1m households '˜go solar'

The UK now has more than a million 'solar homes' that get electricity or hot water from the sun, the industry has said.

There were almost 800,000 domestic solar power schemes registered under the “feed in tariff” subsidy scheme by January, figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) show.

And the Solar Trade Association (STA) estimates there are now 775,000 square metres of solar thermal hot water panels in operation in the UK, which equates to around 258,000 homes.

While some homes may have both solar photovoltaic (PV) power panels and thermal arrays, most houses have one or the other, according to the industry, meaning there are more than a million households getting energy from the sun.

New figures from the Government also reveal that the amount of solar power overall in the UK has risen 66% in a year to more than nine gigawatts (GW) of capacity across more than 860,000 installations by January of this year.

Around half (51%) of the capacity is in large-scale solar farms, while just over a quarter (26%) is on homes, the data shows.