The UK government has shared new data that indicates that, as of the end of June 2024, the UK reached a solar capacity of 16.9GW.
The Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) reported an 8.5% increase (1.3 GW) in solar capacity over the previous year, distributed across more than 1.5 million domestic and commercial installations.
In 2023, there were 196,782 new solar projects, marking the second-highest number of new installations in a year, surpassed only by 2011’s 208,586 installations.
Despite this high number of new projects, the DESNZ noted that the overall capacity added in 2023 ranked only fifth on record, as most of these installations were relatively small.
June 2024 saw the completion of 15,807 new installations, contributing 65MW of capacity. Although this was fewer than May’s 16,333 installations, it remains significantly higher than the average monthly figures from 2016 to 2021, just above the median number of monthly installations over the past year (15,000).
Domestic solar installations dominate the UK market, with over 1.4 million of the nearly 1.6 million total installations being residential.
However, these domestic installations only account for 30% of the UK’s total solar capacity. In June 2024, residential buildings hosted 78% of new installations, up to 48MW of capacity.
