Do Solar Panels and Battery Storage Increase Home Insurance Costs?

And batteries?

Batteries are the new obsession. A sleek box on the wall that promises freedom from the grid, lower bills, and the ability to tell your energy supplier to politely get lost.

So far, so brilliant.

But recently, in passing, we heard something that made us pause. A casual comment from someone in the trade — that solar and battery installs might be nudging up customers’ home insurance. Not enough to cause panic, but enough to make you wonder if this is one of those modern “hidden costs” that only appears after you’ve spent £10,000–£15,000 on a shiny new system.

So, being the sort of people who can’t leave a question alone, we decided to investigate. Properly.

Because the real “truth” of home insurance isn’t the number you see on the screen. It’s in the policy documents — the long PDFs that can run to 60, 70, even 90 pages of definitions, exclusions, conditions and fine print. They’re full of important stuff you really should read before you buy, but realistically most people don’t… until it’s too late and they need to make a claim.

So here’s what we did. We took 10 home insurance policies offered through the meerkat comparison journey, and we studied the actual policy documentation behind them. Not just the sales summary — the proper wording. We wanted to see whether solar panels are treated as “normal” now, whether battery storage is even mentioned, and what the hidden traps might be around disclosure, workmanship and electrical breakdown.

That’s where it gets interesting.

For the most basic cover, the quotes we saw ranged from £154 per year up to £347 per year. That’s more than double, for the same house, before solar panels, batteries, heat pumps or anything else even enters the picture. So if solar does affect the premium, it’s happening inside a market that’s wildly variable to begin with.

When we ran our quotes, the comparison site suggested a rebuild cost of £357,000 for our Didsbury semi. But here’s the key detail: most policies weren’t pricing cover tightly around that figure anyway. Many insurers were automatically including rebuild cover somewhere between £500,000 and £1 million.

So yes, you could argue solar increases rebuild cost. But in this particular case, it made no difference at all — the rebuild limit was already comfortably above what the property would need, panels or not. Which means the premium question probably isn’t being driven by rebuild cost in the way people assume.

So we turned to the policy wording.

Some insurers now explicitly list solar panels in the Buildings definition. Aviva includes “fixed clean energy installations such as solar panels.”

Allianz defines Buildings as including permanently fixed energy installations such as solar panels.

The Post Office goes as far as listing solar panels directly as part of Buildings.

MBNA includes fixed wind turbines and solar panels within the definition of the private residence. 

In other words, solar is increasingly being treated like other permanent fixtures. It’s not being positioned as some exotic upgrade that invalidates your cover. It’s just part of the property.

In a few policies, solar panels are also recognised in practical ways beyond the definition. Post Office, for example, explicitly states it will cover repair or replacement of solar panels that are accidentally broken.

That’s a very clear sign that, for at least some insurers, panels have moved firmly into the “normal household risk” category.

When you read the policy documents, you start to see why so many post-installation disputes happen. Because home insurance is not designed to be a warranty for electrical kit.

A common theme across multiple policies is that mechanical and electrical breakdown isn’t covered. MBNA states clearly that it won’t pay claims if anything mechanical or electrical becomes faulty or breaks down.

That’s directly relevant to inverters and battery packs. If something fails internally, that’s typically treated as breakdown, not an insured event — unless that failure causes wider insured damage such as a fire.

Another repeated theme is workmanship. Policies often exclude damage caused by poor workmanship, faulty materials or bad design. Aviva excludes damage caused by faulty materials, design or poor workmanship.

MBNA also excludes bad workmanship or design and the use of faulty materials.

From an electrician’s point of view, this is crucial: insurance generally won’t pick up the tab for problems rooted in installation quality. That sits with the installer, the manufacturer warranty, or ultimately the customer — depending on what went wrong and who’s responsible.

Solar panels can alter the structure and risk profile of the building. Roof-mounted PV introduces wind loading considerations. Roof penetrations can change how a roof behaves in storms and heavy weather. And with in-roof systems, you can also be changing the fire performance of the roof structure itself.

So when policies say “tell us about alterations,” it’s not just administrative box-ticking — it can be grounded in real building risk.

The Post Office requires customers to tell them about significant alterations to the home.

Safeguard includes structural alterations, restoration or renovation as changes that must be disclosed, and notes terms or premiums may change as a result.

Aviva also flags that you should tell them if you plan to alter or renovate the buildings. 

So while the meerkat might not ask about solar panels, the policy wording often assumes you’ll disclose changes — particularly if the installation materially alters the property.

From what we’ve seen, the honest answer is this: solar panels are increasingly being treated as normal, and any premium effect is hard to isolate because the baseline pricing varies massively anyway.

The bigger story isn’t always the cost. It’s clarity.

Solar is now frequently written into Buildings definitions, and sometimes even into accidental breakage cover. Battery storage, by comparison, is still poorly defined in many policy documents. And across the board, the same exclusions and conditions keep appearing: breakdown isn’t covered, poor workmanship isn’t covered, and significant alterations should be disclosed.

And if you’re the installer, it’s worth making this part of the customer conversation. Not as a scare story — just as a practical reality.

Because the last thing anyone wants is to discover what the policy really thinks about batteries… after the claim.