Sunshine salary is a £14.2bn opportunity sitting on UK rooftops

25 September 2026

UK households could be missing out on a collective £14.2 billion a year in potential energy bill savings from the roofs over their heads, according to new analysis of more than 15 million UK homes.

The UK Rooftop Valuation Report calculates that the average home analysed could achieve a £946 annual ‘Sunlight Salary’ from energy bill savings generated by an optimised solar and battery system.

Produced by solar SaaS company GreenSketch, the research used proprietary AI to model the projected financial performance of solar and battery systems at more than 15 million individual addresses across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Rather than applying a standard solar set-up to regional averages, the analysis modelled each rooftop individually and paired solar with battery storage to estimate household savings and the total financial value of the UK’s residential rooftop opportunity.

Despite the UK’s frequent grey skies, the analysis finds meaningful potential across the country, with average potential savings above £800 in every UK nation. Southern regions, including South West Wales and South East England, deliver higher average annual savings than the national average, at £1,001 and £991 respectively. In Northern Ireland, the strongest returns are clustered in the east, showing that local weather patterns and geography can matter as much as latitude.

The findings challenge the assumption that the UK simply isn’t sunny enough for solar. Solar panels generate electricity from daylight rather than requiring constant direct sunshine, while batteries allow households to store more of the electricity generated during the day for use when needed.

GreenSketch describes the potential annual saving generated by a rooftop as its ‘Sunlight Salary’, putting a financial value on the unused energy potential above millions of UK homes.

Prashant Aggarwal, CEO of GreenSketch, says:

“This research flips that thinking to treat roofs as an energy and financial asset, capable of generating their own ‘Sunlight Salary’.

“Solar and battery storage is an investment in the home that can help bring down its running costs today while preparing it for the way we’ll use energy in the future. The £14.2 billion figure shows the scale of that opportunity nationally, but for a homeowner the number that really matters is their own: what could my roof generate, how much could I save, what would it cost and how long would it take to pay back?”

The report coincides with GreenSketch’s UK launch of Emily, an AI agent accessed through its EnergyBrain platform. Homeowners can enter their address to receive a personalised estimate of solar generation, storage, annual savings, investment and payback period.

Discover a roof’s Sunlight Salary at https://uk.energybrain.com/ and view the report here.