Manor Road, Leicester.
11.5 kWp solar with Powerwall 3.

Our client at Manor Road is a homeowner focused on sustainability, energy efficiency and keeping costs down over the long term. The property is a large home with high energy demand, driven by modern living, growing electricity use and the recent arrival of an electric vehicle.

The brief was to cut reliance on grid electricity significantly, protect the home against volatile energy costs and move towards clean, renewable energy. System reliability, appearance and up-to-date technology were all non-negotiable.

The house has a multi-elevation roof, so panels had to sit across different aspects with varying orientations and pitches. It is covered in concrete interlocking tiles, which called for a mounting solution that would maintain structural integrity and long-term weather resistance. The whole installation also had to look neat and well finished, with careful cable management.

We designed the system around the property’s roof layout and the way the household uses electricity. To deal with the multiple elevations, we specified a SolarEdge inverter with panel-level power optimisers, so every panel works independently and partial shading or a different pitch does not drag down the whole string.

Behind it sits a Tesla Powerwall 3 (13.5 kWh) with an expansion pack (13.5 kWh), giving 27 kWh of storage. Surplus solar from the day is stored for use in the evening and overnight, and the house has whole-home backup during power cuts.

A Zappi EV charger is built into the system, so the client can charge their electric vehicle from stored solar energy. We chose a K2 railed mounting system for the concrete interlocking tile roof and fitted a solar skirt bird protection system around the array to stop birds nesting beneath the panels without restricting airflow. Cable runs and component positions were planned for a clean, professional finish, and headroom in the inverter and mounting leaves space for future additions.