What is the Solar Together group-buying scheme?

The headline figure is a reported saving of 10 to 25 per cent off the cost of a solar installation⁴. That range is repeated across the scheme's own documentation and in third-party guides, and it is the number to hold on to when weighing the scheme against quotes gathered independently. One maker guide puts group-buying discounts higher, at 20 to 35 per cent compared with standard market rates, so the two figures do not agree⁵.

The scheme is not a single national programme. Each council commissions its own round, under its own name, so participation depends on where you live and on whether a round is open at the time. Rounds have run as Solar Together Wirral, Solar Together Cheshire, Solar Together Hertfordshire and Switch Together Norfolk, with Switch Together Birmingham operating on the same model⁶.

What Solar Together is: a council-backed group-buying scheme

Solar Together is a group-buying scheme that secures savings on installation costs, offered by some local councils¹. The mechanics are simple in principle: households that would otherwise buy individually are pooled, and the pooled demand is put out to installers who compete for it. Wiltshire Council describes it as a group-buying scheme for solar panels and battery storage², and Wirral Council describes it as bringing households together to get high-quality solar panels at a competitive price⁶.

The council's role is to lend the scheme its backing and its local reach. Wirral Council is working with Liverpool City Region Combined Authority through the Climate Emergency initiative⁶. Switch Together Birmingham, which runs on the same model, offers high-quality solar photovoltaic panels and battery storage and is described as bringing Birmingham households together⁹. Switch Together Norfolk offers high-quality solar photovoltaic panels and battery storage on the same basis³.

The administration is usually handled by a specialist. Broadland District and South Norfolk Councils have partnered with iChoosr Ltd, described in the scheme's own rules as independent experts in group-buying³. iChoosr was founded in 2008 and is privately owned by two co-founders, and it works with community leaders helping households select energy and solar power suppliers⁹. Cheshire's round partners Cheshire West and Chester Council, Cheshire East Council and Warrington Borough Council with the Dutch company iChoosr⁷.

For a household, the significance is straightforward. The scheme is a route to a professionally installed system with a council's name attached to the procurement, rather than a route to independence from the grid. The electricity still comes through the same connection, the installer is still a private company, and the auction is still run by a commercial partner. What the scheme changes is how the price is arrived at, not what the system does.

How the group-buying model works, from registration to installation

Group buying brings households together to unlock better deals on sustainable upgrades⁸. The category is wider than solar: schemes of this kind cover solar panels and battery storage, heat pumps and EV chargers⁸. Solar Together is the solar-specific version, and its sequence runs in a fixed order.

1. Register your interest. Registration is free and carries no obligation to install¹.
2. The reverse auction. A reverse auction is held where pre-vetted solar installers submit bids for the work³. The lowest compliant bid sets the price for the round.
3. The personal recommendation. Each registered household receives the costs and specification for a complete solar panel installation³.
4. Acceptance and survey. Once you accept your offer, a surveyor visits your property to assess whether your roof is suitable for a solar installation and confirm the number of panels, their location and other details such as cabling locations and colour¹².
5. Documentation. The contractor provides a basic panel design for the roof and descriptions of the installation, including a basic drawing of the proposed layout¹².
6. Planning and connection. You will still need to check planning requirements if you join the scheme², and the installation must be registered with your distribution network operator, usually done by your installer¹⁴.

The installer side is where the scheme's quality control sits. Switch Together Norfolk uses pre-vetted solar installers³, and the Microgeneration Certification Scheme notes that to qualify for any government scheme including the Smart Export Guarantee and the Warm Homes Plan, the solar installer and installation must be certified¹⁵. That certification requirement is what makes the export payments available afterwards, and it applies to the scheme's installations as much as to any other.

The step that catches households out is the survey. It happens after acceptance, not before, so the panel count and layout are confirmed only once a commitment has been made. The contractor supplies the basic design, but it is the resident's responsibility to provide any drawings or information required for a submission via the Planning Portal¹².

Savings: 10 to 25% below typical installation costs

The saving is the reason the scheme exists, and the figures reported for it cluster in one band. Solar Together material reports between 10 and 25 per cent off the cost of your solar panels⁴, and the same range appears in a scheme explainer, which puts participant savings at 10% to 25% of the costs associated with a solar installation¹⁶. A battery manufacturer's guide repeats savings of 10% to 25%¹⁷, and a further guide gives 10% to 25%¹⁸.

One source sits outside that band. A maker guide states that group-buying schemes leverage bulk buying to secure discounts of 20 to 35% compared to standard market rates⁵. That is a wider and more generous range than the scheme's own documentation gives, and the two do not reconcile. The 10 to 25 per cent figure is the one repeated across the scheme's own material and should be treated as the working assumption.

To judge what a percentage means in cash, the underlying cost matters. The average solar system costs £10,270, while half of UK households have less than £5,000 in savings¹¹. A 10 to 25 per cent saving on a system of that size is a meaningful sum, but it does not close the gap between the average installation price and the savings of a typical household on its own.

The comparison that matters is against your own quotes. The standard advice is to get various quotes to compare prices of different installers¹⁹, and the scheme's own framing is that you can register to participate for free and without an obligation to install¹. Registration therefore costs nothing and forecloses nothing: it produces a priced offer that can be set against whatever else you have gathered.

Where schemes run: London, Manchester, Suffolk, Norfolk and beyond

Coverage is patchy by design, because each round is a separate council decision. Group buying of this kind is backed by local councils and trusted partners and has already helped thousands of UK households⁸, and the Solar Together scheme has installed 79,500 solar panels in the UK since 2018¹⁰. Those are national totals built from many separate local rounds.

The named rounds in the scheme's own documentation give a sense of the spread. Solar Together Wirral operates with Liverpool City Region Combined Authority⁶. Solar Together Cheshire partners Cheshire West and Chester Council, Cheshire East Council and Warrington Borough Council⁷. Solar Together Hertfordshire is cited as an example of a council-facilitated group-buying scheme²⁰. Switch Together Norfolk covers Broadland District and South Norfolk³, and Switch Together Birmingham covers Birmingham⁹.

Elsewhere the picture is a mix of council schemes and independent ones. East Anglia solar installation work covers Norfolk, Suffolk, and parts of Cambridgeshire and Essex²¹. Good Energy installs solar panels and batteries in multiple places across the south of England²². A community energy project was initiated in Ambleside and is already being introduced to Kendal, Arnside, Levens, Duddon and Keswick, expanding to at least two new communities²³. Richmond residents have a separate arrangement with a trusted installer offering a £600 discount on solar and battery installations²⁴.

The practical consequence is that a householder cannot assume a round is open. A council that ran a round in one year may not run one the next, and the scheme's name changes with the council: Solar Together in most places, Switch Together in Birmingham and Norfolk. Checking the council's own energy pages is the only reliable way to establish whether a round is live.

Who can take part and when schemes open

Eligibility is set by the individual round rather than by a national rule, and the scheme's own material describes participation as ongoing rather than tied to a fixed national window⁴. In practice a round opens, runs for a registration period, holds its auction, issues recommendations, and then closes. Households with existing solar panels are not excluded: Switch Together Norfolk invites households that already have solar panels to register to have battery storage added to their existing system to maximise its benefits³, and the same offer appears in the Birmingham scheme⁹.

Battery storage is a standard part of the offer rather than an optional extra in most rounds. Switch Together Birmingham offers high-quality solar photovoltaic panels and battery storage⁹, and Switch Together Norfolk offers the same³. The technical case is well established: a solar PV system can be paired with a battery storage system to store excess electricity that your panels generate for when you most need it¹.

Two conditions apply to anyone joining. First, planning. You will still need to check planning requirements if you join the Solar Together scheme², and the contractor will provide a basic panel design for the roof and descriptions of the installation, including a basic drawing of the proposed layout, to support that¹². Second, grid registration. The installation must be registered with your distribution network operator, usually done by your installer¹⁴.

On the question of what the scheme does for independence, the answer is partial. A scheme-installed system generates electricity on your own roof and reduces the amount bought from a supplier, and a battery shifts that generation into the evening. What remains is the grid connection, the supplier relationship, the export arrangement and the installer's own company. The scheme changes the procurement, not the underlying dependence.