Battery storage suits Horwich's commercial mix better than most places in the borough, mainly because of Middlebrook. A cinema, bowling alley, hotel or restaurant does much of its trade in the evening, and on weekdays the evening includes SP Electricity North West's red band from 4pm to 7pm, when distribution charges are at their highest. Solar panels on the same roof are winding down by then, particularly between October and March. A battery bridges the gap: it fills from the roof through the middle of the day and empties into the evening peak. For business units at Lostock and the new employment land at Rivington Chase, the reasoning is closer to a factory's - capacity peaks and weekend surplus - and we would size the system differently. Either way, the starting point is your half-hourly data.
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These are the effects we test for when we model storage on a Horwich site.
01
Leisure and hospitality loads build through the late afternoon, just as weekday red-band pricing starts. Discharging the battery from 4pm to 7pm means those hours draw less from the grid at the most expensive rate, while the panels have already done their work earlier in the day.
02
PVGIS figures for Greater Manchester show December generation at around a quarter of June's per kWp. In winter the battery may never fill from solar alone, so where the tariffs justify it we set it to top up from cheaper green-band power overnight rather than sit half empty.
03
If you add charge points to a Middlebrook car park, simultaneous charging can push your import above its agreed capacity. A battery can supply the extra for short periods, which avoids excess capacity charges billed across the whole period and may postpone a supply upgrade.
04
For a five-day business unit at Lostock, weekend solar has nowhere useful to go. Storage carries some of Sunday's generation into Monday morning, which beats exporting it at a rate set by a supplier that may not even be obliged to offer the Smart Export Guarantee to business customers.
05
A battery does not keep the lights on in a power cut by default. Islanding needs extra switchgear and a design that meets the network's rules. Where a Horwich hotel or food business wants critical circuits kept running, we price that separately and explain its limits plainly.
06
Storage used with on-site renewables is exempt from business rates in England until 31 March 2035. Pairing the battery with your panels keeps it within that exemption, which a stand-alone trading battery might not achieve.
£0
Site survey and a review of your half-hourly data
kWh
Systems sized from your own meter readings
G99
Grid application drawn up and submitted for you
M17
Based on Trafford Wharf Road, Trafford Park
Space and access decide most Horwich battery projects. On the retail and leisure park, units are packed closely and the service yards are busy, so an outdoor cabinet needs protection from delivery vehicles and enough clearance for the fire service to reach it. Some landlords will want a say on where it goes, and the centre's own insurer may raise questions alongside yours. We usually produce a layout drawing early, so the conversation with the managing agent is about something specific.
At Rivington Chase the new employment plots will be built to current standards and are easier to plan around, especially if storage is considered while a unit is being fitted out. Inside the conservation area, though, an external battery enclosure is a visible piece of equipment near heritage buildings, and there is no permitted development class for battery storage. We would raise it with Bolton Council's planners before settling on a location.
Storage works best with generation behind it, and our guide to commercial solar panels in Horwich looks at roofs, carports and the wind exposure that shapes both.
"Most of the Horwich battery enquiries we're asked to look at start with a question about the solar array, and the real question turns out to be how much of the evening trade a battery can carry."
We study a year of half-hourly data with particular attention to 4pm to 7pm on weekdays and to any half-hours close to your capacity limit. For leisure businesses we also compare busy and quiet seasons, because the evening peak can shift a long way between them.
The proposal sets out battery capacity, inverter power and the control strategy - when it charges, when it discharges and what it does on a Sunday. We show the savings with and without solar so you can see which part of the case each one delivers.
Before ordering anything we agree the location with the landlord if there is one, give your insurer the fire and isolation design, and submit the G99 application to SP Electricity North West, since a battery counts as generation for connection purposes.
An outdoor unit sits on a level concrete base with impact protection on the yard side. We trench or tray the cables back to the main board along a route agreed with your facilities team, kept well away from customer areas.
The battery, inverter and two-way protection go in, then the meters and current transformers the controller needs to read your load in real time. Connection to the main switchboard happens in a short planned shutdown, outside trading hours wherever possible.
We test protection settings, prove the emergency shutdown and run the system through real charge and discharge cycles. Red-band and capacity settings are checked against live data for the first few weeks and adjusted if your evening peak lands differently.
Your team receives operating and emergency instructions, the commissioning records and monitoring that shows stored energy used, red-band import avoided and capacity breaches prevented. We revisit the settings if opening hours or tariffs change.
There are two layers of cover on a commercial installation, and it pays to know which is which. The first is the installer's workmanship guarantee. It covers the way the system was put in: the fixings through your roof, the cable runs, the terminations, the protective devices and the commissioning settings. Its length and terms are written into the quotation, so you can read them before you sign rather than discover them afterwards.
The second layer belongs to the manufacturers. Panels normally carry a product warranty and a separate performance warranty, which promises a minimum output after a set number of years. Inverters and batteries have their own terms, often with cycle or throughput limits on storage. These vary by product, so every proposal names the exact models and attaches their warranty documents.
A guarantee is only as good as the install underneath it. That's why the structural check comes before the design is fixed, why every string is tested and recorded to BS 7671, and why the grid connection is commissioned to the settings SP Electricity North West has approved. If something we fitted fails because of how it was fitted, we come back and put it right.
In writing
Workmanship guarantee, set out in your quote
Per model
Manufacturer product and performance warranties
Test results, drawings, warranty certificates and the grid connection agreement are handed over in one pack on the last day.
The table sets a battery against running solar alone and against doing nothing. For an evening-heavy Middlebrook business, the gap between those columns tends to be wider than for a unit that only trades in daylight.
| Comparison point | Solar only | Solar + battery | Battery on its own (tariff shifting) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solar used on site | Only what the load takes at the time | Higher: surplus stored for later | No solar involved |
| Red-band (16:00-19:00) costs | Little effect, almost none in winter | Cut with stored solar or overnight charge | Cut with overnight green-band charge |
| kVA capacity charges | No reliable effect | Peaks can be shaved | Peaks can be shaved |
| DNO export limit | Surplus above the cap is lost | Surplus stored instead of clipped | Cap applies to battery discharge too |
| Backup in a power cut | None as standard | Only if designed for it | Only if designed for it |
| Planning and permissions | G99; roof usually permitted development | G99; roof PD plus a siting and fire review | G99; no PD class, so take planning advice |
There is no trustworthy public price per kWh for commercial batteries, so we price each site from its own requirements. These items make most of the difference.
Covering the full three-hour red band needs more stored energy than trimming the first hour of it. We show you the saving curve as capacity rises, so you can see where an extra kWh stops paying for itself.
A tight service yard behind a retail unit at Middlebrook can need bespoke enclosures, bollards and longer cable runs. A new building at Rivington Chase or Lostock, where storage is planned into the fit-out, usually avoids most of that.
Islanding switchgear, which lets chosen circuits keep running through a grid outage, adds noticeably to the price. Many sites decide they can do without it once they see the figure; some food and hospitality businesses cannot.
Landlord consent, insurer requirements, the G99 study and, in the conservation area, planning advice all take time and occasionally money. We itemise them separately from the hardware.
Lithium batteries prefer moderate temperatures and lose some usable capacity in the cold, which is why outdoor cabinets come with heating and cooling control. On an exposed site we also check that the enclosure's rating suits wind-driven rain, and we position it where drifting snow will not block access to the isolator.
Rarely in winter, sometimes in summer. Covering a whole evening's demand needs a large battery and enough solar to fill it, and from November to February the panels will not supply that on most days. The usual design covers part of the red band from solar and, if the tariffs justify it, tops up overnight from the grid at green-band rates.
There is no permitted development class specifically for battery storage, so an external unit needs advice from Bolton Council and may need an application. Batteries inside an existing building are often treated differently, but we check rather than assume. Systems of 1 MWh or more bring an expectation that the fire and rescue service is consulted early.
Usually. A battery can be added on its own inverter alongside an existing array, so the solar side does not need to change. We check the existing inverters, the switchboard and your connection agreement, because adding storage means updating the G99 arrangement with SP Electricity North West.
The monitoring compares what you actually imported in each half-hour with what you would have imported without the battery, using the method agreed in the proposal. You can check that against your supplier's invoices, which show red-band units and any capacity excess directly.
A stone tower built in 1733 on an old beacon site crowns this hill above Horwich, and the climb rewards walkers with views across the Lancashire plain towards the coast on a clear day. It is a favourite short hike from Lever Park.
Learn more about Rivington Pike on Google Maps
Lord Leverhulme's hillside garden, laid out mainly by Thomas Mawson between about 1905 and 1922, survives as a network of stone stairways, loggias, ponds and the Pigeon Tower. Volunteers have spent years clearing and restoring it, and it is free to explore.
Learn more about Rivington Terraced Gardens on Google Maps
Lever gave this country park to the public in 1902, and it stretches from Horwich to the Rivington reservoirs with woodland paths, a replica of Liverpool Castle and the old Rivington barns. The stone-built Rivington Hall Barn is now used as a venue for events.
Learn more about Lever Park and Rivington Hall Barn on Google MapsWe're a new name, so you won't find a wall of reviews here yet. We'd rather show you nothing than make some up.
For a project this size, reviews were never the best evidence anyway. Ask any installer you're considering for a reference site you can visit, a year or more of generation data from a system they fitted, and the grid connection paperwork from a past job. If they can't produce those, keep looking.
Send us a year of half-hourly data and your opening times, and we will show you hour by hour what storage would change.
