13.5 GW: UK’s Cumulative Solar Capacity Till April 2020

The cumulative installed solar power capacity of the UK till the end of April 2020 reached 13,493 MW (13.5 GW). The Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) says the total capacity since April 2019 grew less than 1.5%, adding only 195 MW.

In terms of installations that added up to 511 kW in the month of April 2020; the annual installations declined 74% to reflect the lowest number of installations in a given month. BEIS blames COVID-19 lockdown measures for majorly impacting new installations.

As per the department’s data, between January 2020 and March 2020, the UK added 35.6 MW of new solar, which is a steep decline from 118.5 MW the country reported during Q1/2019.

Till the end of March 2020, 57% or 7,695.7 MW of capacity came from ground mounted or standalone solar installations. BEIS said by May 28, 2020, of the total installed capacity 45% or 6,069 MW came from 466 large scale PV installations of over 5 MW capacity.

The BEIS data does not include subsidy-free solar installations of below 1 MW that are not registered on the Microgeneration Certification Scheme database. All the data is highly provisional, the department cautions.

In 2019, the country installed 233.4 MW of new installations taking the aggregate to 13.35 GW, but national solar association STA wasn’t too happy with the data calling out the department for ‘serious flaws’ in the accuracy of the numbers (see UK Installed 233.4 MW Solar PV Capacity In 2019).