Heva Energy Launches Affordable Solar Solutions for Homes

Heva Energy, a technology platform, founded by entrepreneurs Ian Napier and Thomas Newby, has launched the UK’s first salary sacrifice scheme for residential solar PV, battery storage, and EV charge points.

The scheme will allow employees to fund clean energy systems through pre-tax salary reductions, using the same model widely adopted in the electric vehicle sector. Employees will have the opportunity to install systems with no upfront cost and without traditional consumer finance checks. Currently, 80% of households cite upfront cost as the biggest obstacle to going solar. 

Under the scheme, employees can access solar and battery systems through their employer, with repayments taken directly from gross salary before income tax and National Insurance are deducted. The company said this could reduce overall system costs by up to 42% for higher-rate taxpayers when compared with traditional consumer finance deals, which usually carry interest rates of around 12% APR. Heva Energy added that payments can be paused automatically during parental leave or when an employee changes employer and end-of-term options include purchasing the system at fair market value or continuing usage through a nominal monthly fee arrangement. 

Battery-only systems are also available for employees who don’t have EVs, enabling households to store cheaper off-peak electricity and release it during peak pricing periods potentially cutting electricity bills substantially.

The scheme can also offer savings for employers by reducing their National Insurance contribution liabilities by around £2,500 annually per participating employee, according to Heva Energy. Not only does the employer not incur any financial risk, but they can also help reduce the participating employees’ Scope 3 emissions by 1.3 tonnes annually. Scope 3 emissions are all indirect greenhouse gases generated throughout a company's value chain, excluding purchased electricity (Scope 2). They span upstream activities (e.g., supply chain, employee commuting) and downstream activities (e.g., product use, disposal). Frequently accounting for 70–90% of a company's total footprint, they are crucial for comprehensive climate accounting. 

The scheme normally takes around two months from employer onboarding to the first installation and may also help reduce Scope 1 emissions for employees who work from home. Scope 1 emissions are direct greenhouse gas emissions from sources an organisation owns or controls, such as fuel burned in boilers, furnaces, manufacturing processes, and company-owned vehicles.

Ian Napier said:

"Eighteen million households need to move to renewables but it's not affordable unless we change how it’s funded. This is what we are trying to achieve."

Heva Energy provides an end-to-end service, covering financing, installation, asset management, and maintenance. All installations are carried out by vetted installers and include a 21-day repair-or-replace service-level agreement. Their clean energy systems use hardware from two primary tier-1 manufacturers specifically Tesla Powerwall 3 and EcoFlow systems. The Tesla Powerwall 3 features an integrated inverter and provides 13.5 kWh of storage capacity, which allows the battery to store cheap off-peak grid electricity and release it during peak hours. The EcoFlow hardware provides flexible, scalable storage solutions. Heva Energy also partners with myEnergi for their smart EV (Electric Vehicle) home charge point integrations. These brands have been selected for their high longevity and long-term manufacturer warranty coverage. 

Heva Energy’s proprietary system is HMRC-compliant which means there’s no chance of being stung with a tax penalty later. Employees can be confident in the knowledge that the scheme is being backed by a team with over 14 years’ experience in energy assets.

According to Heva Energy, UK electricity prices have risen by an average of 6% each year since 2000, outstripping inflation and driving growing interest in technologies such as solar panels and battery storage that allow households to generate and store their own energy. Heva Energy’s offering comes at a time when UK households are facing continued pressure from rising electricity prices and energy market volatility because of ongoing conflict in the Middle East. 

Heva Energy estimates that a typical employee earning £60,000 with a company EV and high electricity usage could install a full solar, battery and EV charge point package through the scheme for a net monthly cost of £123 after tax savings, with potential energy savings of approximately £171 per month. This amounts to around £2,050 in annual savings. However, this level of saving is usually only possible if the household has very high electricity consumption, an electric vehicle, a large battery, favourable time-of-use tariffs, and good solar generation. The householder needs to actively shift electricity usage to maximise energy savings. For an average UK household without an EV, the savings would be much lower. 

Unsurprisingly, demand for the scheme has tripled over the past month, driven by growing interest from sustainability teams, HR departments, and employees seeking ways to address cost-of-living pressures and corporate decarbonisation targets. 

According to Ian Napier, the largest contract secured so far has been with an NHS Trust. 

“Energy price disruption is not short-term. It is a structural shift, and most households have no mechanism to protect themselves from it. Consumer finance for solar locks you into credit checks and 12% interest rates, while salary sacrifice removes both barriers and offers the deepest savings for those who need them most. This is about transforming energy independence from a luxury to a workplace benefit accessible to every taxpayer. We have seen demand triple in a month. People are looking at their bills and deciding they want a way out.”

The National Lottery Community Fund is another participating organisation. 

Zobair Mehmood, from the National Lottery Community Fund, said: 

“We’ve seen energy prices rise 79% since 2019, and our employees are dealing with the same volatility at home. We already use salary sacrifice for electric vehicles; extending that mechanism to solar and batteries was the most direct way to protect our people from rising bills while making real progress on our net zero commitments. The fact that there's a battery-only option for employees who can’t participate in salary sacrifice matters to us because we really wanted a benefit our whole workforce could use.”

Heva Energy’s new salary sacrifice scheme could make solar panels, battery storage and EV charging far more accessible to UK households by removing large upfront costs and reducing reliance on expensive consumer finance. As energy prices remain volatile and demand for renewable energy continues to grow, the rapid rise in interest from both employers and employees highlights a growing shift towards workplace-backed clean energy solutions. If adopted more widely, schemes like this could help lower household energy bills, reduce carbon emissions, and accelerate the UK’s transition towards greater energy independence.