solar panels for holiday lets in Tenby

Serving Tenby and the wider Pembrokeshire area, including Saundersfoot, Penally, New Hedges.

Tenby is one of Wales’s busiest seaside resorts, and behind its pastel harbour front sits a dense stock of self-catering cottages, converted townhouses and coastal apartments — holiday lets whose energy profile is well matched to solar. A property inside the town walls or out along the Penally road earns its income and burns its electricity through the bright half of the year, exactly when a Pembrokeshire array generates the most. That overlap of peak occupancy and peak generation is the heart of the case for solar panels for holiday lets here.

The Pembrokeshire tourism economy and the coastal let

Pembrokeshire is one of Wales’s leading tourism counties, and Tenby is its flagship resort, drawing several million visitors a year to a town of under 5,000 residents. Self-catering dominates the accommodation mix across the SA70 district, from the tall Georgian and Victorian townhouses inside the walls, many now split into holiday apartments, to the cottages and lodges strung along the coast toward Saundersfoot and Penally. These are seasonal businesses run to an occupancy and changeover rhythm, and their owners watch a thin shoulder-season margin closely — which is precisely where cutting the electricity bill earns its keep.

The generation picture is strong. The south-west Wales coast enjoys some of the higher sunshine totals in Wales, and a well-oriented Tenby roof produces well across the April-to-October season when the lets are full. Because occupancy and generation peak together, in-season self-consumption runs high rather than exporting cheaply — the opposite of the domestic-solar maths competitors quote for a home that sits empty by day.

The Tenby season, and why it fits the panels

It is worth being concrete about the seasonal overlap, because it is the whole argument. A Tenby self-catering property fills through Easter, the May half-term, the long school summer holidays and the September shoulder, with the town at its busiest exactly when the days are longest and the array is generating hardest. Those are also the months the hot tub runs continuously, the changeover laundry is heaviest and guests are charging cars — so the electricity the panels make is electricity the property is using, on site, in real time. Come the quiet winter, generation falls away, but so does occupancy, so there is little idle capacity; what surplus there is exports under the Smart Export Guarantee. This is why the generic domestic-solar payback figure understates a holiday let: it assumes a home empty by day, whereas your Tenby let is fullest when the sun is highest.

The hot tub and the changeover load

Guests booking a Tenby cottage increasingly expect a hot tub, and where one is fitted it is usually the single biggest electrical load on the property. A hot-tub heater draws 2 to 3 kW kept hot for back-to-back stays, much of it daytime, which a solar array covers directly. Beyond the tub, the defining load on a busy resort let is the changeover: every turnover means fresh linen, a deep clean and a full re-heat of the hot-water cylinder, and a townhouse split into two or three apartments carries that hot-water demand several times over through the season. A battery stores midday sun to carry the evening re-heat and the changeover-morning surge, which is where the return on a Tenby let concentrates. We size to that in-season daytime baseload, not to an annual average. The cottage-specific detail is on our solar panels for holiday cottages page.

Planning inside a National Park and a walled town

This is the constraint that shapes every Tenby install. The town and its surroundings sit within the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park — the only wholly coastal National Park in the United Kingdom — and the historic core inside the medieval town walls is a conservation area thick with listed buildings. The National Park Authority is the planning authority and applies close scrutiny to anything that alters the roofscape of the walled town or the coastal setting.

Roof-mounted PV on a dwelling is often permitted development, but not on a slope fronting a highway within the conservation area, and the many listed Georgian townhouses always need Listed Building Consent. The route through is discreet siting: panels on the concealed rear pitch away from the harbour-facing frontages, in-roof mounting that sits flush with the slate, or a screened array where a courtyard or garden allows. Pembrokeshire County Council has committed to a net-zero county, and the National Park supports sensitively-sited renewables — the constraint is the visual character of a walled medieval resort, not opposition to solar. We provide the visual-impact detail the Park’s case officers expect.

Coastal salt specification

A Tenby array sits directly in the Atlantic weather. Salt-laden air off Carmarthen Bay argues for a coastal specification — marine-grade mounting and fixings and appropriately-rated inverters — so a system a few streets from the harbour reaches its 25-year design life rather than corroding early. It is the kind of detail a generic domestic quote skips, and it matters here.

Off the gas grid — higher-value self-consumption

Parts of Tenby and much of the surrounding coast sit off the mains gas network, on electric, oil or LPG heating. When your heating and hot water run on electricity, every self-consumed kilowatt-hour of solar displaces a full-rate electric unit rather than a cheaper gas one, which lifts the value of self-consumption and shortens the payback. For an off-gas let, the battery captures that higher-value energy for the evening rather than spilling it to the grid — and it steadies a seasonal margin against the next price rise.

What a Tenby system costs, indicatively

Scoping figures for a Tenby let track the sector ranges, adjusted for coastal specification and conservation-area siting. A single self-catering cottage with a hot tub suits a 4 to 8 kW array plus a 5 to 10 kWh battery, indicatively £7,000 to £16,000. A walled-town townhouse split into two or three self-catering apartments carries a multiplied hot-water load and often warrants a system toward the upper end of that range, or a shared array feeding a common supply. Indicative payback lands roughly eight to eleven years, at the faster end where a hot tub and guest EV charging raise self-consumption. Marine-grade fixings and in-roof mounting for the conservation area add a little to the headline cost but protect the asset and secure consent. These are scoping ranges, not quotes — real cost depends on the property’s roof, hot tub, heating and how many units it serves.

Grid connection on the peninsula

The Pembrokeshire network is rural and coastal, and outlying feeders can be capacity-constrained. A single small cottage or apartment array of 3.68 kW per phase or under notifies to the DNO under G98; larger arrays, multi-flat townhouses and most battery-plus-EV systems need a G99 application before connection. We check the local network position early, because on a constrained coastal feeder that is what really governs the timeline.

Guest EV charging and green bookings

Guests increasingly arrive in Tenby by EV, and charging along the Pembrokeshire coast is patchy, so a charge point on a let is a real draw. A 7 kW charger absorbing daytime solar is close to a perfect self-consumption match, and a battery lets guests charge from stored solar in the evening. On-site solar is auditable evidence toward a Green Tourism award and a Visit Wales sustainability credential, both of which help direct and platform bookings for the eco-conscious visitor the Pembrokeshire coast attracts.

A worked example for a Tenby let

Take a three-storey Georgian townhouse inside the walls, split into two self-catering apartments let through a Pembrokeshire agency, off the gas grid on electric heating with a shared hot tub in the courtyard. Fit a 4 kW array on the concealed rear roof pitch, away from the harbour-facing frontage, with a 10 kWh battery. Indicatively that covers much of the summer daytime hot-water and hot-tub load across both flats and time-shifts the rest to the evening, exporting the winter surplus under the Smart Export Guarantee. Indicative payback around nine to ten years. These are scoping figures, not a quote — real sizing needs the property’s own consumption, roof and shading.

A note on tax — take your own advice

The Furnished Holiday Lettings regime that let holiday lets claim capital allowances on plant such as solar was abolished from 6 April 2025. Hold your Tenby property personally and you can no longer write the panels down as plant and machinery; hold it in a limited company and solar may still be qualifying plant, with the Annual Investment Allowance potentially available. It depends entirely on your structure, so take your own tax advice. The Smart Export Guarantee applies cleanly to an MCS-certified system, and 0% VAT on qualifying domestic-scale solar and battery runs to 31 March 2027 in Great Britain, though its application to a purely commercial let is not clear-cut and should be confirmed.

Common questions

Can I get panels approved inside Tenby’s walls?

Usually, with discreet siting. The route is a concealed rear or in-roof array out of view from the harbour frontages and the highway, and listed townhouses need Listed Building Consent. We provide the visual-impact detail the National Park case officers expect.

Will the sea air damage the panels?

Not with a proper coastal specification. We fit marine-grade mounting and fixings and site the inverter sensibly so a Tenby array reaches its full design life. Insist on this when comparing quotes — a generic domestic install often omits it.

My townhouse is split into apartments — does that change the sizing?

Yes, usually upward. Several self-catering flats mean the hot-water and changeover load is multiplied, which raises the value of a well-sized array and battery. We model the combined in-season load rather than treating it as one home.

Will the work disrupt my summer bookings?

It need not. We schedule roof work for a changeover gap or the quiet off-season, so guests are unaffected, and book the short final grid connection for an empty period. On a multi-apartment townhouse we phase the work to keep at least part of the property lettable.

Do I qualify for the Smart Export Guarantee on the Welsh coast?

Yes, provided the system is MCS-certified. The Smart Export Guarantee applies UK-wide, and a Tenby let exports meaningfully across the quiet winter when the town is empty, so the export income is worth having on top of the in-season self-consumption saving.

The wider Pembrokeshire coast

We install across south and west Pembrokeshire. If your let sits along the coast, our nearest pages cover Haverfordwest, Carmarthen, Saundersfoot, Penally and Swansea. Wherever the property is, we size to your occupancy and your hot tub, not a generic domestic profile.

Ready to see the figures? Request a free quote and we will model your in-season load against the Pembrokeshire generation curve and handle the National Park siting from the start.

How a Tenby install runs, start to finish

For a walled-town or coastal Tenby let we start with a free desk feasibility from the property’s roof geometry, aspect and consumption, so you see indicative generation, self-consumption and payback before anyone visits. Where the property is listed or in the conservation-area core we prepare the visual-impact material and, where needed, the Listed Building Consent and planning submission, siting the array on the concealed rear pitch or as a flush in-roof system away from the harbour frontages. The design is MCS-certified and specified for the marine setting, with a G98 notification or a G99 application to the DNO depending on the array and battery size. Installation itself is short — a domestic-scale array and battery is typically a few days on site — and we schedule it into a changeover gap or the quiet off-season so your bookings run undisturbed, booking the brief final grid connection for an empty period. On a multi-apartment townhouse we phase the work to keep part of the property lettable throughout, and hand over with the MCS certificate you need for the Smart Export Guarantee, the electrical certification and a workmanship warranty. Because we work across the Pembrokeshire self-catering market rather than fitting the odd coastal roof, we understand the changeover pressures, the salt exposure and the National Park’s expectations that a general domestic installer meets for the first time on your property.