Scotland's Solar Panels Beat London's, Data Shows
Ask someone in Edinburgh whether solar panels are worth it this far north, and you'll usually hear some version of "we don't get enough sun up here." The government's own meter readings say otherwise.
For two years running, in 2023/24 and again in 2024/25, the typical Scottish home solar system produced more electricity per kilowatt of panels than the typical London one. That's according to Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) data covering more than 23,000 homes.
Quick take
Scotland's median solar output beat London's in 2021/22, 2023/24 and 2024/25, only the third time this has happened in 14 years of records
Averaged across all 14 years, the gap between the two regions is just 2.4%
Edinburgh's official solar rating, 938 kWh per kWp a year, is higher than Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Aberdeen and Glasgow
Solar Panels Edinburgh · Analysis of DESNZ and MCS primary data
What the data actually measures
DESNZ tracks homes registered on the Feed-in Tariff scheme and records how much electricity each system produces against its maximum possible output. That figure is called the load factor.
In 2024/25, the typical Scottish system recorded a load factor of 8.50%, against London's 8.31%. The year before, it was 9.05% for Scotland versus 8.90% for London. Convert that into real numbers and a typical Scottish system generated around 745 kWh per kilowatt of panels in 2024/25, compared with about 728 kWh in London.
The 14-year picture
This isn't a story about Scotland being sunnier than London, because it isn't. Over the full 14 years of records, London has actually finished ahead in 11 of them. What the record shows instead is how close the two have always been. Averaged across every year from 2011/12 to 2024/25, Scotland's median sits just 2.4% below London's.
Scotland also came out on top in 2021/22. That makes the last year only the third time it's happened overall, and the first time it's happened two years in a row.
England as a whole runs well ahead of both, at roughly 10% above Scotland over the same period. London sits well below the English average, which is exactly why its gap with Scotland is so narrow.
"People in Edinburgh regularly tell us they assume Scotland is too far north for solar. The government's own meter readings say otherwise. For two years running, the typical Scottish home system has produced more electricity per kilowatt than London's. The weather gap people imagine simply isn't there in the data."
Jibreel Rana, Co-Founder, Solar Panels Edinburgh.
How Edinburgh compares, city by city
The meter data covers Scotland as a whole, not individual cities. For that, the better source is the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS), the standard certified installers use to estimate how much a system will generate. MCS splits the UK into postcode zones and publishes an official annual output figure for each.
For a south-facing roof at a standard 35° pitch, Edinburgh's zone is rated at 938 kWh per kWp a year. That's above Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle, Aberdeen and Glasgow, level with Birmingham, and below the cities further south.
Official MCS rating for a south-facing roof at a 35° pitch, for the zone covering each city's main postcode area. These are modelled standard figures, not meter readings.
What this actually tells you
Latitude matters less to solar output than most people assume. A typical Scottish system performs within a few percent of a typical London one, and Edinburgh's official rating beats most major cities across the north of England.
It doesn't mean Scotland gets more sunshine than London, or that every Edinburgh roof will beat every London roof. Real-world output still comes down to roof direction, pitch, shading and the system itself. England as a whole still runs ahead of Scotland on the meter data, and London has led in most individual years.
As for why London's own figure runs lower than the wider English average, the data doesn't say. Denser housing, taller neighbouring buildings and less favourable roof layouts are all plausible factors, but that's speculation, not something the figures confirm.
Methodology
Meter data. DESNZ publishes annual load factors for solar systems on the Feed-in Tariff scheme, broken down by region as a count, a weighted mean and percentiles. We've used the median (50th percentile), the output of the typical system, because it's less skewed by unusually high or low performers than the mean. The 2024/25 figures cover 18,119 systems in Scotland and 4,979 in London; 2023/24 covers 23,529 and 6,283. Load factors are converted to kWh per kW by multiplying by the 8,760 hours in a year.
2024/25 context. DESNZ notes that 2024/25 had the fewest sun hours since 2012/13, which is why both regions recorded lower figures than usual that year.
City ratings. MCS figures come from the MCS irradiance datasets, matched against the postcode-to-zone table in the MCS solar standard (MIS 3002). Each city is assigned the zone covering its main postcode area. Edinburgh (EH) falls in zone 15.
Averages. The 14-year comparison is a simple average of each region's annual median from 2011/12 to 2024/25.
Sources
Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, Quarterly and annual load factors: annual regional load factors, Feed-in Tariff years 2 to 15.
Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, Feed-in Tariff load factor analysis 2024/25 (December 2025), for the sun hours context.
Microgeneration Certification Scheme, Irradiance datasets, figures at 35° pitch.
Microgeneration Certification Scheme, MIS 3002 Solar PV Systems, issue 5.0, Table 2, postcode-to-zone mapping.
Media enquiries and data requests: please get in touch through our contact page. Journalists are welcome to use these figures with a link to this page.
