Why air conditioning is the perfect partner for solar
Most home appliances don't line up with when your solar panels actually generate. You cook in the evening, run the washing overnight, watch TV after dark. Air conditioning is the exception — it works hardest on hot, sunny afternoons, which is exactly when your roof is producing the most power.
A typical single-room split system draws around 0.8–1kW while cooling. A decent home solar array is generating 3–4kW at midday in summer. That means on the days you need cooling most, your panels can comfortably run the air con with power to spare — instead of that surplus being exported to the grid for a fraction of what you'd pay to import it.
The simple version: exported solar earns you roughly 12–15p per kWh on a typical SEG tariff. Grid electricity costs 25–28p+ to buy. Every unit of your own generation you put into cooling your house is worth nearly double what you'd get selling it. Free cooling on sunny days isn't marketing — it's just arithmetic.
It's not just cooling — it's cheap heating too
Modern split-system air conditioners are air-to-air heat pumps. Run in reverse, they heat a room at roughly 3–4 units of heat out for every 1 unit of electricity in — far more efficient than plug-in electric heaters, and often cheaper to run per hour than gas for heating a single room.
That makes them genuinely useful year-round: solar-assisted cooling in summer, efficient heat-pump heating in the darker months — especially if you pair it with a battery and a cheap overnight tariff, so you're heating on stored off-peak electricity rather than peak-rate grid power.
If you have battery storage
A home battery makes the whole thing work harder. Surplus solar that would otherwise export gets stored during the day and can run the air con into the evening — cooling the bedroom before you sleep on power your roof generated at 2pm. And in winter, charging the battery overnight on a time-of-use tariff means your heat-pump heating runs on electricity bought at well under half the daytime rate.
How our installs work
Air conditioning is part electrical, part refrigeration — and it's regulated accordingly. We handle the electrical side ourselves: a dedicated, correctly-rated circuit from your consumer unit, isolation, safe cable routing and full certification. The refrigerant side is carried out by a trusted, F-Gas registered air conditioning engineer we work with regularly.
- One point of contact — we coordinate the whole job, electrical and refrigeration, so you're not juggling two trades
- Solar-aware design — if we're installing (or you already have) solar, we size and position the system so it makes the most of your generation
- Properly certified — NICEIC-registered electrical work, F-Gas registered refrigerant handling, no shortcuts on either side
- Single room to multi-room — from one bedroom split to a multi-split setup covering several rooms, a home office, shop or small commercial space
What does it cost?
Every air conditioning job is quoted individually — it depends on the number of indoor units, cable and pipe run lengths, and the electrical work needed at your consumer unit. We provide a clear written quote covering the full job, with the electrical work and the AC engineer's costs set out plainly. As a rough guide, a single-room split system typically starts from around £1,800–£2,500 fully installed.
Just want air con, no solar?
No problem — you don't need solar panels to have air conditioning installed. Our sister company Cube Electrical handles standalone air conditioning installs across Bath and Somerset, same team, same standards. Visit Cube Electrical →
But if you're considering both — solar and air con together — it's worth planning them as one job. We can size the solar array with your cooling load in mind, wire the AC circuit while the electrics are already open, and you'll get one coordinated install instead of two separate ones.