How To (Drastically) Reduce Your UK Energy Bills

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]UK energy prices continue to rise and they're expected to rise again shortly, this time by around 13%. It's getting crazy. You don't have to just sit there and take it, though. There's a powerful way to fight back and it might be way more affordable than you think. I'll show you that by adding solar to your home, you can cut your bills drastically, perhaps even down to zero.

[00:00:28]Hi there, I'm Gary and welcome back to my channel, Gary Does Solar. There's no sugar coating it. Energy in the UK is seriously expensive. British households are paying some of the highest prices in Europe. When you look at these recent figures from the UK's Department of Energy Security and Net Zero, or DESNES for short, the UK is right up there, second only to Germany for domestic electricity prices. And it's about to get worse. To protect households from energy prices getting out of control, offgen, the UK's energy regulator, runs what is called the energy price cap, which is the maximum price that energy suppliers can charge for gas and electricity on their standard tariffs.

[00:01:08]They can go lower than the energy price cap, but they can never go higher. This cap is recalculated by OffGFJ every 3 months, and from July this year, it's expected to rise by around 13%. Yes, you heard that right, 13%. Personally, I think it's scandalous. Many people in the UK are already struggling to pay their energy bills. And unfortunately, this price rise is happening whether we like it or not. Of course, there are ways to reduce your energy bills. Better insulation, sealing up drafts, that sort of thing. But adding solar panels to the roof of your property is the best way I know to drastically reduce your bills, perhaps even down to zero. Now, that might sound just too good to be true, but it's exactly what happened to my own electricity bills after installing solar 4 years ago. Even in its first year of operation, instead of actually paying a bill, I got money back from my supplier.

[00:01:59]All right, then stick with me and with just a few minutes of your time, I'm going to get you up to speed on home solar so that you can take that first step towards taking control of your energy and your bills.

[00:02:10]It all starts with the solar panel. It's an incredibly simple piece of hardware about a meter and a half long and a meter wide and they're only about 3 or 4 cm thick. Solar panels convert sunlight into electricity. A lot of electricity.

[00:02:25]With today's technology, even just one panel in the right conditions can generate half a kowatt of power. Very impressive. And with say 10 of those panels on your roof, they can generate a combined 5 kW of power at times. That's more than enough to run heavy appliances like washing machines and electric ovens. Now, the amount of energy that those panels will typically generate throughout the day depends on a whole range of factors, including where you live, the weather that day, what time of year it is, the way your roof faces, and even the pitch of your roof. To give you a rough idea, where I live near Oxford, if those 10 panels were on a southacing roof, on a sunny summer's day, you would see a daily generation curve like this.

[00:03:07]As the sun rises in the morning, generation slowly builds up. It gradually increases throughout the morning, reaching a peak of 5 kW around midday when the sun is highest in the sky and then gently tapers off towards the late afternoon and evening. When you look at the total generation over the whole day, it's quite a big number. Our 10 panel solar array can produce around 41 kwatt hours of energy for the home, likely way more than your home would need on a typical day. Most homes in the UK require less than half that. There are ways to make use of all that extra energy, though. You can do what is called load shifting, which essentially means running heavy appliances like washing machines, dishwashers, or even charging an EV during the middle of the day to use as much free energy as possible. Or another more popular way is to add a home battery to a setup. Any energy that your home can't use is automatically stored in the battery.

[00:04:01]Then later when the sun goes down, your home will be fed by the energy in the battery instead of drawing power from the grid. With a home battery, all the energy captured by your solar panels can be used by the home. And if you don't want to have a home battery, any extra solar generation that the home can't use is simply exported back to the grid.

[00:04:21]Now, that might sound strange to be sending energy back the other way, but that's what happens. And if you're on the right energy tariff, you'll get paid for that energy. Now, I can already hear you thinking, it's not sunny every day in the UK, and it won't be summer every day either. So, what does that mean in terms of solar generation throughout the year? Well, let's look over an entire year then to see what the overall generation would be for our 10 panel solar array. In this utility, if I enter my location, solar array size, and some other details, I can see a chart showing estimated annual solar generation for that array month by month. As you might expect, there's far more generation in the summer months than in the winter.

[00:05:02]But over the whole year, it's just over 5,000 kwatt hours. And that's more than the typical annual electricity usage of many homes in the UK. Not too shabby.

[00:05:11]And don't worry, those panels will continue to generate like that year after year. Actually, for at least 25 years, because that's how long the warranty period is. You don't even need to have a southacing roof either. No matter which direction your roof faces, solar panels are powerful enough these days to generate a good amount of energy. Check out my videos here for more information on that. The links are in the description. And feel free to try out this utility yourself to see how much solar panel your home can generate.

[00:05:40]Just enter solarasma.com into your browser. It's completely free and you don't need to enter any personal details like with some other utilities on the internet.

[00:05:51]I hope you're seeing already just how beneficial solar panels can be for your home to dramatically reduce your energy bills. Now, in terms of actual equipment that you would need to buy, I have many videos on my channel that you can watch, and these should give you a very good idea on what would work best for your situation. I won't lie, though.

[00:06:09]Installing home solar is not cheap.

[00:06:11]While the solar panels themselves have become really affordable, often under £100 each these days, that's only a small part of the story. You'll also need scaffolding for safe roof access, all of the mounting hardware, specialist wiring, an inverter unit, a home battery if you want one, electrical certifications, warranties, and a properly qualified company to do the work safely and in compliance with all the necessary standards. You can expect to pay many thousands of pounds for a highquality solar installation. Now, that's quite a scary number, but a good way to think about it is as a financial investment that will pay itself back in just a few years. Let me show you what I mean with this chart. Let's say the solar installation you want will cost you £10,000. Now, it might be cheaper or more expensive than that, but we'll use this as a round number on day one. Then, you're £10,000 out of pocket to pay for your installation. But every year after that, the money that you save on your electricity bill, plus anything you earn from exporting energy back to the grid, effectively pays you back. You can see the cumulative savings steadily repaying the original investment year after year.

[00:07:21]And in our example here, by year 7, you've recovered all of your original investment. That break even point might be more or less years depending on the equipment you buy. But with today's technology and pricing, anywhere between five and eight years is a reasonable target. From year 8 onwards, then with the original capital sum paid off, it's pure profit. And because a good solar system will keep working reliably for many years to come, that profit keeps growing. After 14 years, you could expect to get back twice what you originally invested, and it just keeps on going. Of course, there are other factors to consider. Energy prices might go up or they might come down eventually. Inflation will of course play its part and you may spend some additional money upgrading or repairing equipment that's out of warranty. But the principle holds. Now you might be thinking that's fine if you have that kind of money to make that initial investment, but not everyone does. I recommend then that you watch this video I made which provides a whole range of ideas on how you can finance your solar system. You might find it's more affordable than you think. Again, the link is in the description. Okay, if you like what you've heard so far and you want to make the move into home solar, how do you get things started? The quickest and easiest way once you've watched a few of my videos to get reasonably well informed is to reach out to a solar installer who can provide you with a quotation. The trouble is, there are thousands of solar installers in the UK, and I'm sorry to say, but they don't all have your best interests at heart.

[00:08:51]I'm old enough to remember the Wild West world of double glazing back in the 1980s. It was so easy to get ripped off by cowboys back then. And I'm afraid to say that Home Solar is no different today. That's why I provide a directory of who I consider to be the very best solar installers in the UK. Ones that I've vetted myself and I would trust with my own money. Just enter get ready fors solar into your browser to see which of those installers serve your location.

[00:09:19]Now, I really do hope that you make the move into home solar to take control over your energy and your bills. And when you do, there's one final action to take, and that's to get on the right smart tariff with the right energy provider. There's only one energy provider in the UK that I recommend, and that's Octopus Energy. I'm a huge fan, and you'll see why in this video I made.

[00:09:41]Being on the right tariff can actually bring your payback time down by a year or more. And in my view, Octopus Energy has the best smart tariffs out there.

[00:09:50]Again, the link is in the description if you'd like to watch it. Even better, if you switch to Octopus using my referral code here, you'll get £50 credited to your account, and I'll get the same, which helps support the work on my channel. Thanks again to the many people who've used my referral code already.

[00:10:07]All right, then. I hope this video has got you interested in getting solar for your home. It's one of the best decisions I ever made and it's actually why I started the Gary does solar channel in the first place so that you can benefit from all the research I've carried out to date. Let me know in the comments where your head is at with all this and what your plans are if you're thinking about getting home solar.

[00:10:28]Before I go, I'd just like to say thank you to all my Patreon supporters who make these videos possible. Would you believe I'm working on the next five videos at the moment? There's so many topics I want to cover and I'll try and get those videos out to you as soon as I can. Cheers for now.