Until 31 March 2027, installing solar panels or battery storage in a home in Great Britain carries VAT at 0%. Not reduced — zero. It is the most valuable and least understood support available to households going solar in 2026, partly because it arrives with no application form and no headline, and partly because half the explanations online predate the rules that now apply. This guide sets out what qualifies, what does not, and what actually changes when the window closes.
Where the 0% rate comes from
The legal footing is HMRC’s VAT Notice 708/6, which zero-rates the installation of energy-saving materials in residential accommodation in Great Britain. Solar panels are on that list, and — since a significant amendment in February 2024 — so is battery storage in its own right.
Two features of the design are worth understanding. First, it is a temporary window: the zero rate runs until 31 March 2027, after which qualifying work is due to revert to the reduced rate of 5%. Second, it attaches to the installation, not the shopping. The relief exists to get equipment professionally fitted into homes, which shapes everything below.
What qualifies
- A residential solar panel installation — panels supplied and fitted by an installer, with the equipment, labour and associated works billed together as one installed job.
- A battery fitted alongside solar panels, as part of the same installation.
- A standalone battery — installed in a home with no panels at all, or retrofitted to an existing solar system. This has qualified since 1 February 2024.
- The whole invoice for that job. Because the relief applies to the installed supply, the zero rate covers the parts and the labour that make up the installation, not the hardware alone.
The common thread: a business installs energy-saving equipment in your home and invoices you for the completed work. That is the qualifying shape. It also applies per installation rather than once per household — panels this year and a retrofit battery next year are two qualifying jobs, each at 0%, provided each is completed while the rate holds.
What does not qualify
- Equipment you buy yourself. Order panels or a battery online and VAT applies at the till in the normal way — and fitting them yourself afterwards does not claw it back. The saving belongs to installed jobs.
- Home EV chargepoints. Chargepoints are not on the energy-saving-materials list in Notice 708/6, so charger installation sits outside this relief. The support that does exist for charging is a grant rather than a VAT rate: 75% of the cost up to £500 per socket for eligible flat owner-occupiers and renters, running to 31 March 2027.
- Non-residential work. The relief covered here is the residential one; commercial premises are a different conversation.
The February 2024 change — why older advice says the wrong thing
Battery storage originally qualified only when it arrived with panels: the battery rode along as part of a solar installation, and a battery on its own — or added a year later — carried VAT in full. From 1 February 2024, HMRC brought standalone and retrofit battery storage inside the zero rate.
That change matters for a lot of real households. If you installed panels years ago and have been weighing up storage, the retrofit now gets the same 0% treatment as a new combined system. And if your roof cannot take panels at all, battery storage systems installed on their own — charging cheaply overnight, covering the expensive evening hours — qualify too. Any guide that tells you otherwise is describing the rules as they stood before February 2024.
What the relief is worth in pounds
VAT at 0% is invisible on an invoice, so it is worth making the counterfactual concrete. Using the Energy Saving Trust’s typical installed costs:
- On a £6,100 typical 3.5kWp solar system, the same job invoiced at the post-window 5% would carry around £305 more.
- On a £4,600 typical 5kWh battery, around £230 more.
- On a combined install priced around £10,700, roughly £535.
Had the standard 20% rate applied instead, those figures would be four times larger — which is the scale of support the window quietly provides. It also feeds the payback arithmetic: every pound not paid in VAT comes straight off the numerator in the break-even sum, as our realistic payback calculation shows. And since there is no general grant for household solar in England, this window — together with Smart Export Guarantee payments — is the support that actually exists, whatever a “government-funded solar” advert implies.
After 31 March 2027: 5%, not 20%
The deadline invites two opposite mistakes.
The first is believing VAT jumps to 20% on 1 April 2027. It does not: qualifying installations are due to revert to the reduced rate of 5%, the rate that applied before the current window opened. The cliff edge is a few hundred pounds on a typical system, not a few thousand.
The second mistake is the panic purchase. A few hundred pounds is real money, but it is small against the cost of a badly specified system — wrong size, wrong roof, wrong battery — that underperforms for decades. Our view, said plainly: if you were planning an installation anyway, the window is a sensible reason to stop postponing it. It is not a reason to skip the survey, compress the design, or sign with whoever can fit you in before April. A rushed installation bought to beat a VAT deadline is still a rushed installation. The panels will outlast the deadline by decades either way — the sums that matter are the ones in our guide to how much solar panels can save, not the calendar.
How the 0% rate should look on your quote
Because the relief needs no application, the only place you will ever see it is the paperwork — which is one more reason to insist on an itemised quote. Qualifying work should show VAT at 0% as a stated line, not as an unexplained absence. If a quote for a residential solar or battery installation shows VAT at 20%, or goes quiet when you ask how the VAT has been treated, that is a question to settle before signing, not after. The same goes for deposits and stage payments: ask how VAT is being handled across them, and expect the final invoice to match the treatment on the quote you accepted.
The treatment is identical everywhere in Great Britain. What changes from county to county is the generation side — sunshine hours, housing stock, how many homes sit off the gas grid — which is what our local guides cover, our Hampshire solar installation page among them. The VAT line on the quote should look the same in every one of them.
The plain-English summary
Installed residential solar and battery work in Great Britain: 0% VAT until 31 March 2027, then 5%. Standalone and retrofit batteries included since February 2024. DIY kit and EV chargepoints excluded. Nothing to apply for; everything to check on the quote.
If you would like an itemised quote for your own home — the VAT line included and the arithmetic shown in full — request a free, no-obligation survey through our contact page. No pressure, just clear advice.