Where a panel can go on your home
Your roof, wall or garden, read against the rules.
Read moreWhich company is yours
Fourteen distribution licence areas cover Great Britain. The company holding the one you live in owns the cables in your street. It is not your electricity supplier, and you do not get to choose it: it arrives with the address.
Our map of those fourteen is a starting point rather than an answer. Three parts of the country are worth knowing about before anyone assumes anything.
- Two companies cover Scotland. One has the north, the other the south and centre.
- The North West is divided. Merseyside and Cheshire sit with north Wales under one company and the rest of the region under another, so Liverpool and Manchester write to different places.
- Two companies share the South East, so no single name covers it.
The way round all of that is the telephone. Dial 105. It costs nothing, it works from anywhere in England, Scotland and Wales, and it hands you to whoever runs the network where you are standing. We do this with you, and we confirm the answer on that company’s own postcode checker before a form goes anywhere.
Granite and sash windows in Aberdeen. What goes on the form is wherever the device is fitted, and that is not always what is printed on the bill.
One name you may run into
Older licence lists still carry Western Power Distribution and its sister companies. They became National Grid Electricity Distribution in 2022. Same cables, same network, different name on the letter.
What you send, and when
The government describes a short online form of five to ten minutes, done inside 28 days of the device going in, carrying a name, an email address and the address where it was fitted. The guidance packed with the device points you at it.
We put that to you as something you are asked to do rather than a deadline with a penalty on the end of it, because what we are reading is an assessment setting out how the process is meant to work. It is a Great Britain arrangement. Northern Ireland sits outside it.
Why it is one per household
The Energy Networks Association put the change forward on 1 April 2026. Ofgem agreed it on 11 August 2026 and it landed with everything else on 27 August. Engineering Recommendation G98 Issue 2 Amendment 1 holds plug-in solar to a single device per home, and that is the number that binds, because the product specification steps aside for it.
It is also how you get paid for export
Most people meet this form as an obligation. It is also the gate to being paid for what you send back: the government’s assessment records that getting an export tariff would depend on having registered the device with your network operator. If a tariff is what you are after, this is not optional paperwork.
What people ask about the form
Does the operator have to say yes first?
No. You register a compliant device after it is in, rather than applying before. Full rooftop systems run the opposite way round.
What if I move house?
The registration belongs to the address rather than to you. Take the device and register it again where it ends up.
Is it the same in Northern Ireland?
No. G98 covers Great Britain. Northern Ireland has separate connection requirements under G98 (NI), a different company running the network, and a government statement that plug-in solar would only become legally usable there if the Northern Ireland electricity safety regulations are reformed. That sits with the Northern Ireland Executive.
The rest of what we do
On this page
- Which company is yours
- What you send, and when
- Why it is one per household
- It is also how you get paid for export
- What people ask about the form
Ask us about your own home
Send us the postcode and tell us what the surface is made of. We reply by email.
Start with my postcode