3 July 2026

Does solar affect your EPC rating?

Yes — but the size of the effect depends heavily on what the rest of the property looks like, which is why two homes with identical panels can see different band movements.

Why it helps at all

An EPC assessment scores a property partly on the cost of running it, and solar panels reduce the electricity a household needs to buy from the grid. That shows up directly in the calculation the assessor's software runs, alongside insulation, heating type, and glazing.

Why the effect varies so much

A well-insulated, gas-heated home with a modern boiler is already scoring reasonably well on the factors that dominate the calculation — so solar adds a smaller relative bump. A poorly insulated home tends to see a bigger jump from the same panels, simply because it started from a lower baseline where every efficiency gain counts for more of the total score.

Solar alone rarely moves more than one band

It's a genuinely common misconception that panels alone can carry a property from, say, E to B. In most cases solar shifts a rating by roughly one band, occasionally two in an otherwise well-specified home. Pairing it with insulation and heating-control improvements — the cheaper items covered in our how to improve your EPC rating guide — tends to produce a bigger combined jump than solar on its own.

Battery storage doesn't currently move the score much

A home battery improves how much of your own solar generation you actually use, which is genuinely useful for your bills — but the standard EPC methodology doesn't currently give it significant separate credit the way it credits the panels themselves.