Solar · Battery · EV — Sussex
Solar Panels Crawley
Solar panels, battery storage and EV chargers for homes in and around Crawley — designed from your actual usage, installed by an MCS-certified team, and explained in plain English before you commit to anything.
Crawley has been building homes in planned batches since 9 January 1947, when it was designated a New Town and Anthony Minoprio drew up a master plan merging the old market town with Three Bridges and Ifield around nine residential neighbourhoods. The borough now has fourteen, from Maidenbower, begun in 1987, to Forge Wood, begun in 2014. That history matters for solar: whole streets share similar roof shapes and orientations, so a survey on one house tells you a lot about the rest of the row. We quote for homes in and around Crawley, which sits roughly 19 miles from Guildford.
We'll be straight about whether solar stacks up on your roof. Crawley homes aren't cheap — the ONS puts the borough's average house price at a provisional £338,000 in April 2026, against £270,000 UK-wide — and with 55.7% of households owner-occupied, plenty of residents would rather cut their running costs than move. Solar helps many of them, often paired with battery storage to use more of what the panels generate. But not every roof earns its panels: a small, shaded or awkward slope may not, and if yours is one of those we'll say so plainly.
Solar on Crawley's housing
The 2021 Census makes Crawley a terrace town: 37.4% of its 45,500 households live in terraced houses — the largest single type — with another 22.7% in semis, so three in five homes are terraced or semi-detached and only 14.2% are detached. Much of that stock is planned New Town housing with simple, regular roof lines, which makes surveys refreshingly predictable: street orientation was fixed by the master plan, so whole roads share the same solar aspect, for better or worse. The trade-off is size — a mid-terrace roof holds fewer panels than a semi or a detached roof, so we model realistic system sizes rather than promise big arrays.
A quarter of Crawley's homes — 25.1% — are flats or maisonettes, where solar normally needs freeholder consent and often isn't practical; we'd rather establish that in the first conversation than the last. 22.9% of households are social rented, and the council reports over 1,000 of its own homes upgraded for warmth and energy efficiency. At the newer end, Maidenbower (built out from 1987) and Forge Wood (from 2014) have the modern roofs and insulation levels that suit solar well — new dwellings in England show a median EPC score of 84, against 70 (band C) for the regional grouping that includes the South East. And in the borough's 13 conservation areas, from Ifield Village to Worth, panel placement needs extra care.
What Crawley Borough Council is doing
Crawley Borough Council has been unusually explicit about its direction. It declared a climate emergency on 17 July 2019, voted unanimously in December 2021 to bring its net-zero target forward from 2050 to 2040 (with at least a 50% cut by 2030), and in December 2024 passed a new climate and nature emergency declaration — net zero for the council's own emissions by 2030 and borough-wide by 2045. The delivery is visible too: the council reports a 350kW solar carport at K2 Leisure Centre producing 'clean, lower cost electricity', support for Re-Energise Manor Royal helping businesses put solar on their roofs, a town-centre heat network serving the Town Hall and nearby homes, over 1,000 council homes upgraded, and more than 130 public EV charging sockets via the West Sussex Chargepoint network.
For a homeowner, the practical read is this: Crawley has repeatedly been a named partner in Solar Together Sussex, the group-buying scheme run with West Sussex County Council and independent specialist iChoosr — more than 1,700 systems were installed across the first two Sussex rounds, and it returned in 2023 with battery-retrofit registration for existing solar owners. The scheme has since rebranded as Switch Together, and no 2026 Sussex round was confirmed when we last checked, so treat it as a track record and check the council's site for a current round. The Local Plan 2023–2040, adopted in October 2024, sets the planning framework any installation sits within. To be clear, all of this is the council's work, reported from its own pages — not ours.
Local facts, sourced
Crawley in numbers
Every figure below comes from a named public source — the same standard we hold our savings estimates to.
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The Met Office climate station used for Crawley is Charlwood, immediately north-west of Gatwick, which averaged 1,628 hours of sunshine a year over 1991–2020.
Source: Met Office 1991–2020 averages for Charlwood, as tabulated in Wikipedia's Crawley climate section
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Terraced houses are Crawley's largest housing type at 37.4% of the borough's 45,500 households, with semis at 22.7% — three in five homes combined — flats and maisonettes at 25.1% and detached houses at just 14.2%.
Source: ONS Census 2021, TS044 accommodation type (censusdata.uk)
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55.7% of Crawley's 45,502 households are owner-occupied (24.0% outright, 31.7% with a mortgage), 22.9% social rented and 19.8% private rented.
Source: ONS Census 2021, TS054 tenure (censusdata.uk)
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Crawley Borough Council declared a climate emergency on 17 July 2019, unanimously brought its net-zero target forward from 2050 to 2040 in December 2021 (with at least a 50% cut by 2030), and in December 2024 committed to net zero for its direct emissions by 2030 and borough-wide emissions by 2045.
Source: Crawley Borough Council news (15 Dec 2021) and climate emergency pages; CAPE climate-emergency register
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The council reports a 350kW solar carport at K2 Leisure Centre now producing clean, lower-cost electricity, and supports Re-Energise Manor Royal, a project helping businesses install solar panels on their roofs.
Source: Crawley Borough Council — Reducing our emissions
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Crawley has been a named partner in Solar Together Sussex, the group-buying scheme run with West Sussex County Council and iChoosr: more than 1,700 systems were installed across the first two Sussex rounds, and the scheme returned in 2023 with battery-retrofit registration. It has since rebranded as Switch Together.
Source: Crawley Borough Council news releases (2021 and 2023); switchtogether.co.uk
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Crawley's electricity distribution network is run by UK Power Networks (its South Eastern licence area), so G98/G99 notifications for solar and battery systems go to UKPN, not SSEN.
Source: UK Power Networks — operating areas
Data last reviewed: July 2026
Where we work around Crawley
We quote for homes in and around Crawley, including Three Bridges, Ifield, Pound Hill, Maidenbower, Tilgate and Broadfield, across the RH10, RH11 postcode districts. Every quote starts with a free survey of your actual roof and usage — if solar wouldn't pay its way on your home, we'll say so plainly. Try the numbers first on our savings calculator, or read how we approach installations across Sussex.
Crawley solar questions
Do I need planning permission for solar panels in Crawley's conservation areas?
Crawley currently has 13 conservation areas — not just historic pockets like Ifield Village (the town's first, designated in 1981 and extended in 2013) and Worth, home to the Grade I listed St Nicholas' Church with parts dated to between AD 950 and 1050, but also protected New Town precincts such as Queens Square and The Broadway and the Southgate and Gossops Green neighbourhood centres. Most home solar is permitted development, but permitted development rights can be narrower in a conservation area. If you're in one, check with Crawley Borough Council's planning team first — we'd rather you asked than assumed.
Which electricity network handles solar connections in Crawley?
UK Power Networks — Crawley sits in its South Eastern licence area, one of the three UKPN runs alongside London and the East of England. That means the G98 or G99 notification or application for a solar and battery system goes to UKPN, not SSEN. Your installer normally handles that paperwork, but it's worth knowing who your operator is, and you can confirm it for your exact address with the network operator checker at energynetworks.org.
Has Crawley had a council-backed solar scheme?
Yes. Crawley Borough Council has been a named partner in Solar Together Sussex, the group-buying scheme run with West Sussex County Council and the independent specialist iChoosr. More than 1,700 systems were installed across the first two Sussex rounds, and the scheme returned in 2023 with registration for battery retrofits on existing solar systems. It has since rebranded as Switch Together, and no 2026 Sussex round was confirmed when we last checked — so treat it as a solid track record and check the council's website for a current round before assuming one is open.
Does Crawley get enough sun for solar panels to make sense?
The Met Office climate station used for Crawley is Charlwood, immediately north-west of Gatwick, and its 1991–2020 average is 1,628 hours of sunshine a year (Met Office data, as tabulated in Wikipedia's Crawley climate section). Solar panels work everywhere in the UK, and we won't pretend Crawley is a special case — what actually decides your output is roof orientation, pitch and shading. A well-aimed, unshaded roof here will do the job; a heavily shaded or north-facing one may not, and we'll tell you honestly which yours is.
What are Crawley's roofs like for solar?
Predictable, mostly — which is useful. The 2021 Census shows 37.4% of households in terraced houses and 22.7% in semis, much of it planned New Town stock where whole streets share the same roof shape and orientation. Terraced roofs are smaller, so systems are usually modest; semis and the 14.2% of detached homes have more room to work with. The 25.1% of homes that are flats or maisonettes will normally need freeholder consent, which we'd flag before anything else. The borough is covered by the RH10 and RH11 postcode districts, with RH6 on the Gatwick fringe.
Nearby
We also cover solar panels in Horley, solar installation Horsham and Haywards Heath solar and battery installers.