About solarpanelsforbarns.co.uk

A UK barn-solar specialist — and only barns

Solar Panels for Barns is a dedicated barn-solar service operated by SEO Dons Ltd (Company No. 16766013), registered at 71–75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9JQ. We are a focused specialist, not a general installer with a farm section bolted on. Every page on this site, every survey we run and every proposal we write is about one thing: putting solar PV onto a barn roof — whether that roof spans a 300 kW poultry complex or a 6 kW converted stone barn.

We will be straight with you about what we are and what we are not. This is a specialist service built to do barns properly. We would rather earn your trust by knowing the building type inside out than pretend to be the biggest name in the field. The work is delivered by MCS-certified installation teams working to the standards set out below, and the design and feasibility thinking is ours.

Why we focus only on barns

A barn is not a big house, and treating it like one is exactly how a barn solar project goes wrong. The building type is genuinely distinct, and the differences are the whole job:

• Permitted-development rights work differently. Rooftop PV on a working agricultural building is normally Permitted Development under Class A, Part 14 of the GPDO 2015 — no planning application — provided panels don't protrude more than 0.2 m above the roof plane and the capacity and siting limits are met. Knowing exactly where your barn sits within those rules is a barn-specialist skill.
• Heritage and listed barns need a sensitive design, not a refusal. Stone, brick and timber-framed threshing barns, Dutch barns and field barns lose Permitted Development when listed or in a conservation area, National Park, AONB or the Broads. That changes the consenting route — but with the right approach it rarely makes solar impossible.
• Asbestos-cement roofs are common on pre-2000 barns. They can't be drilled or loaded with panels, and only a licensed contractor may remove them under CAR 2012. The proven route is a combined strip-and-reclad to modern profiled steel, then PV on the new roof.
• Rural grids are capacity-constrained. A G99 application is required above 3.68 kW per phase, and rural DNO networks often need a connection study or an export-limited design. This is a defining feature of barn projects, not a footnote.
• Barns span hard commercial and domestic at once. A 24/7 poultry shed and a barn-conversion home are sized, costed, taxed and consented in completely different ways. One template cannot serve both.

Because we only do barns, every one of these is routine for us. You can see how each building type is handled — and how the numbers differ — across our barn types, from steel-frame portal sheds to traditional and listed barns.

How we work

Our process is built to give you real numbers early, with no obligation and no surprises later.

• Free desk feasibility. Send us your half-hourly meter data (where a supply exists) and a photo of the roof, and we model an indicative system size, generation and payback before anyone visits. For a working barn we design to your actual load — for example, a typical 180 kW broiler-shed array on two clear-span roofs is sized to the continuous ventilation, heating and lighting load, not to a one-size template. You get an honest first picture for the cost of an email.
• Fixed-price proposal. When the desk study stacks up, we move to a fixed-price proposal — sized to your roof and your load, with the figures matching the relevant barn type rather than a headline guess. You can sense-check the ranges yourself on our barn solar cost page.
• Structural appraisal. PV adds a modest dead load of roughly 10–15 kg/m² plus wind uplift, so a short structural appraisal confirms the purlins and frame can carry it. Modern steel portal frames almost always can; older or modified barns occasionally need minor strengthening, which we factor in before any panels go up.
• Planning, LBC and grid handled in-house. We confirm your barn's exact Permitted-Development position and, where a listed barn or designated area requires it, prepare the Listed Building Consent or planning application and the supporting heritage statement. We submit the G99 DNO application alongside the survey to start that clock immediately — on rural networks the grid connection is usually the long pole, so we get it moving early.
• MCS-certified installation. The install itself is carried out by MCS-certified teams, with biosecurity and animal-welfare protocols followed in full on livestock and poultry units, and DSEAR and grain-dust precautions taken on operational grain stores.

When you're ready for tailored figures, the quickest route is to request a free desk feasibility.

Standards we work to

Barn solar should be installed to the same standards as any quality commercial or domestic system. The accreditations and frameworks below are the benchmarks our installation work is delivered against:

• MCS commercial and domestic certification — the gateway to Smart Export Guarantee payments and to most product and workmanship warranties.
• NICEIC — electrical installation and inspection standards.
• RECC and TrustMark — consumer-protection and Government-endorsed quality frameworks.
• IWA insurance-backed warranty — an insurance-backed guarantee so workmanship cover stands behind the install.

We treat these as the bar to clear on every barn, from a single field barn to a multi-shed complex.

Our promise: an honest answer either way

Not every barn is right for solar, and we will tell you plainly when that's the case. If a roof is the wrong pitch or orientation, if a fragile or asbestos roof would need a re-clad that doesn't make financial sense for you, if a low-load barn would export so much that the payback doesn't earn its keep, or if a grid constraint shrinks a scheme below the point of being worthwhile — you'll hear it from us at the desk-feasibility stage, before you've spent anything. We'd rather give you a straight "not yet" or "not this roof" than sell you a system that disappoints. A barn roof is the best solar site on most rural properties, but only when the building, the planning and the grid all line up — and our job is to check that they do before we recommend a single panel.