Battery Storage Reigate

The borough's 59,849 households (Census 2021) include 17,720 in semi-detached houses, 16,679 detached, 9,596 terraced and 12,839 in purpose-built flats. In the semis and detached houses around South Park, Woodhatch and Reigate Heath, a battery normally goes on a garage wall, in a utility room close to the consumer unit or on a side elevation. We rarely use a loft, where summer heat and awkward access for servicing count against it. Terraced houses near the town centre, often with no side access, usually take the unit on a rear wall or in a ground-floor room away from the escape route.

With 71.1% of households owning their home and 15.7% renting privately (Census 2021), most Reigate decisions sit with the occupier, though tenants need the landlord's written consent and flat owners the freeholder's. Heritage is the Reigate-specific check. The town centre conservation area, the 2024 additions such as Blanford Road and the extended Wray Common area, and Article 4 directions on most of the borough's conservation areas all mean a unit on a street-facing wall deserves a word with the council first; indoors or on a rear wall, the street scene does not change. For a listed house, ask about listed building consent before anything is fixed.

Reigate's town centre is well inside UK Power Networks' South Eastern Power Networks area, about 15.6 km from the next licence area, so RH2 battery installations are notified to UK Power Networks. A battery, with or without panels, is covered by the same rules as generation: equipment rated up to 16 A per phase (3.68 kW) is notified under G98, before commissioning or within 28 days after, and anything above that needs G99 approval before work starts, which a 4 kW inverter at 17.39 A already triggers. UK Power Networks says it approves automatically where maximum export after any export limitation is under 5 kW, and that it charges nothing unless your supply needs upgrading first.

A standard grid-tied battery switches off in a power cut, even on a bright day with the panels producing, because the inverter must disconnect from the network until it returns. If you want the lights, fridge and broadband to carry on in a Reigate home through an outage, backup has to be designed in, with an isolation switch and a circuit for the loads you choose. Whether you are in a terrace off the High Street or a detached house out at Sidlow, the design starts from which circuits matter to you. We price backup separately and will say if it does not add up.

Ofgem's reported 2024/25 figures for South Eastern Power Networks show about 42.2 supply interruptions per 100 customers and about 30.4 minutes lost per customer over the year, against 39.7 and 35.1 across Great Britain. Source: Ofgem — RIIO-2 Electricity Distribution: annual report 2024 to 2025, supplementary datafile, sheet "Ch2 outputs - reliability" (CI and CML performance, planned and unplanned).