Solar Panels for Sports Clubs and Clubhouses

Why solar suits sports clubs

• Daytime and early-evening use. Training, matches, bar and kitchen, changing rooms. On a busy clubhouse, most of the solar is used on site.
• Big, simple roofs. Clubhouses, pavilions and sports halls often have plain pitched or flat roofs with no shading.
• Long-term savings. The panels keep generating for decades, which suits a club that plans to be there for generations.
• Funders like it. Lower running costs and a smaller carbon footprint make a club more sustainable, which is what many sport funders want to see.

Grants and funding for sports club solar

Funding changes often. Check the current status of each scheme before you apply.

• Sport England Movement Fund. It funds projects that get more people active, including projects that improve environmental sustainability as well as physical activity. Sport England has said solar panels and batteries are the kind of green projects it can fund. Grants and crowdfunding pledges run from £300 to £15,000. There’s no submission deadline, but you need to apply at least 12 weeks before you want to start or spend any money. You’ll need to show how the project helps people be active, for example lower running costs keeping the clubhouse open longer or subs affordable. Not-for-profit clubs, community groups and charities can apply, and you’ll usually need to own the building, have a long lease or have the landlord’s consent.
• Football: Football Foundation and the Premier League Stadium Fund. The Football Foundation has run an energy fund for grassroots clubs, but its expression-of-interest window is currently closed. The Premier League Stadium Fund supports clubs in the National League System and Women’s Football Pyramid, and its current energy focus is LED floodlights. England Football’s Greener Game programme has guidance for clubs. Check each for new rounds.
• Community and charity funders. If your club is a registered charity or community organisation, the routes on our solar panels for charities page may apply, including Great British Energy’s community funding and local wind farm community funds. See also community energy funding.
• Local funds. Councils, housing associations and local trusts sometimes fund clubhouse improvements. We’ll help you look.

We run your grant application with you

Committees are volunteers, and grant forms take time. We run the grant application with you and do the legwork: technical details, quotes, generation forecasts and paperwork. We’ll give you the design and expected generation figures funders ask for. If the grant pays in stages, we’ll plan the work so each milestone is finished and recorded before the next payment comes through. That’s how the Hessle project ran.

Other ways to pay

• Club funds and fundraising, often alongside a grant. The Movement Fund’s crowdfunding option matches what you raise from your community.
• A Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) on larger sites. A funder installs the system and the club buys the power at a fixed or index-linked rate, over 5–25 years. See PPAs.
• VAT. Installing solar on a building used by a qualifying charity is currently zero-rated, until 31 March 2027. Not every club qualifies, so check with your accountant. Read our guide to the charity solar VAT deadline.

How we deliver a clubhouse install

1. Initial call: your bills, opening hours and the roof you have in mind.
2. Desktop design: an initial layout and generation estimate you can take to your committee and funders.
3. Site survey: roof, structure, shading, electrical supply and access.
4. Proposal: design, expected generation, cost and payback, in the format funders ask for.
5. Grid application: we deal with the network operator (G98 or G99, depending on size).
6. Installation: planned around fixtures, training nights and events.
7. Handover: MCS certificate, documentation and monitoring, with the paperwork your funder needs.

Accreditations

• CHAS Elite accredited for health and safety.
• MCS certified (NIC-601602) and a RECC member.
• NICEIC accredited.
• 24-month workmanship warranty on commercial and community installs.

Related case study

Hessle Sporting Club, East Yorkshire: a grant-funded 21.6 kWp system of 48 Aiko 450 W panels on the clubhouse’s pitched roof, with a Solis 20 kW three-phase inverter. Payments were released in stages, so we planned the work and paperwork around each milestone. It was handed over in April 2025, and the system is estimated to generate about 15,432 kWh a year. The club chose not to add a battery, because the clubhouse uses most of its power during the day and early evening.

See also solar panel grants and solar panels for charities and community groups.