Grants and funding for solar carports

There is no single grant that pays for a solar carport. Instead there is a stack of reliefs and schemes that, used together, take a meaningful slice off the net cost. The trick is knowing which ones apply to your site type and how they combine. A retail car park, a workplace, an NHS site, and a university all draw on a slightly different mix. Here is how the main routes work and how they fit together.

The Workplace Charging Scheme: funding the EV side

The single most relevant scheme for a solar carport is the Workplace Charging Scheme, because almost every carport carries EV chargepoints. It covers up to 75 per cent of the purchase and installation cost of the sockets, capped at £500 per socket, for up to 40 sockets across all of an applicant's sites. It runs to 31 March 2027. It is voucher-based and must be claimed through an OZEV-authorised installer, which we are, so we handle the claim for you. Businesses, charities, and public-sector bodies across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland all qualify. Note that the separate EV Infrastructure Grant for SMEs closed on 31 March 2026, so the WCS is now the primary EV-charging grant for workplace car parks.

100% Annual Investment Allowance: the tax relief on the panels

The PV plant itself qualifies for 100 per cent Annual Investment Allowance. Solar panels count as plant and machinery, and the AIA lets a business write off the first £1m of qualifying expenditure per year at 100 per cent. For a limited company that means up to 25 per cent effective tax relief in year one. Most single-site carport PV installs fall within the £1m cap and are fully expensed against profits in the year of purchase. One subtlety worth flagging to your accountant: the structural steel canopy may be treated differently from the PV plant for capital allowances, so the split between the two matters. We provide the cost breakdown that lets your accountant make that call.

Smart Export Guarantee: income on the surplus

Whatever your carport generates and does not use on site can be sold back to the grid under the Smart Export Guarantee. It is open to MCS-certified installations up to 5 MW, and licensed suppliers with 150,000 or more domestic customers must offer a tariff. Rates sit around 4 to 15p/kWh as of 2026 and are supplier-set, so shop around. The SEG matters most for car parks with low out-of-hours load, a weekday-only office or a weekend-only visitor attraction will export a significant share of generation, whereas a 24/7 hospital self-consumes almost everything and exports little.

Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme: for NHS, councils, and education

Public-sector car parks have an additional route. The Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme, administered by Salix Finance, funds heat decarbonisation and energy-efficiency measures across the public estate, including NHS trusts, councils, schools, and universities. A solar carport can form part of a wider qualifying decarbonisation project. PSDS runs in competitive phases rather than as a standing fund, so timing matters, you need an open competition and a project ready to bid. For NHS sites it dovetails with the Greener NHS net-zero programme, and for councils with their climate-emergency commitments.

Devolved support in Scotland and Wales

Sites in Scotland and Wales should check devolved EV and renewables support on top of the UK-wide schemes. Energy Saving Trust Scotland offers interest-free low-carbon transport loans, and Transport Scotland runs its own EV infrastructure schemes. In Wales, Business Wales provides SME grant support, and the Welsh Government's public-sector net-zero-by-2030 target drives strong funding interest for council, NHS, and education car parks. These can be more generous than the England-only equivalents and stack with the Workplace Charging Scheme.

How the stack works in practice

On a typical workplace carport the layering looks like this: the Workplace Charging Scheme grant comes off the EV sockets, the 100 per cent AIA gives first-year tax relief on the PV plant, and any surplus generation earns SEG income year after year. A public-sector site adds PSDS to that mix where a competition is open. The common pitfall is treating the EV charging and the solar as separate projects with separate budgets, which forfeits the behind-the-meter supply that makes the charging cheap and misses the chance to claim the WCS alongside the AIA. Delivering them together, one structure, one application, one connection, is what makes the blended return work. We map the right combination for your specific site type as part of the feasibility study. See our cost guide for how these reliefs feed the financial model, or request a quote to get the full breakdown for your car park.