By 2030, Britain’s data centres could draw as much electricity each year as almost nine million homes, roughly 8% of the country’s total supply. Our analysis finds that 5.5 million domestic solar installations could meet that demand in full, and could be built far faster than any other source of new power.
Matching AI demand with rooftop solar
NESO’s Clean Power 2030 analysis forecasts that electricity demand from British data centres will more than quadruple, from roughly 5 TWh today to 22 TWh a year by the end of the decade.¹ Set against Ofgem’s 2026 figure for typical household electricity use, around 2,500 kWh a year,² that is the annual usage of some 8.8 million UK homes.
The average domestic solar array installed in Britain in 2026 is 4.7 kW,³ roughly 11 panels, producing around 4,000 kWh of electricity a year on the MCS standard basis. On that basis, 5.5 million new domestic installations would match the sector’s entire projected draw.
Panels up in weeks, not decades
Rooftop solar is the only source that can scale in months, not decades. From enquiry to installation takes six to 12 weeks. Households can export to the grid, and start saving money, from day one.— Manan Shah, Co-Founder, Solar4Good
That timetable leaves other options in the shade. A wind farm can take a decade from inception to completion. A nuclear station takes longer still to commission and build. The industry is already scaling at pace: in 2025, a record year, MCS logged more than 267,000 newly certified rooftop systems,⁴ up from just 36,000 in 2020. Keeping up with the data centre revolution would call for around one million installations a year, a large but not impossible figure given that growth.
Data centres can supply only a fraction themselves
One obvious response is to put panels on the data centres. Government plans forecast that the UK will need at least 6 GW of AI-capable data centre capacity by 2030.⁵ Roofs on that scale, somewhere between 310 and 640 football pitches, could host perhaps 200 to 350 MWp of solar, a serious portfolio by UK standards, yet still enough to offset only around 1% of the increase in demand.
Where on-site generation earns its keep is locally. Data centres in Slough drew approximately 1.3 TWh in 2024, around 65% of all electricity used in the local authority.⁶ Generating on-site there means the power never has to travel to the grid and back.
Why this matters for homeowners. The same rooftop solar that can help absorb national demand also cuts a household’s own bills, by generating power on site and exporting the surplus. See what home solar involves, or pair it with battery storage to use more of what you generate.
Solar4Good (2026), Powering Britain’s data centre boom would take five million home solar installations. Available at: https://solar4good.co.uk/research/data-centres-solar-2026/. Attributed to Manan Shah, Co-Founder, Solar4Good.
Sources
- NESO, Clean Power 2030, Annex 1: Electricity demand and supply analysis (data centre demand 5 TWh to 22 TWh by 2030). neso.energy
- Ofgem, typical domestic consumption values, 2026 (around 2,500 kWh electricity). ofgem.gov.uk
- MCS Data Dashboard, 2026 average domestic array 4.7 kW. datadashboard.mcscertified.com
- MCS, 2026 low-carbon landscape (267,000 systems certified in 2025). mcscertified.com
- DSIT, UK Compute Roadmap, 2025 (at least 6 GW AI-capable data centre capacity by 2030). gov.uk
- DESNZ, Energy Trends, 2026 (Slough data centre consumption).