UK local solar deployment index

Download all 362 local-authority records. Every row carries the council code, source release and extraction date.

What this index measures

The ranking divides DESNZ’s number of photovoltaic sites by its estimated household count, then multiplies by 1,000. It makes differently sized areas comparable. It is not the percentage of homes with panels because the numerator includes non-domestic and utility PV.

Highest site densities in the 2024 table

| Local authority | PV sites | Households | Sites per 1,000 | PV capacity | |---|---:|---:|---:|---:| | Stirling | 8,003 | 41,103 | 194.71 | 25.900 MW | | Isle of Anglesey / Ynys Môn | 5,676 | 30,800 | 184.29 | 101.755 MW | | South Hams | 7,052 | 39,300 | 179.44 | 142.493 MW |

This is not a league table of “best places for home solar.” A council with a large solar farm can have high capacity without unusually high household uptake; a dense city can have fewer suitable roofs per household. The value is in combining fields, not treating one column as a verdict.

Methodology

1. Download the Renewable electricity by local authority, 2014 to 2024 workbook published on 30 September 2025.
2. Select the 2024 Sites, Capacity and Generation worksheets.
3. Join rows using official local-authority codes, not text-matched names.
4. Calculate sites ÷ estimated households × 1,000.
5. Preserve suppressed generation as blank with generation_suppressed=true; never convert a suppressed value to zero.
6. Retain the raw components and sort the download by calculated density.

Limitations

• The latest local-authority release covers 2024; this is not a live counter.
• Boundaries can change, so use the code and release year when joining another dataset.
• Site counts cover the full PV range and are not limited to homes.
• Estimated households are a denominator, not proof a site belongs to a household.
• DESNZ suppresses some generation to avoid revealing an individual plant.

Change history and reuse

• 29 August 2026: first release, 362 rows from the September 2025 workbook.

Reuse the transformation under CC BY 4.0 with attribution and a link. The underlying DESNZ data is under the Open Government Licence. For corrections, contact us.