Most of the electricity an Edmonton roof makes arrives in the months when the house needs least of it. PVGIS, the European Commission’s solar model, puts a 4 kWp south-facing array at the Edmonton town-centre point at about 477 kWh in June and about 142 kWh in December. That gap decides how much of your driving the sun can pay for, and the honest answer is: a useful share in summer, almost none in winter.
This guide works through one June day and one December day, then asks the question that matters more in N9 and N18 than in most places: is the car at home, and is the roof yours? For the charger itself, the cable route and the grant position, see our page on home EV charger options in Edmonton.
A June day on an Edmonton roof
Divide PVGIS’s June figure for Edmonton, 477 kWh, by 30 and the array averages about 15.9 kWh a day. Ofgem’s typical domestic consumption value, from 1 July 2026, is 2,500 kWh a year for a medium household, which is about 6.8 kWh a day. Take one from the other and about 9 kWh a day is left over (our arithmetic).
Nine kilowatt-hours is roughly an hour and a quarter of charging at 7 kW. Over the whole of June, the most an Edmonton roof of this size could leave after the house is about 272 kWh, which on paper is around four and a half charges of a 60 kWh car battery (our arithmetic again). Treat that as a ceiling. The house does not use its 6.8 kWh evenly through the day; much of it goes on in the evening, after the panels have stopped. And the car can only take the surplus if it is parked and plugged in while the sun is up.
July looks much the same: PVGIS gives about 478 kWh, roughly 15.4 kWh a day across 31 days. Hampstead, the nearest Met Office station that records sunshine, averaged about 200 hours of it in July over 1991 to 2020.
A December day on the same roof
December is a different picture. The same array makes about 142 kWh, about 4.6 kWh a day. That is roughly 2.2 kWh short of what the typical household uses, before the car is counted at all (our arithmetic). January, at about 159 kWh, is around 5.1 kWh a day and still below the house’s own use. Hampstead averaged 54 hours of sunshine in December over the same thirty years.
So in winter the sun does not charge an Edmonton car. The grid does, and the useful tool is the charger’s schedule rather than the roof. Every new home charger sold in Great Britain has had to be smart since 30 June 2022, which means it can be set to charge in an overnight off-peak window that a tariff prices below the daytime rate.
Does the car see the daylight?
Across the three Edmonton wards, 17.9% of households live in semis and 6.6% in detached houses (Census 2021, our sums), the homes most likely to have both a roof of their own and a drive beside it. Even there, the arithmetic above assumes the car is at home in the middle of the day. If it leaves at eight and comes back at six, a June surplus mostly goes to the house, to export, or to a battery if you have one, and very little reaches the car on a weekday. Weekends and home-working days are where solar charging earns its keep. The charger setup also has to be able to follow the panels: matching the charging current to what the roof is producing at that moment needs a compatible combination of charger, settings and metering, and we confirm what your setup can do at the survey rather than promise it in advance. Our guide to the EV charger installation cost shows where the extra items, such as a current sensor, appear on a quote.
Terraces: the footway channel and the parking space
Lower Edmonton is 41.6% terraced, out of 5,826 households, and most of those homes park on the street. Enfield Council’s footway channel scheme, read on its own page on 19 October 2026, is the lawful way for a house without a drive to charge from its own supply: a self-closing duct set flush into the pavement, with the cable running from your home to the car. The council says you must live in a house, not a flat, and own it or have your landlord’s approval. The footway must be hard-surfaced, the route must avoid trees and stay 2.5 metres from electrical street furniture such as lamp columns, and there can be no yellow lines or other parking restriction outside.
For solar charging, one line on Enfield’s page matters most: residents gain no right to a dedicated parking space. A daytime top-up from your own roof only works on days when the space outside your house is empty and you are there to use it. The council’s fees, its £480 subsidy and the separate £500 government grant are set out on its page. Our guide to who qualifies for the EV chargepoint grant explains the grant side, and the claim has to be made through an OZEV-authorised installer, so tell us your situation at the quote stage. The council also says not to install a home charger before the channel is approved.
Flats and rented homes: whose roof?
Purpose-built flats are 38.2% of households across the three wards and 51.6% in Edmonton Green ward. In a block, the roof and the external walls usually belong to the freeholder, so panels that feed one flat’s car are a building decision before they are yours. A third of households, 33.3%, rent privately and another 33.1% rent from a social landlord, and only 31.7% own their home (Census 2021, our sums). For most of Edmonton, then, the June figures above describe what a roof could do rather than what a household can choose.
Where you do own a house with a usable south or west slope, our page on solar panels in Edmonton covers the roof itself, including the Church Street and Fore Street conservation areas.
What to bring to a survey
Three things make the conversation useful. A year of your electricity readings, so we can see how much the house uses by day and by night. A rough idea of when the car is at home in daylight. And, for a Lower Edmonton or Upper Edmonton terrace, whether you have applied to Enfield Council for a footway channel. With those, we can tell you whether summer surplus is worth designing for, or whether a well-scheduled overnight charge does nearly all the work.
Sources: European Commission Joint Research Centre, PVGIS 5.3 (PVGIS-SARAH3 2005–2023; 4 kWp, 35° tilt, due south, 14% losses, building-mounted), Edmonton town-centre point, run 15 October 2026, daily averages our arithmetic; Ofgem, Typical Domestic Consumption Values from 1 July 2026; Met Office, Hampstead location-specific long-term averages 1991–2020; ONS Census 2021 via Nomis, TS044 and TS054 for Edmonton Green, Lower Edmonton and Upper Edmonton wards (our sums); London Borough of Enfield, Footway channel for electric vehicle charging on the roadside (https://www.enfield.gov.uk/services/roads-and-transport/footway-channel-for-electric-vehicle-charging-on-the-roadside, read 19 October 2026); The Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021; GOV.UK, Changes to electric vehicle chargepoint grant schemes from 1 April 2026 (updated 7 July 2026).