A look back into Solar & Storage Live 2023

By Chris Hewett, Chief Executive at Solar Energy UK .

This year’s Solar & Storage Live was a huge success, with 17,000 attendees and 425+ exhibitors and sponsors, showcasing a genuinely buoyant industry. Solar Energy UK was there in force, helping to run the Installer Training Hub and new Recruitment Zone, both of which were very popular parts of the show, as well as our stand and evening Solar Networking Celebration , all of which will become annual fixtures in the event.??

This year, we were pleased to welcome three senior politicians. Rt.Hon Graham Stuart MP, Minister of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Alan Whitehead MP, Shadow Minister for Energy Security, and Rt.Hon Chris Skidmore MP; author of the Mission Zero report . All of them gave supportive speeches and were able to visit some of the stands as well. The sheer scale of the exhibition is now a physical manifestation of how strong the UK's solar energy and storage sectors are.?

The confidence in the future was, of course, tempered with plenty of discussion about the challenges. No gathering of the industry is complete without a lot of conversations about grid connections, but there is a sense that this concern has now been heard at the highest levels and everyone is now impatiently anticipating some actions. Attendance at the Recruitment Zone was another indicator of a surge in interest in working in solar and a momentum for attracting a larger and more diverse set of people into the industry to address the skills gaps.??

Finally, whilst plenty of products from around the world were on display, there was a clear desire for the industry to develop a stronger UK element to the supply chain – something the Solar Taskforce will address in the coming months.?

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Solar &?Storage Live will be back in April with its first London edition.?

The event, on 29-30 April 2024 at the?ExCeL London, we'll bring key stakeholders within the energy value chain together with the innovators and disruptors to showcase their technology and service solutions needed to enable change at this critical time.?More info on SSL 2024 London here.

In Other News

• Eight leading businesses have joined Solar Energy UK’s highest membership tier, helping us drive the solar industry towards 70GW of generation capacity by 2035.??
• Solar energy is still the most cost-effective way to generate power, despite inflationary pressures pushing up the cost of deployment. ?
• Solar Energy Cymru, the Welsh policy division of?Solar Energy UK (SEUK)?hosted its first Solar Energy Drop-in at the Senedd last month in Wales. ?
• The Scottish Government committed to a new solar target to boost solar energy generation in Scotland by 2030. With a minimum target of 4GW and an ambitious goal of 6GW – marking a remarkable tenfold increase in the number of solar panels to be installed in Scotland. ?