Almost all the advantage of a perfect pitch, none of the ladder, and no argument with the planning right about what your wall is made of.
A roof is whatever pitch the builder chose, facing whichever way the street runs. A frame is set to thirty degrees and turned due south because you decided to.
No brackets through render, no penetrations, no conversation about making good. For a tenant or a leaseholder that changes the nature of the request entirely.
The August 2026 conditions rule out wooden walls, balconies and timber cladding for these devices. Freestanding on the ground is not any of those.
Dirt on glass costs output. A panel at chest height gets wiped. A panel two storeys up gets forgotten for three years.
This is not a free lunch, and the honest list is short but real.
| The catch | What to do about it |
|---|---|
| It occupies ground you might want for something else | A single compliant device is a modest object. Measure the shadow it casts in December before you decide where. |
| Low panels shade easily | A fence, a hedge or a parked car matters far more at ground level than it would on a roof. Watch the spot across an afternoon first. |
| The cable has further to travel | It still has to reach a socket, and extension leads, multi-way adaptors, RCD adaptors and travel adaptors are ruled out in terms by the specification. |
| An outdoor socket has to be rated properly | Where the plug and socket sit outside the building the socket must be IP55 or better, and fitting one is electrician work. |
| It is more visible than a roof panel | Which is a conversation with whoever else uses the garden rather than with the council, unless you are in a conservation area or the grounds of a listed building. |
Reaching for a garden extension lead is the natural move and the specification forbids it twice over, once as a required warning on the device and once in the instructions. If the socket is not in reach, the answer is a properly installed outdoor socket, not a reel.
We are not going to name a frame or quote you a price for one. Retail prices in this market have not been sourced from anywhere we would be willing to cite, and a figure with no date and no source on it is worth nothing to you.
When we have prices we have actually checked, they will appear with the day we checked them. Until then this page tells you what a mounting is worth in kilowatt hours, which is a number we can stand behind.