Home Battery Storage: Certified Installations and Costs
Track certified domestic battery installations and reported costs by capacity. The figures cover the United Kingdom and include only installations registered with MCS.
Installations and costs
Certified installations recorded
Home batteries fitted to existing homes
United Kingdom — These are MCS-certified domestic retrofit battery installations recorded, not batteries in Britain. A voluntary certification scheme is never a census: an uncertified fit, a DIY fit, a commercial installation and a new build are all outside these figures, and DESNZ state that numbers for batteries not registered with MCS are not available.
Latest month
5,774
March 2026, provisional
Recorded since September 2023
73,987
Installations, not households or batteries in the country
Months published
31
Dated by installation, not by registration
Installations recorded each month
Every figure is provisional and is revised upward as late registrations arrive, so the most recent months are undercounts. A fall at the right-hand end of the series is usually registration lag rather than fewer installations.
The publisher cannot separate growth in installations from growth in how much of the market MCS covers. DESNZ say the rise "may be due to an increase in the number of retrofit battery installations being registered by MCS, an increase in the number of batteries being installed, or both", so the shape of this series is not an adoption rate.
Complete financial years
| Financial year | Installations recorded | Months |
|---|---|---|
| 2024/25 | 24,242 | 12 |
| 2025/26 | 44,033 | 12 |
The first part-year in the series is left out of this table because it covers seven months, not twelve, and would read as a collapse beside a full year. These totals are added up from the monthly counts, which are the only full counts published.
Cost per kWh by battery size, 2025/26
| Battery size | In sample | Average size | Median cost per kWh | Typical total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1-5.99 kWh | 16,270 | 5.1 kWh | £1,300 | £6,680 |
| 6-10.99 kWh | 14,457 | 9.8 kWh | £890 | £8,720 |
| 11-29.99 kWh | 12,176 | 15.5 kWh | £630 | £9,760 |
Cost per kWh falls sharply with battery size, so it is published and shown one capacity band at a time and never averaged across them. The figures are not adjusted for inflation, so a rise between years is not a real-terms rise.
Capacity and cost are published for an outlier-filtered sample only — the publisher drops capacities under 1 kWh or over 30 kWh and costs under £100 or over £5,000 per kWh. Sample counts are named separately from the full monthly count and the two are never added or compared. The typical total is each band’s own median price at its own average size, so no figure crosses a band boundary.
What is included
Uncertified, do-it-yourself, new-build and commercial installations are not included. Growth in the series can reflect both more installations and greater use of MCS registration. Recent months may rise as late registrations arrive.
What a battery actually earns you
A battery moves electricity from one time to another. Its value comes from the difference between the charging price and the import price it avoids later.
On a flat tariff, the main benefit is storing solar output for later. On a time-of-use tariff, the price spread matters. The cheapest and cleanest hours page shows the spread as it stands in each region, and the smart meter replay compares your own half-hourly use with available tariffs.
With solar, compare the export payment you give up with the import price avoided later. The solar deployment page gives wider installation context.
Bigger batteries cost less per kWh
Reported cost per kWh falls as capacity increases because installation, inverter and electrical costs are spread over more storage.
Compare within the capacity bands rather than using one overall average. Prices are in cash terms and are not adjusted for inflation.
Frequently asked questions
How many homes in the UK have a battery?
Nobody publishes that figure. What is published is how many domestic retrofit battery installations MCS-certified installers have registered, which is a different and smaller number — an uncertified fit, a DIY fit and a new-build installation are all outside it. The Government states plainly that figures for batteries not registered with MCS are not available.
How much does a home battery cost in the UK?
The official statistics give a cost per kWh for each capacity band, and the bands differ enormously — the smallest batteries cost roughly twice as much per kWh as the largest. That is why there is no single figure on this page: an average across the bands would describe what sizes people bought rather than what a battery costs. The table gives each band separately.
Are home battery installations still growing?
Registrations are rising, but the Government cautions that it cannot separate more installations from more of the market being registered with MCS. Both are happening, so the shape of the series is not a clean measure of adoption. The most recent months are also undercounts, because installations are registered after the fact.
Is a battery worth it without solar panels?
It can be, and that is a tariff question rather than a solar one. A battery earns its keep by charging when electricity is cheap and discharging when it is expensive, so the size of the gap between your cheapest and dearest hours matters more than whether anything is generating on your roof. On a flat single-rate tariff there is no gap to exploit.
What size home battery do most people fit?
The published capacity bands show where the market sits, and the middle and upper bands have grown fastest. The averages within each band are in the table on this page. Sizing is a question about your own consumption and your own tariff windows rather than about a national average.
