Across Horsham district, DVLA records 5,228 plug-in vehicles registered to private keepers at the end of June 2026, up from 3,924 a year earlier. On our arithmetic that is about 1,300 more cars and vans in twelve months, a rise of roughly a third. The figure covers the whole district, from Southwater and Broadbridge Heath to Roffey and the new streets at Mowbray, and it counts vehicles where the keeper lives. It is not a count of chargers or of households with a car on the drive.
If one of those vehicles is yours, or soon will be, the practical question is how a home charger, solar panels and a battery fit together on a Horsham house, and in what order. This guide works through it with the district’s own figures. For the battery itself, where it goes and how it connects, see our page on battery storage in Horsham.
Three pieces of kit, three different jobs
A charger moves electricity into the car. Panels make electricity in daylight. A battery moves electricity from one part of the day to another. In Horsham district, 37.2% of households live in detached houses and 26.9% in semis, and 72.3% own their home (Census 2021), so the person weighing up all three is usually the person who decides what goes on the roof and the garage wall. That makes it tempting to buy everything in one go. It is worth pausing first, because the three solve different problems and are taxed differently.
Take the tax first. Under HMRC’s VAT Notice 708/6, residential solar panels and batteries are zero-rated until 31 March 2027 and revert to 5% from 1 April 2027. A home EV charger is not on the energy-saving materials list, so its installation is standard-rated at 20%. If a Horsham quote bundles all three, ask for the charger on its own line so you can see which part carries VAT.
June in Horsham against December
PVGIS 5.3, the European Commission’s solar tool, estimates that a 4 kWp array facing due south at 35° in Horsham makes about 4,099 kWh a year. For a car, the split across the year matters more than the total: about 503 kWh in June and about 140 kWh in December. Spread across each month, that is roughly 16.8 kWh a day in June and 4.5 kWh a day in December (our arithmetic on the PVGIS monthly figures, for an unshaded roof).
Now set a car beside those numbers. Taking a 60 kWh charge as an illustration, an average June day’s output from that roof would cover a little over a quarter of it, if the house used none of it, and an average December day’s output less than a tenth. In a Horsham winter, the car is mostly charged from the grid whatever sits on the roof. In summer, a car that is at home in the middle of the day can take a real share of the surplus; one that leaves for Horsham station at seven and comes back at six mostly cannot.
The charger comes first
A 7.4 kW charger draws 32 A for as long as it runs. Most homes have a 60 A, 80 A or 100 A main fuse, and a current sensor on the incoming supply, known as load management, usually avoids a supply upgrade. Notice that 7.4 kW is more than a 4 kWp roof ever produces at once, so a car charging at full rate on a bright afternoon in Holbrook still draws the difference from the grid. Every new home chargepoint sold in Great Britain has had to be smart since 30 June 2022, which is what makes scheduling it around a cheaper overnight rate possible. Our guide to whether your fuse will take a 7 kW EV charger covers the fuse question in full.
Grants depend on the home. Owner-occupiers of houses get no OZEV chargepoint grant; that scheme closed to them in April 2022. Renters, and people who own and live in flats, can claim 75% of the purchase and installation cost up to £500 per socket if they have private off-street or allocated parking. With 15.6% of Horsham district households in purpose-built flats, that second route is narrower here than in a flat-heavy borough, but it is real for the people it covers.
Where a battery fits alongside a car
The Energy Saving Trust puts a 5 kWh battery at around £4,600 and says a typical home system might be 10 kWh. Even the larger size is about a sixth of the 60 kWh illustration above, so a home battery is not a reservoir for the car. Its job is the house’s own evening load: cooking, lighting, the television. In a Horsham June, an array of the size above makes enough on an average day to cover daytime use and still top up a modest battery. In December there is little or nothing spare, and a battery earns its place, if it does, by charging on a cheaper overnight rate and covering the dearer evening hours, alongside the car on the same tariff.
There is no exact formula for sizing, and the Trust says so. Our guide on what size home battery you need shows how to work it from your own bills. The Trust also notes that fitting storage at the same time as panels costs less than a separate visit later. On the new estates at Mowbray, Highwood Village and Kilnwood Vale, check first whether the builder has already fitted panels; if so, the question becomes whether a battery and a charger add anything, not whether to start from scratch.
The paperwork with UK Power Networks
Horsham’s town centre sits in UK Power Networks’ South Eastern Power Networks licence area. It is about 2.9 km from SSEN’s area, so if you live towards the district’s edge, the Energy Networks Association’s postcode lookup confirms your operator. Panels and a battery up to 16 A per phase (3.68 kW) are notified under G98; anything larger needs a G99 application approved before work starts, and a 4 kW inverter, at 17.39 A, is just over that line. UK Power Networks says it automatically approves an application where the maximum export after any export limitation is under 5 kW, and there is nothing to pay it if no supply upgrade is needed. The installer also notifies the operator of every new chargepoint in RH12 and RH13.
We fit panels, batteries and EV chargers, and we are a NAPIT member (73495), MCS-certified for solar PV and battery storage through NAPIT. If you are adding a car to a Horsham house, the sensible order is usually the charger and tariff first, then panels sized to the roof, then a battery sized to your evenings. The roof side is on our page for solar panels in Horsham, and the wider county picture on our Sussex solar page.
Sources: Department for Transport and DVLA, VEH0142 licensed plug-in vehicles by local authority, 2026 Q2 and 2025 Q2 (published 23 September 2026, read 15 October 2026); European Commission JRC, PVGIS 5.3, PVGIS-SARAH3 2005–2023, 4 kWp, 35°, due south, 14% losses (run 15 October 2026); ONS Census 2021, TS044 and TS054 (Horsham), via Nomis; Energy Saving Trust, Battery storage (updated 19 August 2026); HMRC, VAT Notice 708/6; GOV.UK, Changes to electric vehicle chargepoint grant schemes from 1 April 2026 (updated 7 July 2026); Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021; Energy Networks Association, EREC G98 Issue 2 (10 March 2025); UK Power Networks, Solar panels and energy storage: cost, time and what’s involved; UK Power Networks and NESO licence boundary data (read 15 October 2026).