Leeds’ solar disparity: the city’s flats missing out on up to £34.5 million in energy savings every year

The figures land as households face increasingly volatile energy bills, with the 13 per cent Ofgem price cap rise from July adding around £200 a year to bills.

While people in houses have long been able to cut their bills with rooftop solar, those living in flats, among them many of Leeds’ lower-income and social-housing residents, have largely been left out of the savings.

Analysis of Census data shows there are around 59,601 flats in Leeds. With research suggesting just 3 per cent of flats are fitted with solar, the overwhelming majority generate none of their own power.

Equipping these blocks with shared solar and battery storage could cut the electricity residents draw from the grid by around 60 per cent, worth up to £600 per flat a year. Collectively, that could mean a combined saving of up to £34.5 million across Leeds every year, or up to £172.4 million over five years, depending on the specific property and usage.

Allume has called out this widening gap as a ‘solar disparity’. Nationally, around one in five homes (5.4 million) are flats, yet barely any are benefiting from the UK’s ‘solar boom’, even though their residents are among those most exposed to fuel poverty.

The main barrier is that solar was traditionally designed for fitting on houses. The UK’s ‘one roof, one meter’ model means a shared rooftop system normally needs separate cabling and metering for every flat, making it costly and complex.

Allume’s SolShare solution, the world’s only technology that takes power from a single rooftop array and splits it fairly across individual flats’ meters, removes that barrier.

The approach is already delivering across the country. At Odet Court in Cardiff, a 24-flat block cut the electricity residents draw from the grid by 60 to 70 per cent and reduced bills by between £560 and £690 a flat a year, while comparable retrofits have upgraded blocks in London, Manchester and Newport.

Jack Taylor, Allume Energy’s General Manager for Europe, said: “Leeds has around 59,601 flats, exactly the kind of homes where sharing a single rooftop array could make the biggest difference to bills.

“Those living in flats across Leeds have been left out of the UK’s solar boom simply because of the type of building they live in. SolShare changes that. Our approach in the UK is focused on supporting social housing landlords and property developers.

“Because they manage large volumes of housing, even a single partnership lets us scale up clean energy access rapidly. It means we can deliver a big impact quickly, putting up to £600 a year back in residents’ pockets while helping to meet net-zero and EPC goals.”

Agnostic to both solar panels and energy suppliers, Allume Energy has helped thousands of UK residents cut their electricity bills through the approach since 2021.

With the launch of SolShare 2, available in the UK from August 2026, flats can now pair shared solar with battery storage, holding surplus daytime power for use in the evening.