Holiday Park & Caravan Park Solar: Roofs & Ground-Mount

Holiday park solar is one of the strongest-fitting commercial solar cases in UK hospitality: parks combine large, unshaded amenity-building roofs, open ground for ground-mount arrays, and a summer demand peak that lines up almost perfectly with peak generation. Whether you run a touring and camping site, a static caravan park, a glamping estate or a full holiday village, caravan park solar panels can offset the amenity load, feed a private-wire network supplying lodges and pitches, and power EV charging — all on land you already own. This guide sets out where the panels go, how the metering and revenue work, and what a modelled system looks like.

Parks are a different animal to a city hotel. The buildings are lower-rise and simpler, the land is more plentiful, and the load is seasonal rather than flat. That changes the design — and it is why the same supplier-neutral principles behind solar panels for hotels apply, but the sizing and siting logic is its own discipline. For the deeper hospitality context, our pillar on solar panel installation for hospitality covers the sector-wide economics; this piece is the holiday-park and caravan-park specific version.

Why holiday parks are an unusually strong fit for solar

Three site characteristics make parks a better-than-average solar prospect.

First, surface abundance. A holiday park rarely has the roof-space problem that constrains a listed country-house hotel. Clubhouses, indoor pools, restaurants, laundries, reception buildings, shower blocks and equipment barns present broad, low-pitch or flat roofs with few dormers and little heritage sensitivity. Where roof area still isn’t enough, the park almost always has spare ground — verges, bunds, unused paddock, embankments — for a ground-mount array.

Second, seasonal alignment. A caravan or holiday park’s electricity demand peaks in exactly the months solar generates most. Pools are open, kitchens are busy, laundries run flat out and every pitch is occupied through the long summer days. That summer-on-summer overlap pushes self-consumption up and cuts the amount you export at a low tariff — the single biggest driver of a good return.

Third, network ownership. Many parks own their internal electricity distribution and on-sell power to static caravans and lodges through sub-metering. That gives the operator a large, controllable base load to soak up generation — a private-wire opportunity most hotels simply don’t have.

Where the panels go: amenity roofs, ground-mount and canopies

A park solar design usually blends three surfaces rather than relying on one.

Amenity-building roofs are the anchor. The indoor pool hall, clubhouse and restaurant are typically the largest single roofs and sit next to the largest loads, so wiring runs are short and self-consumption is high. These come first in any design.

Ground-mount arrays unlock the scale that roofs can’t. On open parkland a fixed-tilt ground array can be oriented due south at the optimum pitch — something a fixed roof plane rarely allows — and sized to whatever the site and grid connection will take. Ground-mount does need planning attention (see below) and a sensible visual buffer from pitches and lodges, but it is frequently where the bulk of a large park’s generation ends up.

Car-park and touring-pitch canopies are the third option, and they double as EV infrastructure. A canopy over a parking area or a bank of touring pitches shelters vehicles, generates power and hosts chargers on the same footprint. The trade-off is a structural premium — the canopy carries its own steel — so canopies tend to sit at the upper end of the per-kW cost band. The full mechanics of that trade-off are in our guide to rooftop versus ground-mount hotel solar.

Private-wire supply to lodges and pitches

This is the feature that sets parks apart. Where the operator owns the internal network and sub-meters static caravans, holiday lodges or serviced pitches, solar generation can offset not just the amenity buildings but a share of the electricity you resell to occupiers.

Mechanically, the array feeds the park’s private distribution network behind the main meter. Generation is consumed first by the amenity load, and the surplus flows to the lodges and pitches drawing power at the same time — a far more valuable outcome than exporting to the grid. Because holiday and residential caravans are occupied around the clock in season, the resold base load is steady, which lifts self-consumption toward the top of the range.

Two things to get right. Metering must be designed so generation, import and resold consumption are all measured cleanly — you cannot bill accurately or evidence your carbon position without it. And Maximum Resale Price rules apply: under Ofgem provisions, a park reselling electricity to occupiers may not charge more than it paid per unit (plus a standing-charge apportionment). Solar reduces the park’s blended cost of power, which flows through to what you can fairly charge — a genuine amenity benefit you can market to lodge owners, not a margin windfall. The metering and network design is exactly the kind of site-specific work a proper feasibility assessment scopes; the operating economics mirror those on our hotel solar cost page.

Seasonal load and generation: matching the curve

The headline risk with any seasonal business is that you generate most when — in a normal building — you’d need least. Parks invert that problem. Occupancy, pool operation, catering and laundry all peak across April to September, which is also when a UK array produces the great majority of its annual yield.

The design job is to size the system so summer generation is genuinely absorbed rather than dumped to export. That means anchoring the array to the loads that run hardest in season — pool plant, commercial kitchens, laundry, refrigeration and lighting — and being realistic that a shoulder- and off-season park with a closed pool will export more. A battery storage system can shift some of the summer midday surplus into the evening peak, when the clubhouse, restaurant and lodges draw hardest, tightening self-consumption further. For parks with a swimming pool or spa, the load is large and thermally flexible — our note on pool and spa solar load explains how to use the pool as a daytime sink for solar generation.

EV charging for touring and glamping pitches

Charging provision is fast becoming a booking filter for park guests, and it stacks neatly on top of solar. A touring or motorhome guest who arrives for a multi-night stay wants to charge on-site; a glamping or lodge guest increasingly expects it. Because the vehicle sits on the pitch for hours or overnight, standard destination charging suits the dwell pattern perfectly, and daytime solar generation can feed much of that load directly.

The practical design — charger types, load management across a distributed pitch network, back-office and tariffs — is covered in our guide to hotel EV charging. The key point for a park is that routing surplus summer generation into pitch and car-park chargers keeps another slice of every kWh inside the business, rather than exporting it at a low rate, while adding a bookable amenity.

Rural planning and heritage considerations

Most parks sit in open countryside, and that shapes the planning route. Roof-mounted solar on non-listed amenity buildings often falls under permitted development, but ground-mount arrays generally need a full planning application, and parks inside a National Park, AONB, conservation area or Green Belt face tighter scrutiny on visual amenity, glint-and-glare near roads, and landscape character. None of this is a blocker — rural solar is consented across the UK every week — but siting, screening and a landscape buffer matter, and the application benefits from being framed around the park’s own operational use rather than a grid-export scheme.

Heritage does occasionally intrude: a listed manor at the heart of an estate park, or a walled kitchen garden repurposed for glamping, can pull a project into Listed Building Consent territory for roofs on the protected fabric. Where that applies, the ground-mount and canopy options usually give a consentable route that avoids altering the historic building — the same logic set out in our page on solar for listed and heritage hotels.

On glamping specifically, smaller off-grid or lightly-connected pods can be served by dedicated small arrays with battery, giving glamping solar power to sites where extending the mains network to remote pitches would be uneconomic — a genuinely different design to the amenity-building array, but part of the same park-wide plan.

Modelled sizing and savings

The table below is illustrative. It assumes a 12p/kWh import price, 85–95% self-consumption where a private-wire lodge network is present (lower for amenity-only parks with a closed off-season pool), Annual Investment Allowance applied in year one, and installed costs in the roughly £750–£1,200 per kW band that applies across commercial solar. These are modelled scenarios to show the shape of the economics — not quotes, and not outcomes from named parks. Your figures depend on orientation, grid headroom, seasonal load profile and how much of the generation your park absorbs.

Park profile	Anchor loads & surface	Modelled system	Illustrative capex	Modelled year-1 saving	Modelled payback (post-AIA)
Small touring / camping park	Reception, shop, shower block roofs	30 kW	£33,000	£6,700	~4.4 years
Static caravan park	Clubhouse, laundry + ground-mount	100 kW	£95,000	£22,000	~3.6 years
Lodge / glamping estate (private-wire)	Amenity + resold lodge supply	180 kW	£170,000	£42,000	~3.6 years
Large holiday village	Pool hall, restaurant, arcade	250 kW	£230,000	£54,000	~3.7 years
Destination resort park	Spa, pool, conference, EV canopy	500 kW	£430,000	£101,000	~3.7 years

Two UK facts underpin the returns and are worth stating plainly. Solar PV qualifies for the Annual Investment Allowance — 100% first-year capital allowance on qualifying plant, subject to the cap and your tax position — which is the relief that drives the post-AIA paybacks above. And eligible commercial solar generating equipment carries a 100% business-rates exemption up to 5 MW, in place until 31 March 2035, so the array itself doesn’t inflate your rateable value over the payback window. Surplus you do export earns a Smart Export Guarantee tariff — around 12p/kWh at mid-2026 for typical business export — but on a well-sized park the real return is in the units you never buy. The available reliefs and how they stack are set out on our grants and funding page. Always confirm the specific tax treatment with your accountant.

For zero-capex parks, a power purchase agreement lets a funder own the array while the park buys the generation at a fixed rate below grid — useful where the balance sheet is committed elsewhere. The trade-offs are covered in our guide to the hotel solar PPA route.

Get a fixed-price quote

Whether solar stacks up for your park comes down to specifics — amenity roof area, spare ground, grid-connection headroom, your private-wire network, seasonal load and planning context. Those are exactly the inputs a feasibility assessment pins down. We are independent and supplier-neutral: we don’t sell panels, so the modelling is built around your site, not a product. Get a free hotel solar quote and we’ll return an indicative system size, siting mix, private-wire fit and modelled payback for your holiday or caravan park.