How Much Do Hospitality Solar Installations Generate? PVGIS by Region

Hospitality solar panel installations generate between roughly 850 and 1,070 kWh per installed kilowatt a year in the UK, and the spread between cities is wide enough to change a project’s payback by a year or more. The figures below come from the European Commission’s PVGIS tool rather than from installer brochures, and they answer the question every operator should ask before a proposal lands: how much will this roof, in this city, actually produce? The full picture — cost, funding, process and property types — is in our guide to hospitality solar panel installations.

Method

All figures are from PVGIS version 5.3 using the SARAH3 satellite irradiance dataset, a free-standing array, 14% system losses, and south-facing orientation. Two tilts are shown: the optimum tilt PVGIS selects for each location (39–43° across the UK), which represents a well-designed pitched-roof or ground array, and a 10° pitch, which represents a flat commercial roof on ballasted frames or a car-park canopy. The API can be reproduced with optimalangles=1 or angle=10&aspect=0.

Annual yield by city

City	Optimum tilt (kWh/kWp/yr)	10° pitch (kWh/kWp/yr)
Southampton	1,066	964
Cardiff	1,044	946
London	1,023	920
Birmingham	971	875
Newcastle	954	844
Leeds	951	851
Belfast	922	828
Aberdeen	900	791
Manchester	888	807
Glasgow	855	772

Three things stand out. The south coast and south Wales lead — Southampton and Cardiff both beat London, and at canopy pitch Cardiff, Newport (938) and Swansea (921) all out-yield London (920), which reverses the assumption most UK solar content carries about Wales. Glasgow sits roughly 16% below London at the optimum tilt and Inverness (811) further still. And the 10° pitch costs 9–11% against the optimum tilt everywhere, which is the discount to apply to any flat-roof or canopy design.

The seasonal swing

Annual yield hides the shape of the year. At the optimum tilt in London, PVGIS gives June at 120.1 kWh/kWp and December at 38.3 — a 3.1× swing — with April to September delivering 66% of the annual total. Further north the winter trough deepens: at 35° Inverness produces about 107 kWh/kWp in June and 14 in December; at a 10° canopy pitch December falls to 21.6 in London, 10.5 in Glasgow and 7.4 in Inverness.

For hospitality this cuts two ways. Summer occupancy peaks with summer generation, which is the reason hotels reach 85–95% self-consumption. But winter solar cannot refill a battery — November to February storage has to come from the tariff — so a battery for a Scottish or northern hotel should be sized on the tariff-arbitrage case rather than on summer surplus. The battery decision is covered in the hotel battery storage guide.

Applying the numbers to a hospitality installation

1. Check the proposal’s yield assumption against the table. A Glasgow proposal at 1,000+ kWh/kWp is overstating by around a fifth; a Cardiff proposal at “approximately 1,100” is overstating by about 5%; a Manchester proposal that turns 100 kW into 92,000 kWh has used a southern figure.
2. Apply the pitch discount. A 10° ballasted array on a flat roof or a canopy produces 9–11% less than the optimum-tilt figure, and east- or west-facing low pitches less again (around 715 kWh/kWp in central Scotland).
3. Size to self-consumption, not to the roof. With hospitality self-consuming most of what it generates, the array should be sized to the daytime base load from half-hourly meter data — kitchens, refrigeration, hot water, HVAC — not to the largest array the roof will hold.
4. Design the winter separately. The December figures decide whether a battery is a tariff play or a solar play. In the south it is partly both; north of the border it is a tariff play.

The regional pages take these figures further for the devolved nations, where the planning and rates rules also differ: solar panels for hotels in Scotland and solar panels for hotels in Wales. For the wider UK picture, start with solar panels for hotels.

Sources

• PVGIS v5.3 (European Commission Joint Research Centre), SARAH3 dataset 2005–2023, 14% system losses, free-standing south-facing arrays; pulled 16–26 September 2026 at optimum tilt, 35° and 10°.
• Self-consumption bands are modelled from typical UK hospitality demand profiles; a property’s own half-hourly meter data replaces them at proposal stage.

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