How much do solar panels for fabrication cost?

The short answer: a solar system for a UK metal-fabrication or engineering workshop typically costs between about £16,000 for a small single-bay unit and over £320,000 for a large laser-profiling or powder-coating plant, and most installs pay back in three to seven years. The number that matters more than the headline price is the cost per kWp, because that is what falls as the system gets bigger, and the self-consumption your daytime load delivers, because that is what turns generation into savings. Below are real 2026 UK figures by workshop size, what drives the variation, the hidden costs to budget for, and how the tax relief and finance actually work for a fabrication business.

Cost per kWp by fabrication workshop size

Solar is priced per kilowatt-peak (kWp) of panels, and larger systems cost less per kWp because the fixed costs of design, scaffolding, grid connection and commissioning spread across more panels. For fabrication, where a big portal-frame roof usually sits over a genuinely high daytime load, that means the larger structural-steel, laser and powder-coating plants get both the best price per kWp and the fastest payback.

Workshop	Usable roof	System	Indicative cost	~£/kWp	Self-consumption	Payback
Small (jobbing engineering / single bay)	~200 to 400 m²	20 to 50 kWp	£16,000 to £40,000	£700 to £810	70 to 85%	5 to 7 years
Medium (sheet-metal + CNC shop)	~500 to 1,000 m²	75 to 150 kWp	£55,000 to £110,000	£650 to £750	75 to 90%	4 to 6 years
Large (structural steel / laser / powder-coat)	1,500 to 3,000+ m²	250 to 500 kWp+	£150,000 to £350,000+	£520 to £700	80 to 90%+	3 to 5 years

These are indicative planning figures for a rooftop install in 2026. Your real number depends on roof type and condition, the electrical works needed, and your load profile, which is why we always price from a survey rather than a rule of thumb. The per-sub-sector cards below break the ranges down further by trade.

Why fabrication pays back faster than most sectors

Payback is not really about the price of the panels, it is about how much of what they generate you use yourself. Self-consumed solar replaces grid electricity at your full import rate, currently around 25 to 30p per kWh for commercial users, while any surplus you export earns only a supplier-set Smart Export Guarantee rate of roughly 12 to 16p. Because fabrication runs a single Monday-to-Friday daytime shift, its demand lands almost exactly on the solar curve, so 70 to 90 percent of generation is used on site rather than exported. That high self-consumption is the reason a fabrication array pays back in three to seven years while a building that sits empty during the day takes far longer. You can model this for your own site with the savings calculator, and the shift pattern is explained in full in our guide to single-shift self-consumption.

What the numbers look like: a worked example

Take a mid-size sheet-metal and CNC shop with a 1,000 square metre roof and a 150 kWp array costing around £105,000. In UK conditions that array generates roughly 140,000 kWh a year. With 85 percent self-consumed at 28p, that is about £33,000 of avoided grid cost, plus a few thousand pounds of export income, for a simple payback of a little over four years and then twenty-plus years of largely free electricity. Over the 25-year panel warranty the system generates several times its cost. We share the full model built from your half-hourly meter data so your accountant can stress-test every assumption.

The tax relief: what a fabrication company can actually claim

This is where a lot of online cost guides get it wrong, so it is worth being precise. Solar PV is classed by HMRC as special-rate plant and machinery, which means it does not qualify for 100 percent full expensing (that relief is for main-rate assets only). What a fabrication company can claim is the Annual Investment Allowance, which gives 100 percent year-one tax relief on the first £1 million of qualifying spend and does apply to solar, so it covers most SME fabrication installs in full. Above the £1m cap, the 50 percent first-year allowance for special-rate plant applies, then a 6 percent writing-down allowance on the balance. For a profitable company that is worth up to roughly 25 percent of the cost back in year one. The VAT on a commercial install is 20 percent and is reclaimable by a VAT-registered business, so it is effectively net-neutral rather than a real cost, but it is not zero-rated (0 percent VAT is a domestic-only relief). On-site solar and battery are also exempt from business rates in England until 2035. These are illustrative positions, not tax advice, so confirm the detail with your accountant. The full picture is on the grants and funding page and in our guide to capital allowances on fabrication solar.

Hidden costs to budget for

• G99 grid connection. Almost every fabrication array needs a G99 application to the Distribution Network Operator, and on constrained networks that can carry a connection or reinforcement cost. We apply on day one to keep it off the critical path. See G99 for fabrication shops.
• Structural and crane-rail survey. A portal frame must be checked before install, and on structural-steel shops the EOT crane-rail dead load is deducted from the roof's residual capacity first.
• Roof condition. Older units may have asbestos-cement or fragile single-skin roofs that cannot take PV directly and need over-cladding, which can often be funded inside the same project. See asbestos and fragile roofs.
• Scaffolding, access and LEV coordination. Weld-fume extraction routes and discharge stacks must be worked around, which good design handles at no extra hardware cost but poor design does not.

Cash, asset finance or a zero-capex PPA

You do not have to fund a fabrication install from capital. A cash purchase gives the fastest payback and the full AIA relief. 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, leaving your capital free for a new laser or press brake. A Power Purchase Agreement needs no capital at all: a funder owns the array and you buy the power below grid, which suits tenants and shorter leases. We model all three against each other so you can compare like for like, and the trade-offs are set out in our financing guide. When you are ready, request a fixed-price quote.