Metered, not modelled
Birmingham vs Manchester
Birmingham roofs made about 12% more than Manchester roofs last year.
767 against 684 kWh per kWp at the median, from 150 and 2,025 real systems.
Where the two actually overlap
Both areas, grouped by what each system made. The medians differ, but the shapes sit largely on top of one another — a good Manchester roof beats a poor Birmingham one comfortably. Location moves the odds; it does not decide the outcome.
Birmingham: the middle half of 150 systems made 701–814 kWh per kWp. Manchester: the middle half of 2,025 systems made 611–746 kWh per kWp.
Both figures are what real systems metered last year, so the gap mixes sunlight with system age, roof direction and shading. It is the difference in what people actually got, not a difference in sunshine alone.
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Output figures from openclimatefix/uk_pv (Hugging Face, CC-BY-4.0), collected by Sheffield Solar. How we measure.
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How sunlight falls on a UK roof, month by month.
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