The Disadvantages of Solar Panels for Hotels — The Honest List

The disadvantages of solar panels for hotels are real, specific and mostly manageable — but a hotel operator deserves the list before the sales pitch, not after. Most of the case for solar panels for hotels rests on one strong fact: a hotel’s 24-hour load absorbs 85–95% of what a roof array generates. That fact does not make the drawbacks disappear. Here they are, with the figures that size each one.

1. Winter output is a fraction of summer output

Solar generation in the UK is heavily seasonal. At the optimum tilt in London the European Commission’s PVGIS tool gives June at 120.1 kWh per installed kilowatt and December at 38.3 — a 3.1× swing — with April to September delivering 66% of the year’s output. Further north the trough deepens: at 35° Inverness produces about 107 kWh/kWp in June and 14 in December. A hotel’s winter load (heating, lighting, longer hot-water draw) is highest exactly when the array produces least, so the winter bill is barely touched. The annual saving is real; the December saving is small. Size the array to the daytime base load, not to the roof, and treat winter as a tariff problem.

2. The grid connection takes months, not weeks

Any hotel-scale array exceeds the G98 limit of 16 A (3.68 kW) per phase and needs a G99 application to the District Network Operator. The DNO study runs to months and is normally the longest single item in the programme — longer than any planning consent. On a constrained network the answer can include reinforcement or an export limit with cost attached. The practical consequence is a six-to-twelve-month programme from first call to commissioning, most of it waiting. It is a disadvantage of timing rather than of economics, and it is avoidable only by submitting the application at feasibility stage.

3. Exported electricity is worth very little

Hotels self-consume most of their generation, which is the point; but the surplus they do export earns a fraction of the retail price. Published business export rates in 2026 sit between roughly 3p and 15p per kWh depending on supplier and tariff, against retail import prices several times higher. An array sized to export is an array that has been oversized. The corollary is that the one-size-fits-all “20% rule” style advice found on domestic sites does not transfer to a hotel; the right size is the one your half-hourly meter data supports.

4. Panels degrade — slowly, but it belongs in the model

Crystalline silicon panels lose output at a median rate of around 0.5% a year (Jordan and Kurtz, “Photovoltaic Degradation Rates — an Analytical Review”, Progress in Photovoltaics, DOI 10.1002/pip.1182). Over a 25-year life that is roughly 12% less output in year 25 than in year 1. Manufacturers’ performance warranties typically guarantee a floor above that curve, but a payback model that assumes year-1 output for 25 years is overstating the lifetime saving by about 6% on average.

5. The roof decides more than the brochure does

A hotel roof that has less than ten years of life left, that is shaded by a taller neighbouring building, or that cannot take the load of a ballasted flat-roof system, is a bad host for a 25-year asset. The honest answer in those cases is to re-roof first, to look at an outbuilding or a ground array, or not to install — the hotel rooftop survey sets out the eight factors a survey checks. Where the building is listed, Class J permitted development does not apply at all and the project needs planning permission plus listed building consent; where it is in a conservation area, roof slopes remain permitted development for a non-domestic building but an Article 4 Direction can remove the right on named streets. See solar panels in a conservation area for hotels.

6. Tax relief is good but not what some proposals claim

Solar PV is special-rate plant for capital allowances, so it does not qualify for the full-expensing regime that applies to main-rate plant. The route is the Annual Investment Allowance — 100% first-year relief on qualifying capex up to £1 million a year — which is generous, but a proposal that shows full expensing on a solar line is wrong, and a hotel that is not paying corporation tax that year gets no relief in that year at all. Owner-operators and groups with taxable profits benefit most; a loss-making property should model the saving without the tax shield.

7. Guest-facing disruption is small but not zero

Roof work can run above a trading hotel, but the grid synchronisation and any power isolation need a window — normally an overnight or pre-service morning slot agreed with the operations team. Scaffolding on a front elevation is visible to guests for the duration. These are scheduling costs rather than financial ones, and a competent installer plans around service hours; the point is to put them in the contract, not to discover them on site.

8. Batteries do not fix winter

A battery is often proposed as the answer to the seasonal gap. It is not: winter solar cannot refill a battery, so November to February storage has to be charged from the tariff, which makes the battery a tariff-arbitrage asset in winter and a solar asset in summer. That can still pay, but it is a different business case and it should be modelled as one — see hotel battery storage.

What the disadvantages do not change

None of the items above reverses the headline. Published UK hotel projects report six-to-eight-year paybacks at the prices of their install dates — Old Thorns six years at a 19% IRR, Premier Inn Salisbury eight years, Low Wood Bay a projected six — and the ones that state their self-consumption state it at or near 100%. The register of UK hotels with solar panels lists each with its source. The disadvantages are reasons to size, sequence and model a project properly, not reasons to avoid one; and a feasibility that names them up front is the sign of a proposal worth reading.

Sources

• PVGIS v5.3 (European Commission JRC), SARAH3 dataset, 14% losses — monthly and annual yields pulled September 2026.
• ENA Engineering Recommendation G98 Issue 1 Amendment 7 (“up to and including 16A per phase”); SSEN connection guidance (“up to 3.68kW per phase”).
• Jordan, D. C. and Kurtz, S. R., Photovoltaic Degradation Rates — an Analytical Review, Progress in Photovoltaics (2013), DOI 10.1002/pip.1182.
• HMRC Capital Allowances Manual CA22335 (solar as special-rate expenditure).
• Published hotel paybacks: Spirit Energy solar-panels-for-hotels page; LH Magazine, 13 May 2025 — both read 14 October 2026.

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