Solar Panels for Metal Fabrication & Engineering Workshops

Solar built around your fabrication load, not a catalogue

UK metal-fabrication and engineering firms now pay 25p to 30p per kWh on commercial electricity contracts, roughly double the rate of three years ago, and for a shop running welders, plasma and fibre-laser cutters, CNC machining centres and a rotary-screw compressor, power is the largest controllable cost after steel and labour. On fixed-price, competitively-tendered fabrication work there is often nowhere to pass that cost on, so it comes straight off the margin. On-site solar is the most reliable way to take a permanent slice out of that bill, and fabrication happens to be one of the best-matched building types for it in the country.

Sized to your daytime load, not your roof area

We start every design from 12 months of your half-hourly meter data and your roof drawings, then size the array so annual generation matches roughly 70 to 90 percent of daytime consumption. The trick is to anchor the design on the loads that run all day, the compressor that cycles continuously to hold line pressure, the fume extraction that must run whenever anyone welds, the laser chiller, and CNC coolant, then let the spiky welding, plasma and laser peaks soak up midday generation. As a guide, one kWp of panels needs about five to six square metres of unshaded roof and generates 900 to 1,000 kWh a year in the UK, so a 1,000 square metre workshop roof typically supports 150 to 180 kWp. Our savings calculator gives an indicative figure in seconds, and the cost guide sets out real prices by workshop size.

The spiky, high-power load is a feature, not a problem

Fabricators often assume their arc welders, plasma cutters and fibre lasers are too peaky for solar. The opposite is true. Those loads are intermittent, high-current draws that sit on top of a large, near-constant daytime baseload, and it is that baseload the array feeds most smoothly. A modern fibre laser draws far more for its chiller, drives and assist-gas compressor than for the beam itself, and all of those run continuously. Where demand charges or kVA peaks are heavy, we model a battery alongside the array to shave them and to shift a powder-coat oven or compressor warm-up onto stored midday surplus. Everything is sized from your actual half-hourly data, never a rule of thumb.

We design the array around your extraction, because we have to

Since 2019 the HSE has treated all welding fume, including mild-steel fume, as a carcinogen, and its welding-fume guidance requires local exhaust ventilation for all indoor welding regardless of duration or material. That LEV ductwork and its discharge stacks penetrate and vent through the very roof your panels go on. A generalist rarely even checks; we plan the panel layout, cable routing and maintenance walkways around your existing and future extraction so the array never blocks a legally-required fume route, and the extraction load itself becomes an obligatory daytime load the solar offsets. On structural-steel shops we do the same with EOT crane rails, deducting their dead load from the roof's residual capacity before a single panel is specified.

Every fabrication trade sizes differently

A single-bay welding and jobbing shop, a sheet-metal and CNC unit, a structural-steel fabricator under overhead cranes, a laser-profiling house and a powder-coating line all size and pay back differently, which is why we build around the trade rather than swapping a noun on a template. Explore the profile for metal fabrication workshops, structural steel fabrication, welding and engineering workshops, CNC machining shops, laser and plasma cutting and powder-coating and finishing, each with its own typical sizing, payback and compliance notes.

Funded the way that suits your balance sheet, owned or leased

Most fabrication installs do not need capital up front. Asset finance spreads the cost over five to seven years and is usually cash-flow positive from month one, because the finance payment is smaller than the bill it replaces. A Power Purchase Agreement needs no capex at all: a funder owns the system and you buy the power at a fixed rate below grid, which suits tenants and shorter leases. If you buy outright, the Annual Investment Allowance lets a profitable company deduct the first £1m of qualifying spend from taxable profit in year one, and the VAT is reclaimable for a VAT-registered business. Solar is special-rate plant, so it does not qualify for full expensing, and we are careful to model the relief you can actually claim rather than the headline everyone else quotes. See the routes side by side on the grants and funding page.

Grid connection and older roofs are the two things to check early

For anything above about 11 kW on a three-phase supply, the G99 grid-connection application to your Distribution Network Operator is often the longest item in the programme, so we submit it alongside the structural survey to start the clock on day one and use export limitation or a battery where capacity is tight. The other early check is the roof itself: many older fabrication units have tired three-phase supplies, and asbestos-cement or fragile single-skin roofs that cannot take rooftop PV directly. We survey both before you commit, and where a roof needs over-cladding we can often fund it inside the same project. Local grid capacity and council net-zero targets shape a project too, so each of our area guides covers the local picture for a major UK engineering centre.

An honest specialist, not a clipboard sales call

We are MCS-certified for commercial work, NICEIC-registered, and RECC and TrustMark licensed, our rooftop design follows the RC62 fire-safety Code of Practice, and every install is covered by a ten-year insurance-backed workmanship warranty on top of the 25-year panel performance warranty. If your roof, load profile or tenure do not suit solar, we will say so. The proposal is fixed price: what you sign is what you pay. When you are ready, request a free quote or read the answers to the questions we hear most on our FAQs page.