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A solar array is bolted to the most weather-exposed surface of your house and wired straight into its electrical system. That combination raises a question most owners only ask after something has gone wrong: is any of this insured?
The short answer is usually yes. The longer answer involves a number on your policy schedule that probably hasn’t been updated since the panels went up, a clause about removing fixtures, and a battery that may or may not be included. Here’s how it works in practice.
Are solar panels covered by a standard home insurance policy?
In most cases, yes, but by default rather than by design. Panels fixed to the roof structure are treated as fixtures, part of the buildings sum insured rather than contents. Insurers generally define buildings cover as the structure and anything permanently attached to it, which sweeps in the panels, the mounting rails, the inverter on the wall and the cabling.
The catch is the sum insured itself. That figure was likely produced by a rebuild-cost calculator that asked about bedrooms, roof type and outbuildings, and never mentioned solar. If your policy says £250,000 and the house would cost £250,000 to rebuild without the panels, you’re effectively self-insuring the array. A 4 kW system with scaffolding, labour and a new inverter can easily run to £7,000 to £9,000 to replace today.
The leased and financed exception
If the panels are leased, on a power purchase agreement, or still owned by a finance company, they aren’t yours to insure. The lender normally carries cover and you’re expected to disclose the arrangement. Omitting it is the kind of thing that surfaces at claim time, when the insurer asks who owns the equipment on the roof.
What actually goes wrong with a solar installation
The failure modes are more mundane than most people expect. Panels are tough, glass over a polymer backsheet with no moving parts, but the surrounding system is where claims come from:
- Wind uplift during a storm. The most common claim. A single failed bracket can let a panel lift, tear its cabling and take a neighbour with it. Damage to the roof tiles underneath is often the larger cost.
- Hail and impact damage. Golf-ball hail can craze the glass or cause micro-cracks that cut output by 10 to 20 percent without any visible break.
- Water ingress. Poorly flashed mounting points leak for years before anyone notices the stained ceiling below.
- Electrical faults. A failing DC isolator or a corroded connector is a genuine fire risk, and fires that start in rooftop equipment tend to be expensive.
- Theft. Rare, since panels are heavy and awkward, but inverters and batteries do get taken.
- Rodent damage. Squirrels chew cable insulation, and vermin damage is excluded on a large number of policies.
- Accidental damage during other work. A roofer walks across the array, or a ladder goes through a panel.
The roof repair trap nobody reads the small print for
Here’s the clause that catches people out. If your roof needs re-felting or the chimney needs repointing, the panels have to come off and go back on. That’s scaffolding, two trades, and a day of labour, typically £600 to £1,200. Many policies cover “removal and replacement of fixtures” but cap it, sometimes at £500, sometimes at 1 percent of the buildings sum insured.
Worse, if the roof repair itself is excluded because the damage was caused by gradual deterioration, the panel removal goes with it. Ask your insurer for the exact limit in writing before you need it, not during the first phone call.
What solar cover adds to your premium
Less than most homeowners fear. Adding a disclosed array to buildings cover typically adds £25 to £80 a year on a standard policy. A specialist renewable-energy add-on might cost £100 to £150 and include accidental damage, which the standard wording usually won’t.
Battery storage is the item to check carefully. Lithium battery packs are sometimes excluded outright for fire risk, sometimes covered only for fire and explosion rather than fault, and sometimes capped at a fixed amount regardless of the unit’s actual cost. A 10 kWh home battery is a £4,000 to £6,000 item. It deserves its own line on the schedule.
Setting the sum insured properly
Replacement cost is not what you paid. Panels have got cheaper per watt, so a like-for-like swap may cost less than the 2019 invoice, but scaffolding, labour and inverter prices have moved the other way. Insure for what it would cost to put the array back on the roof today, not for the original receipt.
Keep the paperwork together: the MCS certificate or equivalent, the installer’s invoice, the serial numbers from the panel labels, and dated photos of the array and the inverter. If you have monitoring software, export a month of baseline generation data. After storm damage, an adjuster will want to know the array was producing 22 kWh on a clear June day before the event.
Questions worth asking before you renew
- Are the panels included in the buildings sum insured, or listed separately with their own figure?
- Is the inverter covered, and the battery, and to what limit?
- What is the removal and reinstallation limit if the roof needs work?
- Is damage caused by faulty installation excluded, and does that exclusion have a time limit?
- Do I need to notify you if I add panels or a battery later?
- Does the policy cover loss of generation, or only physical damage?
That last one matters more than it sounds. Nearly every policy covers the hardware. Almost none reimburse you for the six weeks of higher electricity bills while the array sits dead.
If a panel does get damaged
Report it promptly, photograph everything before anyone touches it, and expect the insurer to send a loss adjuster rather than a general builder. Solar claims usually need a specialist report, which adds a week or two to the timeline. It helps to know in advance how the process unfolds, from the first notification call through to the settlement offer, which is what the home insurance claim process actually looks like after that first call. Keep paying the mortgage and the premium while it runs; nobody pauses those.
What happens to panels at the end of their life
Panels degrade slowly, roughly half a percent a year, and most will still be producing at 80 percent of rated output after 25 years. When they do come off, they don’t belong in general waste. Roughly 85 percent of a panel by weight is glass, aluminium frame and copper, all recoverable, and the recycling industry built around electronics is increasingly handling them. The thinking behind how Attero is tackling India’s mounting e-waste problem applies just as well to a decommissioned array. Budget for a licensed installer to remove and dispose of it, and check whether your policy covers removal costs after a total loss. Many don’t.
Charging an EV from your own roof
A home charge point is another permanently attached electrical installation, and it should be disclosed for the same reason the panels should. Some policies cover accidental damage to the unit and cable theft; many don’t. If you’re weighing up whether the whole solar-plus-EV setup is worth it, the running costs of the cheapest electric cars you can actually buy in 2025 are a useful reality check, because a 7 kW charger fed by a 4 kW array will still pull from the grid on a cloudy Tuesday in November.
One last habit worth building: every time the house changes, a battery goes in, a charger is fitted, or an array is extended, ring the insurer the same week. Solar equipment is now the single most commonly undisclosed fixed installation on UK home policies, and it is almost always discovered at the worst possible moment.
