Solar panels for caravan parks: when your busiest season is also your sunniest
Solar panels for caravan parks make unusually strong commercial sense, and the reason is the one thing owners worry about most: the seasonal trade. A park's demand is concentrated from April to October, and that is precisely when solar generates the most, so the alignment between peak occupancy and peak sunshine is the distinctive hook for this sector rather than a problem to work around. When a coastal park is running 80% occupancy in August, the showers, the pool plant, the bar refrigeration and the guest EV chargers are all working hardest in the middle of the day, exactly when the panels produce the most. In-season self-consumption is therefore naturally very high, and self-consumption is the single biggest driver of solar payback. Where a 24/7 factory has to export a chunk of its generation cheaply, a well-sized holiday park consumes most of what it makes during the season that matters. The full argument for a seasonal park is in is solar worth it for caravan parks.
Energy is now one of the largest controllable costs on a park after staffing, and on most sites the site-wide bill has risen sharply since 2021. Pitch margins were already thin, and standing charges, frost protection and reception running costs do not stop in the off-season even when income falls close to zero. Solar fixes a large slice of that bill for two decades from a single investment, and it gives the park an on-site generation record it can cite in a Green Tourism application.
Why holiday and caravan parks suit solar
Three features set this sector apart. First, the seasonal load curve runs with the sun, not against it, so the panels are busiest when the park is busiest. Second, parks are rich in solar-friendly space: reception and shop buildings, amenity and shower blocks, swimming pool plant rooms, clubhouses and entertainment venues, plus ranks of static-caravan and lodge roofs and open land between pitches. Third, guest EV charging is fast becoming an expectation, and pairing chargepoints with on-site solar absorbs daytime generation at close to 100% self-consumption. Adding battery storage lets you charge cars from stored solar into the evening peak without overloading your DNO supply, which often defers or avoids an expensive grid upgrade. That last point matters on many parks because rural and coastal sites frequently sit on capacity-constrained networks, where a weak grid connection makes generating your own power on site even more valuable.
How systems are sized
For a static caravan park a system is usually designed in the 50 to 500 kW range, which is roughly 90 to 920 panels spread across about 300 to 3,000 square metres of roof, typically the amenity blocks, reception, shop and any leisure building, with static-caravan roofs hosting micro-arrays where ground or roof space is tight. A system that size generates in the region of 45,000 to 460,000 kWh a year and saves somewhere between 10 and 106 tonnes of CO2 annually. The aim is never simply to fill the roof. Sizing starts from at least twelve months of half-hourly site meter data overlaid on your occupancy calendar, because a park running 80% occupancy in August and 5% in January has a load curve nothing like a year-round business. The array is sized to the peak-season daytime baseload of the highest-value loads first (swimming pool plant, shower-block hot water, kitchen and bar refrigeration, and increasingly guest EV charging), so it is consumed on site when the park is full, and the off-season surplus exports under the Smart Export Guarantee.
A question almost every owner asks is whether to put panels on each caravan or on the park as a whole. The answer is almost always site-wide rather than per-van. The array is fed into the park's private distribution network so it offsets everything the operator pays for (pitch pillars, reception, shop, laundry, amenity blocks, pool and lighting), and the operator keeps the saving or recovers it through pitch electricity charges. Per-unit micro-arrays only make sense for genuinely off-grid pods or where there is no shared roof or ground space at all.
Costs, payback and tax relief
A single static caravan park project typically lands between £45,000 and £450,000 fully installed depending on size and roof area, with a simple payback near 6 years and the electricity effectively free for the years after that. By far the biggest lever in the numbers is the tax relief. The panels, inverters, mounting and battery storage all count as plant and machinery, so up to the £1m annual cap the 100% Annual Investment Allowance lets most park businesses set the cost against year-one profit, returning as much as a quarter of the project value in tax to a limited company. Here is the point owners often miss: as a special-rate asset solar is excluded from full expensing, yet the 100% AIA still relieves it in full, and a single-park install almost always lands inside the cap. Above the cap, the 50% First Year Allowance applies to the balance, which is mainly relevant to larger multi-park roll-outs. These figures are illustrative and depend on your park, load profile and tariff. Our cost guide sets out worked numbers for different park sizes. These cost and payback figures are illustrative estimates, not quotes.
Funding routes
Few parks fund a solar install from cash, and they do not need to. The 100% AIA is the foundation. Beyond that, the Smart Export Guarantee matters more here than in a 24/7 business because parks export significantly through the quiet October to March months, earning income on power you would not otherwise have used; SEG tariffs are around 12-13p per kWh for the better open fixed rates in October 2026, with small suppliers paying 3-6p, and because each supplier sets its own it is worth shopping around. If you want to offer guest or staff EV charging, the Workplace Charging Scheme from OZEV funds up to 75% of chargepoint cost, capped at £500 per socket from April 2026, up to a maximum of 40 sockets per applicant across all sites, and the scheme closes on 31 March 2027. And while it is not a grant, Green Tourism accreditation can use your on-site solar as evidence in an application. The funding page covers export tariffs and the EV charging scheme in detail.
Compliance and sector considerations
The defining compliance point for a caravan park is the site distribution itself. It must comply with BS 7671 Section 708, the standard for electrical installations in caravan and camping parks, with pitch socket-outlets to BS EN 60309-2, IP44 rated, at least 16A and with RCD protection. Solar feeds into the park's private distribution network, not into individual vans, which is exactly why the site-wide metering model works. There is a clear split between amenity buildings and pitches: rooftop PV on commercial park buildings (reception, amenity blocks, leisure complexes) generally falls under permitted development in England under Class J of Part 14 (above 50 kW, the council's prior approval of design and appearance applies; Wales and Scotland have their own rules), whereas the pitch supply is governed by Section 708 and periodic inspection should follow the intervals set out in IET Guidance Note 3. Planning needs more care in rural and protected settings: AONBs, National Parks, conservation areas and coastal sites attract greater scrutiny, so the usual preference is for roof-mount and discreet, screened ground-mount, with the visual-impact and landscape assessment the authority expects. A G99 grid application is required for connections above 16 A (3.68 kW) per phase, and on capacity-constrained rural and coastal networks a connection study is essential before final sizing.
How a project is approached
The starting point is at least twelve months of half-hourly site meter data overlaid with the occupancy calendar, then sizing for peak-season self-consumption rather than a generic commercial profile. A full BS 7671 Section 708 condition survey of the site distribution is standard, so where pitch pillars, the amenity-block board or the incoming supply need bringing up to current standard, that work can usually be funded inside the same capital envelope as the PV, giving you one coordinated plan rather than two separate jobs. The G99 grid application is normally submitted immediately after the survey to start the clock, because that is the longest lead item, and where export capacity is tight the design can be self-consumption only or add battery storage. Coastal parks typically need a salt-resistant specification. The disruptive work is best scheduled for the closed or quiet season so peak-season trading is untouched.
If your park also runs static caravans, lodges or a touring field, our pages on solar for caravan parks and solar for lodge and glamping parks go deeper on each. When you are ready, read the cost guide and funding routes, then send an enquiry from your meter data, or read the holiday park solar FAQs first.
