they change over time. Any local page quoting you a fixed pence-per-kWh number is quoting the day it was written, not the day you will be paid, so treat a specific figure on any installer's site as decoration. Two things are worth knowing instead: your export supplier does not have to be the supplier you buy electricity from, so you can shop the export rate separately; and you will generally need the MCS certificate from your installation plus a meter capable of half-hourly export readings in order to register at all.

The group-buy scheme has moved. If you have been waiting for another council-backed round of Solar Together in South Yorkshire, there is no longer a regional page for it. The old solartogether.co.uk South Yorkshire address now redirects to a national page at switchtogether.co.uk, the brand having been renamed Switch Together. There is nothing South Yorkshire-specific to register for there at the time of writing, and the 0% VAT relief applies to a direct purchase exactly as it would to a group-buy one.

If you are buying for a business. Solar PV is special-rate expenditure for capital allowances, which means it does not qualify for full expensing — a claim we see made regularly and incorrectly. Relief comes through the Annual Investment Allowance, up to £1m a year, or the 50% first-year allowance. Confirm the treatment with your accountant before it goes in a business case.

What solar panels generate in Doncaster, by roof direction

These figures come from the EU's PVGIS model for a point in Doncaster town centre, with the settings we use for every town we cover: crystalline panels, 14% system losses, 35° for a south-facing roof and 30° for east and west. They are modelled output per kilowatt-peak (kWp), not readings from a particular house.

Source: PVGIS 5.2, European Commission Joint Research Centre, fetched 12 October 2026. December is modelled at 34 kWh per kWp and July at 120, so a south-facing 4.85 kWp system makes roughly 165 kWh in December against 580 kWh in July.

Direction, then shade. On the 45.5% of Doncaster households in a semi, the usable roof is often one slope, and on streets that run north to south that slope faces east or west: about 775 kWh per kWp instead of 980, which is still worth having. What PVGIS cannot see is the chimney, the dormer, the neighbour's gable or the tree, and those are checked on the roof at the survey.

Doncaster is flat country, which keeps the terrain out of the picture, but the Met Office's Finningley figures are a reminder that the sunshine is ordinary English sunshine: 1,517 hours a year on average, with the station's later years filled from its neighbours because its own observations stopped in 1995.

What a Doncaster quote should include, and the extras to ask about

Our packages start at 8 panels (3.9 kWp) from £4,999 and the standard 10-panel 4.85 kWp system is from £6,499, with no VAT on a home installation until 31 March 2027. The price is for the system installed; the things that move it, and that any installer should be asked about before you sign, are these.

• Scaffolding. Ours goes up the day before the install, and our package prices cover supply and installation; ask any installer whether theirs do the same, because a quote that lists the scaffold as an extra is not comparable until you add it back.
• The roof itself. Slate needs slates lifted and hooks set; plain clay tiles break more readily than concrete interlocking tiles, so allow for replacements. A roof covering near the end of its life wants attention before panels, not after.
• The consumer unit and the cable route. An older fuse board may need work before an inverter can be connected; a long run from a detached garage adds cable and labour.
• The grid route. Northern Powergrid runs the network here. A system whose inverters total no more than 16 A per phase (3.68 kW on a single-phase supply) is notified under G98 after installation; above that, a G99 application has to be approved before commissioning. We submit whichever applies and it is in the quote.
• Bird proofing, monitoring and the battery. Each is a line item or it is not included; ask which.

Every quote we issue names the hardware (AIKO NEOSTAR panels and the exact storage unit if you are having one), the modelled annual generation for your roof, the grid route, and the warranties: 15 years on workmanship and up to 30 years on the panels. Put a competitor's quote beside it line for line.