Energy Efficiency 13 Aug 2026

Solar and Storage Live 2026: what we are going to look at

We are at the NEC from 22 to 24 September. All three of the brands we fit are exhibiting, and here is what we want to find out from them.

We are heading to the NEC in September for Solar and Storage Live. Here is what we are actually going to look at, and why a Lancashire homeowner might care what an installer does with three days in Birmingham.

Solar and Storage Live runs from Tuesday 22 to Thursday 24 September at the NEC. The organisers put it at more than 500 exhibitors and over 20,000 attendees, which makes it the largest event of its kind in the country. Entry is free if you register in advance.

Trade shows can be a lot of noise. This one matters to us for a straightforward reason: the three manufacturers whose kit we actually put on roofs are all going to be in the same building, on the same three days, with their engineers standing next to the products.

The event

22 to 24 Sept

Tuesday to Thursday

The NEC

Birmingham

500+

Exhibitors, per the organisers

Free

All three of our brands, in one hall

We work with a deliberately short list. Tesla for storage, Fox for inverters and modular storage, Aiko for panels. Two well understood options installed properly beat a dozen we only half know.

All three are on the exhibitor list.

Storage

Tesla

We want to talk through backup configurations properly. Backup during a power cut comes from the Backup Gateway rather than the battery alone, and it is the thing most often left out of a quote.

Inverters and storage

FoxESS

Modular systems are where the awkward Lancashire jobs get solved. We are interested in what is coming for tight spaces and unusual sizing.

Panels

Aiko Solar

The back contact panels we favour on small and shaded roofs. We want the shading data from the people who made them, not from a brochure.

The five things we are going there to find out

How the newest panels behave in partial shade

Shading is the defining problem on a Lancashire roof. Chimney stacks on terraces, hillsides in the valley towns, mature trees in the older suburbs. Every panel manufacturer claims good shade behaviour. We want to see the test data and ask awkward questions about how it was measured.

Whether storage is getting easier to retrofit

A lot of Lancashire houses already have solar with no battery, fitted years ago. Adding storage to an existing array depends on the original inverter and how it was wired, and it is not always simple. Anything that makes that job cleaner matters to a lot of local households.

What is happening with mounting systems for stone slate

Farmhouses and barn conversions up the Ribble Valley are frequently stone slate, which needs a different fixing approach to a concrete tile. Mounting hardware is unglamorous and it is one of the things that separates a tidy install from a leak in three years.

Where EV charging and home storage are converging

EVCharge Live is co located, one ticket covers both. More and more of our conversations start with solar and end up being about a car, a battery and a tariff working together. That is one system now, not three separate purchases.

What the installer training hub is teaching

There is hands on training and commissioning demonstration running across all three days. Standards move. Anyone in this trade who thinks they finished learning in 2019 is going to put something on a roof they should not have.

Why any of this matters to a house in Clitheroe

Fair question, and worth answering directly.

The gap between a good solar installation and a mediocre one is almost never the panels. It is the decisions around them. Whether the array was laid out around the shadows or in spite of them. Whether the battery was sized against the household's evenings or against a price list. Whether the mounting hardware suited the roof covering. Whether anyone thought about the cable run before the scaffold went up.

Those decisions come from knowing the products properly and knowing what has changed since last year. Three days of standing in front of the engineers who designed the kit is a reasonable way to keep that current.

We will write up what we find. If it turns out something changes our thinking on Lancashire roofs, that will end up on this page.

Going yourself

Tickets are free and the show is open to the public as well as the trade, so if you are the sort of person who would enjoy a hall full of inverters, it is a decent day out. It is also a reasonable way to see the actual hardware before you commit to it, rather than looking at photographs.

Registration is on the organisers' site at terrapinn.com.

Going to the show

Give us a shout if you are there.

We install solar PV, battery storage and heat pumps on domestic properties across Lancashire and the North West, from Clitheroe. If you are at the NEC in September and fancy comparing notes, we are always happy to talk to people who find this stuff as interesting as we do.

Get in touch 01200 411830