Solar Lead Generation in the UK: What 5,257 Enquiries Show
Solar lead generation for UK installers, from 5,257 enquiries: when they arrive, how fast to call, how many dials it takes, and what a sale costs.
Solar lead generation is how a UK installer finds homeowners who want a quote for solar panels or a battery. The main routes are your own ads, SEO and a Google Business Profile, an MCS listing and referrals, buying leads, and buying booked appointments. Whichever you use, the number that decides whether it pays is what you spend for each install, not for each lead.
This guide adds something most guides to solar lead generation don't have: recent UK numbers. POCKLA counted what happened to 5,257 solar enquiries it delivered to UK installers between 15 July and 6 November 2026: when they arrived, how fast they were called, how many dials it took, what the homeowners wanted, and how many booked and bought.
What do 5,257 UK solar enquiries tell you?
Where a figure depends on calls, appointments or sales, it comes only from the installers whose systems record them, and each table says how many leads it covers.
Two calling teams appear below. Team A is installers' own sales reps, calling from POCKLA Desk. Team B is one installer's sales team, calling from its own auto-dialler and recording appointments in its CRM. The two record outcomes differently, so we compare fast and slow calls within each team, and never set one team's rates against the other's.
When do homeowners enquire about solar?
Mostly when the office is shut. 57% of the 5,257 enquiries arrived outside 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday. The weekend alone brought 30%, and weekday evenings another 20%.
When 5,257 UK solar enquiries arrived
By day and time of the enquiry, UK time
| When the enquiry arrived | Share of enquiries |
|---|---|
| Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm | 43.0% |
| Monday to Friday, 6pm to midnight | 19.5% |
| Monday to Friday, midnight to 8am | 7.8% |
| Saturday or Sunday | 29.7% |
| Out of hours, in total | 57.0% |
The share is rising. Of the 926 enquiries since 22 October, 66% arrived out of hours. We don't know why yet. The clocks went back on 25 October, and ad schedules change from week to week, so give it a few more weeks before reading much into it.
What it means for your rota: an enquiry sent at 8pm on a Friday that waits for Monday morning has waited the best part of three days. If nobody calls at weekends, nearly a third of your leads start the week cold.
How fast should you call a solar lead?
The same day. In both teams, a lead first called the next day or later booked an appointment less than half as often as one first called the same day.
Appointments booked, by when a solar lead was first called
Each team on its own: read across a row, not down a column
| Calling team | First called the same day | First called the next day or later |
|---|---|---|
| Team A: reps calling from POCKLA Desk | 23% booked (629 leads) | 10% booked (60 leads) |
| Team B: an installer's own auto-dialler | 21% booked (863 leads) | 8% booked (151 leads) |
The two teams use different people, different diallers and different systems, and the gap shows up in both. That makes it the most reliable speed finding in our data.
Evenings and weekends are where the hour counts. In Team A, an out-of-hours enquiry first called within the hour booked twice as often as one first called one to 24 hours later. For enquiries that arrived during office hours, the gap was small enough to be chance. We can test this only in Team A.
Team A: appointments booked, by arrival and first call
Within the hour means 5 to 60 minutes after the enquiry arrived
| When the enquiry arrived | First called within the hour | First called 1 to 24 hours later |
|---|---|---|
| Out of hours | 37% booked (62 leads) | 18% booked (177 leads) |
| Office hours | 25% booked (243 leads) | 23% booked (62 leads) |
And most out-of-hours enquiries did wait: of the 239 in the top row, 177 were first called one to 24 hours after they arrived. That's the gap to close.
These are links, not proof. A team may ring its most promising leads first, and a homeowner who answers at 9pm may simply be keener. But the next-day gap appears in both teams, and both gaps are larger than chance would explain at these sizes.
Should you call within five minutes?
We don't know yet, and this isn't advice to wait. In Team A, calls made in the first five minutes were answered on the first dial much less often: 15% (13 of 85 leads), against 41% (124 of 305) for first calls 5 to 60 minutes in. About half of those very fast first calls (52%) rang out unanswered, and they booked less often too: 15%, against 28%.
One explanation is that the homeowner is still on the form, or isn't expecting a call yet. It's 85 leads in one team, and only that team's call times are precise to the minute, so we're not drawing a conclusion. If your team rings instantly, check your own first-dial answer rate before changing anything.
How many times should you ring a solar lead?
At least three times, and not all on the same day. Team A reached 64% of the leads it called (608 of 947). Of the homeowners it reached, 54% answered the first dial, 68% had answered by the second and 78% by the third. By the sixth it was 88%.
How often a solar lead answered, dial by dial
Of the leads not yet reached, the share who answered on that dial. The teams count dials differently, so don't compare the columns
| Dial | Team A | Team B: auto-dialler |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | 34.7% | 11.8% |
| 2nd | 16.8% | 8.3% |
| 3rd | 16.8% | 5.1% |
| 4th | 13.9% | 5.5% |
| 5th | 6.7% | 2.3% |
| 6th | 6.5% | 2.8% |
| 7th to 12th | 4% to 7% each | 1% to 3% each |
A homeowner who missed the first call was typically reached about a day later: the median was 25 hours. Yet Team A gave up early on the rest. The typical lead it never reached got only two dials, though 1 in 10 got 20 or more. After five dials, each extra call reached about 1 in 20 of those left: small, but more than nothing for a lead you've paid for and never spoken to.
Team B's auto-dialler works differently. It counts answering machines as dials (13,506 of its 17,519), so its rate per dial is lower and isn't comparable with Team A's. Of the homeowners it reached, 59% had answered by the third dial, and the typical lead it never reached had been dialled nine times. Dialling a lead many times is not the same as reaching it.
Do homeowners asking about solar want a battery?
Most do, and they were likelier to book. On the forms that asked, 87% of homeowners (1,278 of 1,469) said they were interested in battery storage. Those leads booked an appointment 23% of the time, against 12% for homeowners who said no. The gap ran the same way in all three systems that record appointments.
What the form said, and how often each lead booked
Booked rates use leads delivered to 29 Oct 2026, at the five installers that record appointments
| Form answer | Share of answers | Booked an appointment |
|---|---|---|
| Interested in a battery | 87% | 22.7% (888 leads) |
| Not interested in a battery | 13% | 12.0% (125 leads) |
| Detached house (one form only) | 47% | 20.8% (967 leads) |
| Semi-detached house (one form only) | 26% | 16.0% (550 leads) |
If your form doesn't ask about batteries, add the question. If you don't fit batteries, most of the homeowners enquiring want something you don't sell.
Only one of the forms in our data asked about the type of home, so read the property rows as one form's answers. On that form, detached homes booked more often than semi-detached ones, in all three systems. That may be roof size or budget rather than the house itself.
How many solar leads become appointments and sales?
About 1 in 6 leads booked an appointment, and about 1 in 10 appointments became a sale. That's at the two installers whose CRMs record sales, on leads delivered between 10 August and 30 September 2026.
From solar lead to sale, at two installers
Leads delivered 10 Aug–30 Sep 2026; outcomes recorded to 6 Nov 2026
| Stage | Leads | Share of leads |
|---|---|---|
| Delivered | 1,655 | 100% |
| Appointment booked | 295 | 17.8% |
| Sold | 27 | 1.6% |
So 9.2% of appointments became a sale. Four caveats, before you use these as benchmarks:
- It's two installers and 27 sales. That's enough to plan with, not enough to hold anyone to.
- Sales lag. The typical time from appointment to sale was a few days to two weeks (52 sales across all our leads), and some of these homeowners will still buy. So 1.6% is likely an undercount.
- A sale isn't an install. "Sold" is each CRM's sale stage, probably a signed contract. Neither installer records the installation.
- Each CRM records stages its own way. We pool the two for the totals, and don't compare them.
How quickly do solar appointments get booked?
Most within three days, and about half within a day. The fastest team booked half its appointments within three hours of the enquiry.
Time from solar enquiry to booked appointment
By the system that records the booking
| Recorded in | Appointments | Median wait | Booked within 24 hours | Within 3 days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Team A: POCKLA Desk | 125 | 3 hours | 69% | 82% |
| Team B: its own CRM | 342 | 19 hours | 54% | 67% |
| A third installer's CRM | 232 | 37 hours | 42% | 70% |
The CRM times are when someone moved the lead to "appointment", which may be later than the call itself. Even so, the pattern is clear: most bookings come in the first few days, so that's where calling effort pays.
How many solar leads are bad?
In our data, few were credited back. We credited 81 of the 5,257 leads to installers (1.5%). 59% of those credits were for a wrong or dead number, and 19% were homeowners who said they hadn't enquired. The rest had reasons with fewer than 10 leads each.
Duplicates were mostly stopped before they reached an installer. Of 4,253 enquiries that came in between 24 August and 5 November, 63 (1.5%) were turned away because we already held that homeowner.
Credits count what was claimed and agreed, so they're a floor, not a full count of every lead an installer was unhappy with. A homeowner who never answers isn't a bad lead in these numbers. Our comparison of lead replacement policies sets out what UK sellers count as a bad lead, and for how long you can claim.
What should you do with these numbers?
- Call every lead the same day, weekends included. Put someone on the phone on Saturday and on weekday evenings, or accept that more than half your leads will wait.
- Ring at least three times, over more than one day, before you mark a lead dead.
- Ask about batteries, on the form and on the call.
- Time your own first calls, split by when the lead arrived. Your average hides the evening and weekend waits.
- Track your booked rate and your appointment-to-sale rate by source. They're the two numbers that turn a price per lead into a cost per install, as the sum further down shows.
How do you generate your own solar leads?
Most installers mix several routes. Our guide to getting more solar customers covers each one step by step, with a script for the first call. Here's the short version.
- Your own ads. Facebook and Instagram reach homeowners who aren't searching yet; Google search ads reach those who are. You pay for clicks, and you need a form or landing page and someone to answer fast. Almost every enquiry in our data came from Facebook and Instagram ads, so the timing and calling figures above are what to plan for. The customers guide covers setting up Facebook ads for solar, and our guide to pay per click lead generation has what a click on a solar search costs on Google.
- SEO and a Google Business Profile. Pages on your site that answer real questions bring enquiries that cost time rather than ad spend, but they take months. For the map results, Google says "There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google", and that "More reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking" (how local results are ranked).
- An MCS listing and referrals. MCS calls itself "the UK's quality mark for small-scale renewables like solar panels and heat pumps", and its find an installer search lets a homeowner pick solar PV and search near them or by region. Referrals from past customers, and from roofers and electricians, cost little but grow only as fast as your installs.
- Buying leads. A supplier finds the homeowner and sells you the enquiry, at a price per lead. It's the quickest way to volume, and the next section covers what to ask.
- Booked appointments. Someone else makes the first call and books a survey into your diary. You pay more per appointment, and you hand over the first conversation. Our guide to booked solar appointments compares sellers' prices and no-show terms.
Marketplaces such as Checkatrade and Bark are a sixth route, with their own way of charging: our guide to Bark, Checkatrade and MyBuilder leads sets out what trades pay.
Referral and search enquiries may well be warmer than paid-social ones. Our data can't say, because none is in it. What it does say applies to any enquiry that arrives by form: it comes in when you're shut, it cools by the next day, and it takes more than one call to reach.
What should you ask before buying solar leads?
Buying leads is the quickest route to volume, and the easiest to waste money on. Ask these before you sign. Our comparison of 13 UK solar lead suppliers sets out their published answers side by side, and our guide to what solar leads cost covers price.
- Who else gets the lead, and for how long? One installer, up to three, or more, and whether a lead can go back on sale after a set time. Our guide to exclusive vs shared leads covers how to check.
- How was it generated, and what did the ad say? Ask to see the ad and the form. The ASA has ruled against ads "promoting 'solar funding schemes' and 'grants'" that suggested "homeowners could qualify for free or heavily subsidised solar panel installations" (lead generation advice). A homeowner who clicked a grant ad expects a grant, and your surveyor spends the call explaining why there isn't one.
- Is each lead sent straight away, evenings and weekends included? With 57% arriving out of hours, a lead held back until the morning has lost its best hours before you see it.
- What does the form ask? Homeownership, the roof, the bill and battery interest at least. Battery interest was the strongest form answer in our data.
- What counts as a bad lead, how long do you have to report it, and is it credit or cash? Wrong numbers were most of our credits. Among the 13 suppliers we compared, the time to report one runs from 72 hours to no limit.
- How are duplicates caught? Including homeowners you've already had from another source.
- Does the consent name you? The ICO says consent collected by a third party must have "named your organisation (not just 'trusted partners' or similar)" and be "recorded so you can demonstrate who consented, when and how". For texts and emails, it adds: "If the consent doesn't name you or does not cover the method you intend to use, then it is not valid" (ICO guidance). Our guide to buying leads legally covers calls and the TPS.
- What ties you in? Minimum orders, prepaid blocks, a minimum number of leads a day, and notice periods.
- Can you start small? One area, a few weeks, no penalty for stopping. You need a month or two of your own booked and sale rates before the price per lead means anything.
What does a solar lead cost per appointment and per sale?
The price per lead tells you little on its own. Put it through two rates, how many leads book and how many appointments sell, and it becomes a cost you can set against your margin:
Cost per appointment = price per lead ÷ share of leads that book
Cost per sale = cost per appointment ÷ share of appointments that sell
Here it is with the rates from our data (17.8% of leads booked, 9.2% of appointments sold) and the two ends of POCKLA's solar range: £20 and £50 per qualified web lead. That's an indicative range, not a quote, so put your own price in the last column.
One solar lead price, three costs
POCKLA's booked and sale rates, at each end of its solar range
| At £20 a lead | At £50 a lead | With your numbers | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leads per appointment | 5.6 | 5.6 | 1 ÷ your booked rate |
| Cost per appointment | £112 | £281 | Price ÷ your booked rate |
| Appointments per sale | 10.9 | 10.9 | 1 ÷ your sale rate |
| Leads per sale | 61 | 61 | Leads per appointment × appointments per sale |
| Lead spend per sale | £1,226 | £3,065 | Cost per appointment ÷ your sale rate |
The price per lead moves the bottom line in proportion. The two rates move it as much, and they're the ones your team controls:
- Your booked rate. A lead first called the next day booked less than half as often in our data. If that happened to every lead, the £281 appointment at £50 a lead would cost more than £560.
- Your sale rate. Suppose your surveyors sold 1 in 5 appointments rather than the 9.2% in our data. That rate is invented, to show the arithmetic, not measured. At £50 a lead, lead spend per sale would fall from £3,065 to about £1,400.
- Everything else. Lead spend isn't the whole cost of a sale. Add the surveyor's time and travel for each appointment, and the hours spent calling.
Our numbers stop at the sale, so there are two more steps to cost per install. Contracts cancelled before installation raise it. Sales still to come from these leads lower it, since our count is likely short. Then set the result against what you make on an install, after materials and labour. If it's more, the route doesn't pay at your rates, whatever the price per lead.
Our guide to cost per lead vs cost per job sets out the sum stage by stage, and our guide to solar lead costs compares an exclusive and a shared lead with invented numbers.
How we got these numbers
- Enquiries. 5,257 solar enquiries POCKLA delivered to UK installers between 15 July and 6 November 2026, timed by when each reached us, in UK time. Out of hours means outside 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday. Test and practice leads are left out.
- Where they came from. All but a handful came from ads on Facebook and Instagram. There are no search, referral or organic enquiries in the data, so it can't compare channels.
- Called leads. Leads with at least one recorded call after they were delivered to the installer, which happened seconds after the enquiry. Time to first call is the first recorded dial minus delivery. Speed and form-answer figures use leads delivered to 29 October, so every lead had at least a week for outcomes to come in. Call timings leave out leads that came through our previous system, before 10 August.
- Two calling teams. Team A is installers' own sales reps, each calling for one installer and logging calls in POCKLA Desk, from September 2026. Team B is one installer's team on its own auto-dialler, with appointments recorded in its CRM, from August. We can't time Team B's calls to the minute, so we use them only to compare same-day and next-day calls.
- Booked and sold. "Booked" is an appointment recorded in the installer's own system: a call outcome in Desk, or a CRM stage. "Sold" is a CRM's sale stage, recorded by two installers, on leads delivered to 30 September. No installer records the installation.
- Credits and duplicates. Credits are leads we agreed to credit to installers. Duplicates are enquiries turned away before delivery, between 24 August and 5 November, because we already held that homeowner.
- Chance. Each gap we report as a difference is larger than chance would explain at its sample size, on a standard test: same day against next day (p = 0.02 for Team A, 0.0002 for Team B), out of hours within the hour (0.002), battery interest (0.006) and detached against semi-detached (0.02). The office-hours gap and the five-minute finding aren't conclusions.
- Privacy. Every figure is a count produced inside the source database, in read-only queries. No names, phone numbers, addresses, call notes or message text were taken out. Groups under 10 leads were merged or dropped, every installer and business is anonymised, and our contracts allow this analysis.
- Limits. UK only, solar only, under four months, and a handful of installers. Sales come from two of them. The figures show links, not causes: a team may call its best leads first, and a homeowner who answers may simply be keener.
If you install solar and want to compare your own numbers with these, email team@pockla.com.
Where POCKLA fits
POCKLA is one of the paid routes above. We find homeowners looking into solar panels and batteries, and sell each lead once, to one installer. Before it's sent, the phone number is checked live and the postcode against your area, and the consent names your business, with its wording and time stored. Many solar leads also get a text in your business's name with a personalised link; a text due after 8pm waits until 9am. The call is still yours to make, and this guide shows why it matters.
Our page on solar panel leads shows what each one contains. Leads go into your CRM or POCKLA Desk, where calls made from Desk get free call analytics. Invalid numbers are returned, with no time limit. The indicative price is £20–£50 per qualified web lead: a range, not a quote, with your exact price agreed on a call. There's no setup fee, no monthly fee and no minimum term. Live transfers are priced on your criteria, and commercial solar is priced on a call.