Do Hotels With Solar Panels Save Money? What the Published Projects Show

Yes — the UK hotels that have published their solar figures report six-to-eight-year paybacks and, where they state it, near-total on-site use of what they generate. That is the short answer. The longer one is more useful, because “hotels with solar panels save money” is a claim every installer makes, and the only way to test it without taking a salesperson’s word is to read what operators and installers have actually put on the public record. This post does that; the full list with sources is in the register of UK hotels with solar panels.

The projects that published a payback

Three UK hotel projects publish a payback figure.

Old Thorns Hotel and Resort, Liphook — a 217 kWp roof array of 572 panels installed in 2021, generating “over 200,000 kWh per year” and saving “more than 90 tonnes” of CO₂ annually, with a stated payback of six years and an internal rate of return of 19%. The figures are the installer’s, Spirit Energy, on its hotels page (read 14 October 2026).

Premier Inn Salisbury — the same installer’s payback table gives eight years and a 12% IRR, without a system size.

Low Wood Bay Resort and Spa, Windermere — 385 panels across five buildings for a £195,000 investment, generating over 130,000 kWh a year, with a projected payback of around six years and lifetime savings estimated at over £1.3 million, according to English Lakes Hotels’ estates director as reported by LH Magazine on 13 May 2025.

Three data points are not a dataset, but they are consistent with each other and with the modelled bands this site publishes: a simple payback in the four-to-seven-year range before tax relief for a hotel with a strong daytime load, shorter after the Annual Investment Allowance.

The project that published its self-use

Hampton by Hilton Blackburn — 124 Risen Energy 410 W panels, 50.84 kWp, two 20 kW inverters — states that it uses 100% of what the system generates and exports nothing, with a 246-tonne reduction in its carbon footprint expected over 25 years (Marketing Lancashire, 10 January 2024). That single sentence is the mechanism behind every hotel payback: because a hotel runs hot water, refrigeration, ventilation and lighting around the clock, the array’s output displaces electricity bought at the retail price rather than being sold to the grid at a fraction of it. It is the reason solar panels for hotels pay back faster than the same array on an office that empties at six o’clock.

The project that published a cost per unit

Avisford Park Hotel (Crest Hotels Limited) — a £300,000 scheme of 163.24 kWp ground-mounted on an unused tennis court, with 200 kWh of battery storage — was reported by Solar Power Portal on 20 July 2026 with the onsite-generated electricity costed at 5.88p per unit over the system’s 25-year lifespan. No payback was published, but a unit cost of under 6p against a commercial import price several times higher tells the same story in a different unit.

The project whose figures do not add up

Not every published figure is usable. Perfect Sense Energy’s hotels page gives Holiday Inn Corby as a 179 kWp system with year-one generation of 30,000 kWh and a year-one saving of £4,230. A 179 kWp array in the English Midlands would normally be expected to generate well over 100,000 kWh a year, so the published figure is either a partial first year, a constrained export, or an error — and the page does not say which. The register reproduces it as published and flags it, because a figure you cannot explain is one you should not model on.

Reading these figures in 2026

Three cautions before using any of them for your own property:

1. They are at the prices of their install dates. A 2021 payback was computed on 2021 electricity prices; a 2024 one on 2024 prices. Re-model on your current tariff.
2. They are pre-tax where the source does not say otherwise. The Annual Investment Allowance gives a tax-paying operator 100% first-year relief on qualifying solar capex, which shortens a six-year simple payback materially; installer case studies rarely include it.
3. Nameplate is not output. Compare kWp to kWp and kWh to kWh, never one to the other — the Corby example is what happens when a page mixes them without comment.

The methodology this site uses to turn a hotel’s half-hourly meter data into a modelled payback is set out in the hotel solar payback guide, and the cost bands by property size are in the hotel solar cost guide. For the drawbacks the published projects do not mention — winter output, the G99 wait, export economics — see the disadvantages of solar panels for hotels.

Sources

• Spirit Energy, solar-panels-for-hotels page (Old Thorns; Premier Inn Salisbury) — read 14 October 2026.
• LH Magazine, “Lake District hotel resort launches solar energy project”, 13 May 2025 (Low Wood Bay).
• Marketing Lancashire, “Hampton by Hilton Blackburn in leap towards sustainable hospitality”, 10 January 2024.
• Solar Power Portal, 20 July 2026 (Avisford Park Hotel).
• Perfect Sense Energy, solar-panels-for-hotels sector page (Holiday Inn Corby) — read 14 October 2026.

Get a fixed-price quote

Set your own property beside the published projects: free desk feasibility from a recent electricity bill, with modelled generation, self-use and payback on 2026 prices — get a free hotel solar quote.