Are solar panels becoming more popular?
Solar panel sales are increasing year-on-year - they've gone from generating just 1 megawatt of the UK's electricity in 2008 to an astonishing 11,730 megawatts in 2020.
Sales of solar panels in 2021 were higher than in the previous five years combined. In the UK government's 2020 report on solar panel costs, it was revealed that around 970,000 UK homes have solar panels.
This amounts to 3.3% of the UK's total housing, so whilst it's great to see solar panels increase in popularity, more needs to be done to help people adopt the technology.
Part of the reason behind the surge in solar panel ownership since 2010 was the Feed-in Tariff scheme. This scheme paid solar panel owners for any kWh (kilowatt hours) of electricity they fed back into the Grid. So the actual return on investment for solar panels was much better than it currently is (the scheme ended in April 2019).
Since then, solar panel sales have continued to rise, but at a noticeably slower rate. Take a look at the chart below for context:
