At the moment, the UK is a world leader in renewable energy generation, with enough solar panels installed to power all of Buckingham Palace's electric needs. It is a big step forward, but it still doesn't mean that there is enough renewable energy to power the country. That would take an estimated 4 million homes' worth of solar panels and even more wind turbines.

So, what does it take to make a house use completely renewable sources? It's not as easy as slapping some solar panels on your roof (though that is undoubtedly part of it).

How Much Energy Does Your Home Need?

Getting all your energy from renewable sources is an exciting goal. But before you can get started, it's essential to know how much energy you'll need and what it will take to generate that kind of electricity.

To power your home entirely from renewable sources, you'd need to generate and store a lot of energy. However, you first have to know how much energy your home uses.

The best way to estimate how much energy you'll need is to look at your last few electricity and gas bills. These will show how much power you have been using per month in kilowatt-hours (kWh). Some suppliers measure gas in kilowatt-hours (kWh), while others measure it in cubic meters (m3). But don't worry too much — if your supplier measures gas by m³, divide this number by 11.2 to get an equivalent figure stated in kWh.

The average UK home uses around 3700 kWh of energy per year for heating, hot water, and electricity.

It is equivalent to daily usage of 10 kWh (kilowatt-hours). But this figure can vary depending on the size of your home and where you live in the country. A big part of this energy is used in the colder winter months (November-March), accounting for over 65% of yearly usage.

What Is an Average UK Home?

So, now you know about the average electricity usage in the UK. But what exactly is an average UK home?

It turns out that the average household in the UK has roughly four people living in it. That household's size is about 164 square meters (about 1,760 square feet). The house contains some combination of gas and central electric heating and at least one refrigerator.

If your living situation is larger or smaller than this, or if you live somewhere with a substantially different climate, your electricity consumption would probably be higher or lower than average. According to statistics, homes in Great Britain contain at least one appliance within each category. It includes a television, microwave oven, and washing machine. Other standard devices include deep freezers and tumble dryers.

But how much electricity do these home appliances consume?

• A refrigerator that consumes a bit less than 200 kWh per year

• A freezer that may consume as little as 100 kWh per year or as much as 1,000 kWh per year

• A washing machine, which consumes around 200 kWh per year

• A tumble dryer consumes about 300 kWh per year.

• An electric central heating system might consume anywhere between 500 kWh and 3,000 kWh per year (depending on the climate and how much central heating the household uses)

• An electric shower might consume between 300 and 1,600 kWh (depending on how long the showers are)

Renewable Electricity and What Are the Main Ways to Get Renewable Energy?

Renewable electricity comes from naturally replenishing resources such as wind, solar and geothermal energy. Because these options are not finite—like burning fossil fuels, which you can only use once—renewables offer a sustainable energy source.

The most common renewable energy sources used in the UK today include biomass, geothermal, hydroelectricity, and solar power. When generated, these don't cause pollution or emit harmful chemicals and can either be used directly on-site or fed into the grid for supply to other places.

You can also store renewable energy for later use, whereas you can't store many fossil fuels safely at all.

Renewable technologies aren't just about replacing gas or electricity. You can use them to supply heat as well - whether it’s hot water flowing through radiators or air blown around a room, renewables can cover pretty much all your home's needs.

Even so, there are some limitations to renewable energy:

• The amount of renewable electricity technologies produce depends on the weather – a calm day will mean there is less wind power. A cloudy day will affect the amount of solar energy. This lack of consistency means renewables aren't very good at meeting base loads in the same way a coal plant might; however, this isn't usually an issue. The baseload is generally completed by traditional 'on demand' power plants.

• While reducing your carbon footprint, they still have some environmental impact – e.g., wind turbines may interfere with local birdlife, and large hydropower schemes can affect river ecosystems.

What Is an Average Home's Carbon Footprint?

The average carbon footprint of a UK household is around 4.5 tonnes of CO2 per year. It consists of two main components: electricity consumed in a typical house, plus the electrical consumption of all appliances and lighting in the home.

It includes refrigerators, washing machines, computers, and televisions - essentially any electronics or electrical appliances.

Once you know that, you can work out your carbon footprint by counting how many kilowatt-hours of electricity you consume in a year.

You can do this easily by looking at your electricity bill. You can also estimate it by multiplying your monthly bill by 12 or dividing it by the cost of electricity per kWh (for example, if your statement says £ 0.12/kWh, you consume 10 kWh for every pound you spend on electricity).

The home's electricity consumption emissions depend on where you live, as the power grid varies from country to country. Most countries' grids are powered primarily by fossil fuels such as coal and gas. So even if your home generates its electricity with renewable energy sources such as solar panels or wind turbines, it's still receiving most of its electricity from a fossil fuel-based grid.

If you have a grid-connected solar system (also known as "grid-tie solar"), which generates more electricity than your home needs, this excess will be sold back into the grid at wholesale rates. The nearby homes use the excess power they need. While your household may not be directly responsible for all of its electricity use, it helps reduce your local community's carbon footprint.

You can take this further by using energy management systems to control how much of your excess solar power goes back into the grid and how much you store in batteries. It allows you to fine-tune how much of your electricity is coming from renewable sources and how much you're helping to reduce other people's carbon footprints!

How to Power Your UK Home off Completely Renewable Sources

In the last few years, people have been turning to renewable energy to impact the environment positively. Businesses and households no longer rely solely on fossil fuels for their power. Now, the question is: which type of renewable energy can you install in your home? Here is a look at three different types of renewable energy that you can use in your house to create clean and green power today!

Solar Panels

Solar panels work by using sunlight as a source of power. They're commonly installed on rooftops or near windows to receive as much sunlight as possible. The solar panels absorb the light and convert this into electricity for your home. When there isn't enough sunlight, solar panels will use grid electricity instead.

Biomass Boilers

Biomass boilers are very similar to other boilers, but they use biodegradable materials such as wood pellets or chips instead of gas or oil. Biomass boilers are cheaper than different boilers, producing fewer carbon emissions! You can even get them with an automatic feeder, making it easy to refill when needed without opening up your boiler's lid all the time (which could be dangerous).

Turbine Wind Power

If you live in the UK, you will be able to install a turbine on your property, a vertical propeller with blades that rotate quickly. Wind powers the propeller, which turns the turbines that make electricity to power your lights and appliances!

Powering your Home with Solar

If you've been thinking about powering your home with renewable energy, now's the time to do it. Solar panels are significantly more affordable than just a few years ago, but it's also more accessible than ever for UK homeowners to install them on their roofs.

But what will it take to get your home off fossil fuels entirely? It depends on the size of your home, how much power you use, and where you live in the UK. Here's a general guide to help you figure out whether going all-in with solar panels (or some other type of renewable energy) is right for you.

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The size of your home:

A typical three-bedroom house needs about 1 kW of electricity to run its appliances, lights, heating and cooling systems, and electronics. If you live in an apartment or condo, you'll most likely pay a fixed amount each month for electricity service. If you're a homeowner and have decided to go 100% renewable, here's what it will take:

Solar panels:

Solar panels are mounted on the roof or ground and work by converting sunlight into electricity. They require no fuel to operate and are considered maintenance-free. The average cost of installing solar panels is about £5,000 – £8,000. A 3kW system will supply half of the power needed for a typical household in the UK. The installation of solar panels generally takes one day up to two weeks, depending on the complexity of your project. To get the best estimate for your specific situation, contact a professional installer who can give you an accurate quote based on their experience with similar projects in your area.

Solar energy is a great way to help decrease carbon emissions from fossil fuels while saving money on electric bills over time as renewable resources become cheaper than traditional methods.

How Many Solar Panels Do You Require to Be Self-Sufficient?

The average British home uses 3,700 kWh of energy per year. To generate that energy using solar panels, you'd need 36 - 40 panels.

That's about two or three times fewer panels than needed for a home in the US.

However, the generation efficiency also varies depending on where you live. You'd need as many as 26 - 30 panels in a cloudy London and only 15 -19 in sunny Bristol. However, you'd still need fewer panels than your American counterparts because the average British home uses less energy than a US home (3,700 kWh vs. 10,000 kWh). It would take about 36 - 40 solar panels to power an average home in the US!

A typical solar PV system can generate 3,800 kWh per year—that means you'd need to add a solar array and battery to cover your energy usage. That's not too bad!

On the other hand, you'd need a gas boiler eight times as powerful as the average one and an extra four heat pumps, which would be more expensive than your standard natural gas setup.

Assuming that you're using an energy-efficient fridge, freezer, dishwasher, washing machine, lights, and other devices people rely on in their homes—you could power your home entirely with solar panels alone!

It's also important to note that to get the most out of your solar panels, you'll need to ensure that your roof is positioned in the best place possible and at the right angle to capture as much direct sunlight as you can.

It would also help ensure that no shadows fall on your roof from nearby trees or buildings. If there are, you may want to consider investing in a slightly larger system or adding more batteries so that you can store more energy for later use.

Of course, many factors go into powering your home with renewable energy sources, but the amount of energy you consume depends on your lifestyle and usage habits. Try an online calculator to determine how many solar panels you need to meet your energy consumption.

As it turns out, you can convert household solar panels into energy that heats water or provides electricity directly to every item you own. You only have to figure out how much energy your panels generate on average per day and what power requirements those items have.

Heat Pumps

As you would imagine, one of the essential elements in powering a home is heating. And much like lightbulbs, there are many ways to do this that don't involve fossil fuels. Heat pumps extract heat from air or ground and deliver it into the home for heating purposes. The most common types of heat pumps are air-source and ground-source, with the former being cheaper but less energy efficient than the latter.s

Calculating the Power Requirements for Heating Your Home via Heat Pumps

Heating your home with a heat pump is one of the most efficient ways to heat your home. However, it does require electricity. So how much power from solar panels do you need to power a system like this?

The rule of thumb for sizing a heat pump system is 1kW for every 10sqm of floor space.

For example, say your house is 200m2. You will need 20kWs (200 divided by 10) to power this house's heat pump heating system.

The heat pumps will be working at a Coefficient of Performance (CoP) of 3:1. In other words, 1kW electricity in will result in 3kWs of heat out (albeit not all at the same temperature). So, you will need 60kWs (20 x 3) of power from solar panels to run your heat pump system.

On-Site vs. Off-Site Renewables

There are two broad ways to generate renewable energy: on-site and off-site. On-site renewables, such as solar panels, generate some of your energy at your home. Like clean energy providers, off-site renewables power your entire home with clean energy that you buy from a provider.

It's more efficient to generate some of the energy you need at home than to purchase all of it from an external provider (although the cost savings will vary by location). Every bit of renewable electricity you generate on-site reduces the amount of power needed from off-site sources.

The trick is how much on-site generation makes sense for your household — and whether you can do this with zero upfront cost through a Power Purchase Agreement, where a third party owns and maintains the system for free in exchange for a share of the revenue generated over its lifetime.

But Which One Should You Choose Between On-Site and Off-Site Renewables?

It's a worthy goal to power your home from renewable sources. But how much can you do? How much renewable energy can you generate on-site, vs. how much will you have to purchase from a renewable energy supplier?

The first thing to look at is your electricity usage. How many kWh of electricity do you use in a year? (You can find this out on your bill)

To estimate how much clean electricity you could generate with solar panels, take your annual usage and multiply it by the number of sunny hours in your area. It will estimate how many kWh of solar power you could generate in a year. Solar panels are likely worthwhile if you have roof space available and use more than 2/3rds of that amount.

If this is not the case for you, though--if you don't have enough roof space for solar panels, or if you're using less than 2/3rds of the clean energy that solar panels would generate for you every year--then solar panels aren't the answer for powering your home.

For example;

Let's say a solar panel produces 5,000 kWh of electricity annually. If you live in a sunny place, that might be enough to power your home. But what if you live somewhere where the sun isn't always out? Then you'll need some extra power, which you can get from a renewable energy supplier. Let's say they charge 10p per kWh.

If your solar panel produces only half the electricity it should (2,500 kWh), you'll have to get the rest from your renewable energy supplier (2,500 kWh). That means you'll pay an additional £250 on your yearly electricity bill.

If your solar panel produces twice as much electricity as it should (10,000 kWh), you won't have to buy any more power from your supplier. Moreover, you'll save an additional £250 on your yearly electricity bill!

Whether or not you want to go on-site or off-site with your renewable energy depends on how much sunlight hits your house each year.

Summing Up

With the UK on a journey to reduce its carbon emissions, now is when to invest in solar power. The government has put in place subsidies for solar energy, which means you can get a great return on your investment. Your best bet is to opt for solar panels on your roof.

To get the most out of those solar panels, you'll want to install a battery to save the energy produced during the day when you need it most (like at night). With that combination, you can still be connected to the grid so that when your panels are producing more energy than you need, you can sell it back to the grid and offset your costs even further.

But if you don't have that kind of capital right now—or if your roof isn't suitable for solar panels—there are still other options available.

Are you looking for more reasons why going green is the way forward? Contact us today to learn more about how going green could save you money.