Solar for Pubs, Restaurants & Bars: Costs 2026

Pubs, restaurants and bars are among the best-fit commercial buildings in the UK for rooftop solar — better, on the numbers, than most offices or retail units. The reason is the load profile: continuous kitchen refrigeration, daytime prep and cooking, ventilation, dishwashing and long trading hours mean a hospitality venue uses electricity when solar is generating. That pushes self-consumption to 85-95%, which is where the economics turn from “sensible” to genuinely strong. Typical hospitality systems run 50-180 kW at roughly £55,000-£172,000 installed, and once the Annual Investment Allowance is claimed they pay back in around 3.5-4.1 years. This guide sets out why the load profile works, what a system costs, and how the 2026 tax and incentive picture actually stands.

Why hospitality has an unusually good solar fit

Solar only saves money on the units you use on site. Export what you generate and you earn a low export tariff instead of avoiding a much higher import price. So the single most important question for any commercial solar case is: how much of the generation gets consumed the moment it lands? For a warehouse that shuts at 5pm, or a school closed all summer, the answer is often “not enough”. For a busy pub or restaurant, it is nearly all of it.

The kitchen and refrigeration base load

A food-led venue carries a substantial, near-constant electrical base load that has almost nothing to do with how sunny it is:

• Refrigeration — walk-in chillers, blast freezers, prep fridges, bottle coolers, wine cabinets and cellar cooling run 24/7 and draw steady load regardless of weather or footfall.
• Cooking and prep — induction hobs, combi-ovens, fryers, pass-through dishwashers and glass-washers ramp up through the day.
• Ventilation — kitchen extraction and make-up air systems run hard during prep and service.
• Water heating — dishwashing, plate warming and back-of-house hot water start early and run late.

Refrigeration is the standout. Because chillers and freezers draw a predictable, round-the-clock load, an array sized to cover that base means your cold chain effectively runs on free daytime energy — a food-safety-critical system with a very high self-consumption value.

The evening peak and how batteries change the maths

The one genuine mismatch is the evening trade. A restaurant’s busiest electrical hours — dinner service, a full bar, lighting and heating from 6pm onwards in winter — fall after solar output has dropped away. Pure solar still covers the long daytime base load extremely well, but it cannot power the 9pm Friday peak on its own.

That is where battery storage earns its place in hospitality specifically. Storing cheap midday generation (or off-peak grid electricity) and discharging it into the evening peak lifts self-consumption further and shaves the most expensive units of the day. For venues with a strong evening bias — wet-led pubs, late bars, destination restaurants — a battery is often the difference between a good case and an excellent one. It is not mandatory; it is a lever you pull when the evening peak is large enough to justify it.

What a system costs — and when it pays back

Hospitality installations broadly track the same cost-per-kilowatt bands as any commercial rooftop: roughly £750-£1,200 per kW installed, with the lower end reserved for larger, simpler roofs. The table below draws on the worked benchmarks from our own hospitality solar cost breakdown. The property descriptors are hotel-scale examples, but the economics map directly to standalone F&B venues by consumption, not by room count — most independent pubs, restaurants and bars sit in the 50-180 kW band, while multi-site groups and hotel-attached kitchens reach the larger systems.

System size	Typical capex	Benchmark property	Indicative year-1 saving	Payback after AIA
50 kW	£55,000	30-room boutique	£11,200	4.1 years
100 kW	£95,000	80-room mid-market	£22,500	3.5 years
180 kW	£172,000	60-room country house	£42,000	4.1 years
320 kW	£290,000	220-room chain	£71,000	4.1 years
600 kW	£510,000	280-room conference	£140,000	3.6 years

Two things to read from that table. First, payback clusters tightly around 3.5-4.1 years across every size band once the tax relief is applied — high self-consumption is doing the heavy lifting. Second, the saving scales roughly with system size because a bigger, hungrier kitchen simply consumes more of what it generates.

On our modelling, a hospitality solar investment can show an internal rate of return in the region of 18-24% post-tax once the Annual Investment Allowance is claimed. Treat that as a modelled range, not a promise: it assumes 85-95% self-consumption, the system sized to match your daytime base load, and commercial electricity prices at roughly current levels. Your own figure depends on your tariff, roof and trading pattern.

The 2026 tax and incentive picture

Annual Investment Allowance — lead with this

For most independent operators the biggest lever is capital allowances. Solar PV is classified as a special-rate asset, and it qualifies for the Annual Investment Allowance (AIA): 100% first-year relief on up to £1 million of qualifying spend. In practice that means a limited-company venue can write off the full cost of a typical system against taxable profits in year one, which is exactly what turns a five-year raw payback into a ~3.5-4.1-year post-tax payback in the table above.

One point worth being precise about, because it is widely muddled: solar does not qualify for the headline “full expensing” (100% first-year relief) — that relief is reserved for main-rate plant and machinery. As a special-rate asset, solar can in principle attract the special-rate 50% first-year allowance, but only on qualifying spend above the £1 million AIA cap. A typical hospitality system costs far less than that, so the AIA already delivers 100% first-year relief on the whole cost — the AIA is the route that matters. Lead with the AIA, and speak to your accountant about how it applies to your accounting period.

Business rates exemption

Eligible commercial solar installations benefit from a 100% business rates exemption for on-site generation up to 5 MW, running until 31 March 2035. For a pub or restaurant this removes a running cost that used to nibble at the returns and is a straightforward point in favour of installing sooner rather than later.

Smart Export Guarantee — a secondary benefit here

The Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) pays you for units you export to the grid. As at mid-2026, a typical UK business export rate sits around 12p/kWh (Octopus’s outgoing tariff was cut to 12p on 1 March 2026), with the wider market spanning roughly 4-15p across suppliers. For hospitality, treat SEG as a modest bonus rather than a pillar of the case: at 85-95% self-consumption you are exporting very little, so the value is in the units you avoid buying, not the few you sell. Always check the live rate before you model it — export tariffs move.

MEES and EPC — where the rules actually stand

If you lease your premises, Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES) matter. The current floor is EPC E for commercial lettings. The direction of travel has been revised: the previously trailed interim EPC C milestone for 2027 has been dropped, and government has instead proposed an EPC B standard for 2031, to be phased in starting with larger properties (over 1,000 m²). Nothing here is settled beyond the current EPC E floor, so avoid planning around a firm future date — but on-site solar generation contributes to a building’s energy performance, so it pulls in the right direction whichever way the timetable finally lands.

Carbon: what solar takes off your Scope 2

Sustainability increasingly shows up in supplier tenders, brewery tie terms, event and wedding enquiries, and simple customer preference. The carbon maths is easy to run yourself. Using the UK DESNZ 2024 grid factor of 0.207 kgCO2e/kWh (location-based, Scope 2):

CO2 avoided (tonnes/yr) = annual generation (kWh) × 0.207 ÷ 1,000

Worked against our own generation benchmarks, a 100 kW array generating ~92,000 kWh a year avoids about 19 tonnes of CO2e annually; a 50 kW system (~47,000 kWh) avoids roughly 9.7 tonnes; and a 320 kW installation (~295,000 kWh) around 61 tonnes. Plug your own expected generation into the formula for a figure you can stand behind in a sustainability statement.

Is your venue inside a hotel?

The economics above assume a standalone pub, restaurant or bar. If your kitchen and dining operation sits inside a hotel — a restaurant-led country property, or a hotel with substantial banqueting and F&B — the load profile is different again, because room occupancy, overnight demand and shared metering all come into play. That case has its own page: see our detailed treatment of solar for a hotel-attached restaurant and F&B operation, which covers commercial-kitchen sub-metering and restaurant-led occupancy economics. For a dedicated, single-site restaurant or pub, the standalone numbers on this page are the right starting point.

Getting a real figure for your venue

Every hospitality site is different: roof orientation and shading, the size of your cold store, whether you trade daytime or evening-led, and whether a battery pays. A desk-based feasibility study can tell you the honest answer in a few days — expected generation, self-consumption, capex, post-AIA payback and the carbon saving — without a site visit or any obligation.

We are independent and supplier-neutral: we model the numbers, not a brand of panel. If you would like a hospitality-specific estimate, request a tailored quote and we will build the case around your actual consumption. There is no phone-tag and no sales pressure — start with a free desk-based assessment and take the figures to your accountant.

This article is provided for general guidance by the Solar Panels For Hotels editorial team and does not constitute financial or tax advice. Capital allowance treatment depends on your circumstances — confirm with a qualified accountant before relying on any figure.