A gateway takes your solar and battery from a bill-cutting tool to a genuine grid hedge, powering the whole house through outages, and still exporting to the grid on the days it can. We design it around your circuits, not around a brochure.
MCS-vetted installers · Whole-home backup design · Independently underwritten guarantees · £1M Public Liability
Grid outages in the South West are not frequent, but when they happen, usually in the middle of a winter storm, they last longer than most homeowners expect. A gateway system takes a standard solar and battery install and turns it into something that keeps the house running: heating, lighting, cooking, working from home, and the freezer that would otherwise defrost silently overnight.
A gateway is a piece of hardware that sits between your consumer unit and the grid. It detects a grid outage in milliseconds, disconnects your home cleanly, and re-powers your circuits from the battery and solar. When the grid returns, it re-synchronises automatically. Sized correctly, the same gateway also allows genuine self-sufficient operation, running from your own generation and stored power for extended periods.
Gateway backup suits rural EX, TQ, TA, and PL properties on longer feeder circuits, homes with medical dependencies or elderly residents, home-workers whose income depends on connectivity, holiday lets and small businesses that cannot afford spoilage, and anyone who has already lived through a multi-hour outage and made a quiet promise not to do it again.
The right time to design in a gateway is at the same time as the solar and battery, the wiring, consumer unit changes, and DNO notification are all done once. Retrofit is possible and often the right choice after a bad outage, but it costs more than doing it at the same time as the original install.
Gateway installs are the least DIY-friendly part of a solar system. They involve consumer unit modification, DNO paperwork, backup circuit design, and manufacturer-specific commissioning. Done well they are invisible until you need them. Done badly they leave you with a battery that cannot power a fridge because the switching logic was never configured.
You do not know whether a backup system is real until the grid drops. By that point it is too late to negotiate.
A 10–20 minute call to understand your bill, your home and what you actually want from your backup power system. No sales script, Dan answers his own phone.
Dan attends personally, flies a licensed drone over the roof, and designs the system in paid bespoke software, not a free web tool. Site visits typically within 2–3 days of your call.
Around three like-for-like quotes from the small panel of MCS installers we vet against seven strict criteria. Every installer pays us the same commission, so there is no hidden reason to favour one.
You contract directly with your chosen installer. They complete the work to MCS standards, and we cross-check the commissioning paperwork, EPVS registration and grant applications on your behalf.
You keep Dan's number. Independently underwritten guarantees stand even if the installer changes shape, and any dispute is escalated by us on your behalf.
Millisecond switchover from grid to battery | you rarely notice the outage happened.
Circuits pre-planned with you: boiler controls, fridge, freezer, kitchen sockets, home-office ring, and lighting typically.
Systems specified to restart from the battery alone after a prolonged outage | no need to wait for the grid to return.
Self-sufficient operation does not cost you your Smart Export Guarantee payments | surplus generation still leaves the property when the grid is up.
Solar, battery, and gateway all fitted by the same MCS installer, on one contract, with one warranty and one aftercare number.
Not a UPS. A properly specified gateway can carry a home through a multi-day outage on sunlight and stored power alone.
Backup and self-sufficient systems are where the solar industry stops being simple. This is the section of the design that rewards a broker who has walked the house with you and understands what actually needs to stay on.
Almost every home we work with runs grid-parallel: normally connected to the grid, exporting surplus for SEG payments, and islanded automatically when the grid drops. True off-grid installs, no grid connection at all, are a very different design and a very different cost. For 95% of Devon and Somerset homes, grid-parallel with a well-specified gateway is the right answer.
We walk the house with you and mark up the consumer unit. Typical backup circuits include the fridge and freezer, boiler controls (the gas or oil is doing the heating; the electricity is running the pump and controls), the router and Wi-Fi, kitchen sockets, and a defined lighting ring. Non-essential circuits, the tumble drier, the hot tub, the electric shower, usually stay off the backup list to avoid oversizing the gateway.
Backup gateways need to handle worst-case simultaneous load, not household average. On a January evening that might be the freezer, oven timer, boiler pump, lighting, home-office equipment, and induction hob all running at once. We size to that number with headroom, not to a monthly average that would misrepresent the peak.
After a prolonged outage that fully drains the battery, some systems cannot restart themselves without the grid coming back. Cold-black-start capable systems can bring themselves back up from the first available solar generation the next morning. This is a manufacturer-specific behaviour and one of the things we check on every backup spec.
Any grid-parallel system with the ability to island must be notified to your Distribution Network Operator (Western Power Distribution / National Grid Electricity Distribution across most of Devon and Somerset). Systems above 3.68 kW single-phase require G99 approval before commissioning; smaller systems fall under G98 with post-install notification. Our installers handle the paperwork on every job.
Can't see yours? Ask Dan directly, no bots, no call centre.
Store the solar you generate. Use it after dark, cut peak-rate imports, and stay powered during outages.
Independent design and installer selection for roof-mounted solar systems, tailored to your consumption and roof.
Home charging paired with your solar and battery, including OZEV grant guidance where you qualify.
Free phone consultation with Dan. Honest view on whether a full gateway is right for your home, or whether a simpler backup circuit is enough.
MCS-vetted installers · £1M Public Liability · Independently underwritten guarantees
