Solar Installation in the New Forest: A Practical Guide by CRG Direct

CRG Direct is a renewable energy and retrofit specialist working across Hampshire and the South Coast. We design and install solar PV systems, battery storage, air source heat pumps and EV charging for homeowners and small businesses, and we've been delivering renewable energy solutions from our base on the Hampshire coast since 2017.

The New Forest is not a straightforward place to install solar, and any installer who tells you otherwise hasn't worked here. Two planning authorities, an unusually high density of listed and thatched properties, mature tree cover that moves shading around through the year, and a lot of rural properties running on oil rather than mains gas.

It's also one of the better places in the country to generate. Larger roof areas on rural and period properties, high daytime occupancy, and solar irradiance on this stretch of the south coast running comfortably above the UK average.

This guide covers what's actually involved — survey, design, planning, costs, grants and the battery decision — for New Forest properties specifically.

Book a free site survey or call 0333 253 3531.

Why choose CRG Direct for solar panel installation in New Forest

Full-service installation. We handle the whole project — survey, system design, DNO application, scaffolding, install, commissioning, MCS registration and handover — with our own installation team. Nothing is subcontracted out, which matters on period and rural properties where the person on the roof needs to know what they're looking at.

MCS certified, TrustMark approved. CRG Direct is certified under the Microgeneration Certification Scheme, approved by TrustMark, registered with HIES and NICEIC-approved. MCS certification is the one that makes your system eligible for the Smart Export Guarantee. TrustMark is the government-endorsed quality mark, and it's a prerequisite for most grant-funded work — including the Warm Homes: Local Grant. Check both on the public registers before you sign anything, with us or anyone else.

Battery storage. Every quote we produce models the system with and without storage so you can see what a battery actually changes for your household, rather than being sold one by default.

Grants and survey support. We'll tell you at survey stage whether you're likely to qualify for grant funding, and support the application rather than leaving you to work it out. New Forest properties in rural areas can access a higher grant ceiling than urban ones — details further down.

Solar panel installation process for New Forest properties

1. Initial site survey. An engineer visits and measures the roof, checks the structure and covering, and assesses shading properly — which in the Forest means accounting for mature trees at low winter sun angles, not just what's visible in July. We also check your consumer unit, earthing arrangement and incoming supply. Rural properties sometimes have three-phase or an older supply that changes what's possible.

2. Bespoke system design. Every design is tailored — solar systems built around your roof and your consumption rather than a package off a price list. We model expected generation for your specific roof orientation, pitch and shading profile, then set it against your actual electricity use. East-west split arrays often suit New Forest properties better than a smaller south-facing array, particularly where the south slope is shaded or visually sensitive. You get a fixed, itemised quote — not a range.

3. Electrical installation and inverter commissioning. Mounting system, panels, DC cabling, inverter, isolation and connection into the consumer unit. The inverter is commissioned to the correct grid settings for your DNO, and any battery or optimiser hardware is configured at the same time.

4. Testing and handover. Full electrical testing to BS 7671, generation verification, MCS registration, and monitoring set up on your phone before we leave. You get the test certificates, the MCS certificate, the DNO paperwork and a walkthrough of the system.

Timeline. Expect roughly six weeks from enquiry to a commissioned system on a typical domestic project — most of that is survey scheduling, design, DNO approval and scaffolding, not install. The install itself is usually one to two days. Conservation area or listed building consent adds eight weeks or more.

Site survey, planning and conservation areas

Two planning authorities cover the New Forest. Properties inside the National Park boundary are dealt with by the New Forest National Park Authority. Properties outside it fall to New Forest District Council. They are not the same body and they don't apply the same weight to visual impact. The first thing we establish at survey is which one you're in — a lot of people assume wrongly.

Roof suitability on period properties. Older roofs need checking before anything else: rafter condition and spacing, batten condition, and whether the covering can take fixings. Handmade clay tiles and natural slate are more brittle than modern concrete and need different hooks and more care. On some older roofs the honest answer is that the covering needs attention first, and we'd rather say that at survey than after we've taken half of it off.

Visual impact inside the National Park. The NPA's position is that small-scale renewables are supported where they're unobtrusive. In practice that means rear or side roof slopes, panels sitting flush and low-profile, all-black frames and rails rather than silver, and array shapes that follow the roof rather than fighting it. Getting the visual approach right at design stage is usually the difference between an approval and a refusal.

When do you need planning permission?

• Most roof-mounted domestic solar is permitted development, including inside the National Park, provided panels project no more than 200mm from the roof plane and don't sit above the highest part of the roof.
• Wall-mounted panels on a wall fronting a highway are not permitted development on designated land — which includes the whole National Park and any conservation area.
• Ground-mounted arrays have their own limits on size and siting, and can't sit forward of the principal elevation on designated land.
• Listed buildings always require listed building consent, wherever the panels go. The Forest has a very high density of listed properties, so this catches more people than elsewhere.

We check all of it at survey and handle the applications with the relevant local authority. If a pre-application enquiry to the NPA is the sensible route, we'll say so.

Choosing solar panel installers in New Forest

Three things to check on any quote, including ours.

MCS certification is non-negotiable. Restrict your shortlist to MCS certified installers. Without one, your system won't be eligible for the Smart Export Guarantee, and you'll struggle with grant funding and with some insurers. MCS maintains a public register — search the company name, not just the logo on the website. Check the certification covers the technology being installed; solar PV and battery storage are separate scopes.

Look for local reviews and real case studies. Not stock photography and not testimonials without a location attached. A genuine local case study names the area, the property type, the system size and the monitored output. If an installer can't show you a comparable job, ask why.

Verify insurance and guarantees. You want public liability cover, an insurance-backed workmanship guarantee that survives the company going under, and registration with a consumer code — HIES or the Renewable Energy Consumer Code (RECC). The consumer code is what gives you deposit protection and a dispute route. TrustMark registration wraps a lot of this together and is worth checking directly on the TrustMark register.

One more: be wary of solar installers who quote without a site visit. Nobody can assess a Forest roof for shading from an aerial photograph.

Solar installations for rural, period and commercial properties

Thatch. You cannot roof-mount solar panels on thatch. Fixings can't be made safely, the fire risk is real, and no reputable installer will attempt it. That doesn't mean thatched properties are excluded — the array goes on an outbuilding, barn, garage or cart shed, or onto a ground-mount screened from view. Thatched properties are often listed as well, so consent will be needed for the alternative siting.

Slate and handmade tile. Natural slate needs slate hooks rather than standard roof hooks, and a slater's approach to lifting and re-dressing. Handmade clay peg tiles need careful hook selection and slower work. Both are entirely doable — they just aren't a job for a crew working to a two-hours-per-roof schedule.

Rural properties and larger roof areas. Barns, stables, machinery sheds and agricultural buildings frequently give you far more usable roof than the house does, often with better orientation and no shading. Where the buildings are on the same supply, a larger array on the barn feeding the house is usually the better engineering answer. Rural New Forest properties are also more likely to be off the gas grid and running on oil or electric heating, which means higher electricity demand and a stronger case for both solar and a heat pump.

Commercial. Larger commercial solar installations for New Forest businesses — nurseries, farm shops, holiday parks, light industrial units around Totton, Ringwood and Fordingbridge. These need a structural survey before anything else, and a half-hourly consumption analysis to establish self-consumption, which is what actually drives the return. Larger schemes inside the National Park face a higher bar on visual impact; the NPA has refused large ground-mounted solar farms in the Park and is explicit that the need for renewable energy doesn't override landscape protection.

Listed buildings. The approach that gets consent is minimising visual impact: rear slopes, secondary buildings, all-black hardware, no panels on principal elevations, and a heritage statement that engages properly with the significance of the building rather than treating it as a formality.

Battery storage and battery system options

Solar generates at midday; households use electricity in the evening. Without storage you export around half of what you generate and buy it back later at several times the export rate. Battery storage is the fix, and the large majority of new UK solar installations now include one.

Sizing for typical homes:

Brands. We install and support GivEnergy, Fox ESS, Sunsynk, Solis, Growatt and Tesla Powerwall, among others. What we specify depends on the property rather than on what we have in the van — modular systems where the household is likely to add an EV or heat pump later, higher-ingress-rating units where the only sensible location is an unheated outbuilding, which is common on rural properties.

Retrofit to existing solar. Adding a battery to an existing system is one of the most common jobs we do. The panels aren't touched — an AC-coupled battery with its own inverter is added alongside your existing setup and connected into the consumer unit. Survey, design, a DNO notification, and typically a single day on site. Where the existing inverter is already past ten years old, replacing it with a hybrid during the battery install often makes more sense than doing two jobs.

Evening self-consumption is where the value sits. A battery charged from the roof by 2pm covers cooking, lighting, TV and the evening peak from your own generation. On a time-of-use tariff it also lets you buy cheap overnight and avoid the expensive early-evening window entirely.

Installation costs, grants and financing

Typical CRG Direct pricing:

What moves the number: array size, battery capacity, roof type and covering, scaffolding and access, whether the consumer unit needs upgrading, and on period properties whether specialist fixings are needed.

Grants.

• Warm Homes: Local Grant. Funds solar PV, battery storage, insulation and heat pumps for eligible households. Up to £30,000 per household — rising to £60,000 in rural areas, which covers a lot of the New Forest. Broad eligibility is an EPC rating of D–G plus household income under £36,000 or receipt of qualifying benefits. Owner-occupied or privately rented; the scheme runs to March 2028. Installers must be TrustMark-registered and MCS certified.
• ECO4. Funds measures including solar for eligible electrically heated homes, running to the end of 2026.
• Solar Together Hampshire. A council-backed group-buying scheme run with Hampshire County Council. Registration is free and non-binding, and it's worth registering even if you also get independent quotes — comparing the two is how you find out whether either is good value.

Eligibility criteria change. We check current terms at survey rather than working from what was true last year.

Reduce energy bills with renewable energy and solar panel systems

Estimated savings. A 4 kWp system on a reasonably sited New Forest roof generates roughly 3,700–4,200 kWh a year — this stretch of the south coast gets meaningfully more sun than the UK average. Without a battery, a typical household uses around 35–50% of that directly; with a battery, 70–85%.

How self-consumption works. Every kWh you generate and use yourself displaces a kWh bought at retail price. Every kWh exported earns you a much smaller export rate. That gap — often 15–25p per unit — is the whole argument for battery storage, and it's why self-consumption percentage matters more than raw generation.

Time-of-use tariffs. Tariffs with cheap overnight windows let a battery import at a low rate and cover the expensive evening peak. For households with an EV this compounds — the car, the house and the battery all charge on the cheap rate. Switching to the right tariff after installing solar and storage is frequently worth more than an extra panel or two.

Export income. All larger licensed suppliers must offer a Smart Export Guarantee tariff, so surplus generation earns money rather than being given away. Rates vary enormously between suppliers — we keep a current comparison in our SEG tariff guide. Picking well is worth a few hundred pounds a year.

Lower electricity bills and a lower carbon footprint are the same project here, not two. Over 52,000 homes across Hampshire now have MCS-certified solar installed. The economics that persuaded them apply at least as well in the New Forest, where roofs are larger and outbuildings give you options an urban terrace doesn't have.

FAQs: solar installation New Forest

Do I need planning permission for solar panels in the New Forest? Usually not for roof-mounted panels on a house, even inside the National Park — that's normally permitted development. You will need permission for wall-mounted panels on a wall fronting a highway, for most ground-mounted arrays, and always listed building consent on a listed property. We establish which authority covers you — the National Park Authority or New Forest District Council — at survey.

How long does the installation take? Around six weeks from enquiry to a commissioned system, with the physical install taking one to two days. The milestones are survey, design and quote, DNO application, scaffolding, install, commissioning and MCS registration. Add eight weeks or more if a planning or heritage application is needed.

What maintenance do solar panels need? Very little. Rain handles most cleaning on a pitched roof; low-pitch and ground-mount arrays benefit from occasional washing. What matters more is watching the monitoring — a system underperforming by 15% won't be obvious on a bill but will show in the app. We recommend a professional inspection every few years covering electrical testing, mounting integrity, inverter health and battery state of health.

What are the warranty terms? Panels typically carry a 25-year performance warranty. Inverters are usually 10–12 years with paid extension options. Batteries carry a manufacturer warranty on cycles and capacity retention, commonly ten years. On top of the product warranties, our workmanship warranty covers the installation itself, backed by the HIES guarantee.

Can I put solar on a thatched roof? Not on the thatch. On an outbuilding, barn, garage or ground-mount, yes.

Will panels work under tree cover? Reduced, but often still viable. Shading costs more output than most people expect, and optimisers or microinverters recover a good part of it. We measure it at survey rather than guessing.

How to get a quote from CRG Direct

1. Book a free site survey. Online at crgdirect.co.uk/quote or by phone. No obligation, no charge, and an actual engineer rather than a salesperson.

2. Send your electricity usage. Twelve months of kWh figures from your bills, or better, half-hourly data from your smart meter account. This is what lets us size a battery properly and give you a realistic saving estimate rather than a generic one. Photos of your roof and consumer unit help too.

3. Get a free quote. Fixed and itemised, broken down by component, with a modelled yield figure for your specific roof, self-consumption modelling with and without storage, and an honest payback estimate. Once it's commissioned you start saving from the first sunny morning.

CRG Direct 172 Sea Front, Hayling Island, PO11 9HP Phone: 0333 253 3531 Email: info@crgdirect.co.uk Web: crgdirect.co.uk

Covering Lymington, Brockenhurst, Lyndhurst, Ringwood, Fordingbridge, New Milton, Sway, Milford on Sea, Beaulieu, Totton and the surrounding villages.

MCS Certified | TrustMark Approved | HIES Certified | NICEIC Approved | Installing across Hampshire and the South Coast since 2017

Book your free New Forest survey or call 0333 253 3531.