The Solar Trade Association (STA) has labelled the latest government solar deployment figures "inaccurate".

The STA has questioned the accuracy of the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy's (BEIS) latest figures, and called on the department to implement the recommendations of the Energy Data Taskforce, which includes introducing a generation asset registration system. The STA says this is the only approach that will enable truly accurate monitoring of solar PV and battery storage deployment. 

STA Chief Executive, Chris Hewett, said: “It is time for BEIS to either get its house in order or stop publishing these meaningless statistics which clearly do not capture the full picture of UK PV deployment.

"We are particularly concerned with the large-scale commercial and industrial rooftop PV market, as these systems are too large to be captured by MCS registration. Our members are seeing significant growth across this space, from supermarket rooftops to football stadiums, and the lack of visibility of this capacity is holding back energy system innovation and decarbonisation.

"As the Energy Data Taskforce stated in their report earlier this year, an estimated 10% of assets are not visible to the electricity system operator today. How will we know if we are on track to reach Net Zero if the government cannot even be certain of what is connected to the grid?

"This clearly demonstrates the urgent need for a coordinated asset registration strategy, and a centralised energy data catalogue that is accessible to industry. We reiterate our call upon government and respective agencies to swiftly implement the recommendations of the Energy Data Taskforce."