Merseyside and the Wirral
Fox ESS installer in Merseyside and the Wirral.
As a Fox ESS installer across Merseyside and the Wirral, we fit its home batteries in 9 towns, 4 to 25 miles from our Ellesmere Port base, with or without new panels, and as a retrofit beside the solar you already have.
In short
Fox ESS builds hybrid inverters and the high-voltage EP batteries that sit under them. Across Merseyside and the Wirral a south-facing roof makes between 939 kWh (St Helens) and 1,026 kWh (Southport) a year per kWp, and VAT on a battery from one supplier-installer is 0% to the end of March 2027.
Sources: fox-ess.uk · PVGIS 5.2 · HMRC VAT Notice 708/6 (energy-saving materials)
The roof studio
Turn the house, fill the roof.
A Cheshire semi on a turntable. Drag it round, then tell it about your roof and your house — the panels, the battery, the current running through it and the numbers all move together.
01Your roof
02Your house
Estimated generation
3,870
kWh a year
Estimated saving
£834
a year, saved and earned
Estimated payback
10.1
years
System size
4.40 kWp
Panels
10
Your use covered
58%
Of what the roof generates
Worked out for a typical Cheshire roof at the pitch and aspect you picked, on a unit rate of 28p and an export rate of 6.5p — rates this tool assumes, dated September 2026, rather than any tariff you have been offered. Nothing here is a quotation: your roof, your shading and how much electricity you use while the sun is up are what the survey settles.
Take the figures with you.
Copy what the studio worked out for your roof, or send it straight to us with a survey request. None of it is a quote: the survey replaces every figure above with your own.
Every assumption behind the numbers
- Unit rate
- 28p for every unit (kWh) you’d otherwise buy from the grid.
- Export rate
- 6.5p for every unit the house and battery can’t use and send back to the grid.
- Your yearly use
- Worked out from your monthly bill at the 28p unit rate, after a standing charge of about 36p a day — and never less than 1,100 kWh a year.
- What a panel makes
- Each panel is 440 W (0.44 kWp). A kWp makes 880 kWh a year facing south, 760 facing east–west and 620 facing north-ish. For this part of Cheshire the EU’s PVGIS model gives 951 for a south roof at a typical pitch — the studio stays below it.
- Pitch
- Shallow (28°) makes 95% of a typical 38° roof; steep (48°) makes 97%.
- Shading
- A bit of shade costs 10%; heavy shade costs 24%.
- How many panels
- Two rows, growing with your bill from three columns to eight — six panels up to sixteen.
- How much you use yourself
- The share of what the roof makes that the house uses: 30% if you’re usually out, 46% in and out, 62% usually home. A battery adds 24 points and a car charger 6, up to 86% — and never more than 62% of your whole year’s use.
- Saving
- The units you use yourself at 28p, plus the units you export at 6.5p.
- Payback
- The yearly saving set against what a system like the one you’ve built typically costs to install: a base figure, an amount for each panel, and more again for a battery or a charger. The answer is held between 4 and 25 years. The studio never shows that cost, because only a survey can price your roof — so treat the years as a rough guide, not a figure to hold us to.
Monthly and yearly sunshine for this area: PVGIS 5.2, EU Joint Research Centre. The unit rate, the export rate and the standing charge are the studio’s own assumptions, set in September 2026 — not a tariff we have quoted you. Your own rates are on your bill, and a survey works from those.
Merseyside and the Wirral in figures
What a battery has to work with in Merseyside and the Wirral.
- 939 to 1,026 kWh per kWp a yearA south-facing roof, from St Helens to Southport (PVGIS, each town’s own coordinates). May to July make about 37% of that, December and January about 7%.
- 74% live in a houseAround the centres of our 9 towns in 2021, 229,826 households between them (Census): a garage, utility room or sheltered wall is usually where the battery goes.
- 53% own their homeA battery is a fixed part of the house, so it is the owner’s decision, and it pays back to whoever pays the bills.
- 26% have two or more carsWhere there is a car on the drive, the battery and a charger share the same surplus and are best designed together.
Sources: ONS Census 2021 (TS044, TS045, TS054) via Nomis · PVGIS 5.2. The region in full: Merseyside and the Wirral.
From the manufacturer
What the Fox ESS system is.
Every line is the manufacturer’s own published figure, with its source.
- K-series inverterSingle-phase hybrid, published in 7, 8, 9 and 10 kW, with three or four MPPTs. fox-ess.uk
- System typesDC-coupled for new installations, AC-coupled for retrofits, battery-ready. fox-ess.uk
- MonitoringFoxCloud 2.0 in a browser or the app, with a five-second data refresh and work modes including self-use, feed-in priority, back-up and peak shaving. fox-ess.uk
- Inverter enclosureIP65, natural cooling, −25 °C to +60 °C with derating from +45 °C. fox-ess.com
- EP batteries in parallelUp to four units in parallel; a junction box is required for two to four units. fox-ess.uk
- EP battery depth of discharge90 %. fox-ess.uk
Every published figure, and the photographs of our own installs: Fox ESS.
The wires
The network paperwork across Merseyside and the Wirral.
Of our 9 towns in Merseyside and the Wirral, 8 are on SP Energy Networks’ SP Manweb network, and 1 sits across the boundary or on its edge, where the distributor ID in the MPAN on the bill settles it (13 is SP Manweb, 16 is Electricity North West). Each town page names its own.
spenergynetworks.opendatasoft.com · electricitynorthwest.opendatasoft.comA battery that can export is a generator in the network’s eyes. A single-phase system under 16A per phase (3.68kW) is notified under G98; anything larger goes through a G99 application, which the operator has to approve before the system is switched on.
spenergynetworks.co.uk · enwl.co.uk
We send the paperwork for you. How G98 and G99 work.
On the survey
Fitting a Fox ESS battery: what we check.
- The inverter and the batteries go on one wall run, with the DC and AC isolators between them and every one labelled.
- Two or more EP batteries in parallel need the Fox junction box, so leave wall space for it beside the string.
- The inverter is IP65 and derates above +45 °C, so a wall that bakes all afternoon is the wrong wall.
- The fixings and what is behind the render are part of the design.
Fox ESS batteries, explained · Adding a battery to the solar you already have
Town by town
Fox ESS in every Merseyside and the Wirral town we cover.
Each town’s own page carries its yield, its network and its planning authority. Nearest first.
- Battery storage in Bebington4 miles · Wirral
- Battery storage in Heswall8 miles · Wirral
- Battery storage in Birkenhead9 miles · Wirral
- Battery storage in Liverpool9 miles · Liverpool
- Battery storage in Wallasey11 miles · Wirral
- Battery storage in West Kirby13 miles · Wirral
- Battery storage in Hoylake13 miles · Wirral
- Battery storage in St Helens14 miles · St Helens
- Battery storage in Southport25 miles · Sefton
Solar for the same roofs: solar panels in Bebington · solar panels in Heswall · solar panels in Birkenhead · solar panels in Liverpool · solar panels in Wallasey · solar panels in West Kirby.
Fox ESS · Merseyside
Fox ESS in Merseyside: what people ask.
If yours isn’t here, give us a ring and ask, or see every question.
Yes: in all 9 towns on our map for the region, from Bebington (4 miles from our base) to Southport (25 miles). Each town has its own battery page with its yield and network.
Usually. Fox ESS publishes its K-series for DC-coupled new systems and AC-coupled retrofits. We look at the existing installation before recommending anything.
December and January make only about 7% of a south-facing roof’s year across the region, so in midwinter the battery earns its keep on a time-of-use tariff, charging when grid electricity is cheapest; in May to July, about 37% of the year, it stores your own generation.
Yes. To the network operator an exporting battery counts as a generator: a G98 notification for a small single-phase system and a G99 application for anything bigger. We send it.
Not until 31 March 2027 for most homes: a battery supplied and fitted by one firm is zero-rated, with or without panels, and the rate goes to 5% after that.
More
Fox ESS elsewhere, and the rest of the kit.
Fox ESS in our other regions
Also fitted in Merseyside
- Tesla Powerwall installer in MerseysideHome battery with the solar inverter built in
- EcoFlow installer in MerseysidePowerOcean: hybrid inverter over stacked packs
- Hypervolt installer in MerseysideHome EV charger with solar-only charging modes
- Home battery storage installationHow the survey and the design run
Start here
Ask about Fox ESS in Merseyside.
Tell us the postcode and roughly what you use. We’ll tell you honestly whether the roof is worth doing — and if it isn’t, that’s a perfectly good answer too.
- Takes about a minute
- You get a person, not a brochure
- No obligation, and no visit until you ask for one