MARKET BRIEF · 2026-05-11

Who buys Headroom Intelligence — and how big is the UK universe?

Pivot Headroom from "G99 form-filler for installers" to pre-investment site intelligence + execution layer for commercial solar/BESS developers (50kW–5MW). The form is downstream of the decision.

The competitive board

Lane	Buyer	What's sold	Price	Player
Decision intelligence — utility scale	Capital allocators	Numbers for a credit memo	£850 – £15k	Quantail owns
Commercial-scale decision intelligence	50kW–5MW developers + IPPs	"Will this site clear, and at what £?"	£150 – £500 / site	EMPTY — OUR LANE
Application execution	Installers (residential)	"Submit my G99"	£50 – £125 / app	DNO Renewables owns

UK commercial solar installer universe — headline vs reality

3,000 – 4,500

Headline number

Total MCS-certified solar PV companies registered in the UK. Includes inactive + domestic-only.

150 – 300

Real demand universe (installer-side)

High-intent commercial developers doing 10+ G99 sites/year, sophisticated buyers, can pay £250-£495 per site.

The headline 3,000-4,500 is misleading. The UK commercial solar market is highly concentrated — the top 50 commercial installers/developers do an estimated 60-70% of the volume. We don't need to sell to everyone.

Behavioural segmentation — do they want our tool?

Group	Description	UK count	WTP	How we serve them
A — High-intent	Volume commercial developers + EPCs, 10+ G99/yr	~150-300	£250-495/site £495+/mo sub	Primary target — direct sales
B — Aware, price-sensitive	Mid-volume (2-10 G99/yr). Pain felt but each query too small to pay £250.	~200-400	Freemium · £99 standalone	Free postcode lookup → £99 standalone fee estimate → upsell on growth
C — Not our customer	Domestic-focused, occasional small commercial, micro-installers.	~500-1,000	Won't pay our prices	Ignore — DNO Renewables' territory
D — Non-installer buyers	Asset managers, IPP funds, EPCs with dev arms, energy consultants. Capital deployers, not installers.	~150-250	£495-£1,500/mo portfolio subscription	Highest LTV — sales-led portfolio product

Real demand universe = Group A + Group D = ~300-550 firms. Plus a freemium funnel into Group B as they grow.

Tier 1 — sweet-spot direct buyers (~350-600 companies)

Segment	UK count	WTP	Example UK firms
Independent commercial solar developers	~250-400	£250-£395/site	Sungift Energy · Custom Solar · Push Energy · Joju Solar · Egni Co-op · BSR Energy
Commercial EPCs with C&I dev arms	~50-100	£500-£2k/site	EvoEnergy commercial · Solarsense · Anesco · Atrato Onsite Energy
IPP funds / asset managers	~50-100	£495-£1.5k/mo sub	Foresight Solar · Bluefield · Atrato Capital · Octopus Energy Generation · Gresham House · NextEnergy Capital · JLEN · Greencoat

Do the existing players already have a tool like Headroom? — No.

Verifiable: a proprietary tool of this kind would be visible (marketing, platform engineering hires, investor decks). It isn't. The major UK commercial solar players manage the screening process today through a manual, fragmented hodgepodge — pieced together per site by experienced engineers.

The 7-tool hodgepodge they use today

Tool / source	What it gives	What it doesn't
DNO online heatmaps — free	Substation capacity colour-coding	No queue position, no curtailment forecast, no fee, no comparables
ENA Connect Direct portal — paid (~£200-500/yr)	Aggregate queue data across DNOs	Coarse; not site-specific; not a decision tool
DNO pre-application advice — paid £500-£1,500, 4-8 wks	Formal indicative DNO response	Slow + expensive + per-site; can't cheaply compare sites
Embedded Capacity Register — free XLSX downloads	Every quoted connection: £, kW, location	Massive Excel dumps; not query-able by postcode; no model on top
Internal Excel pipelines	Custom per-firm site tracking	Stale fast; one-engineer dependency; breaks when staff leave
Relationship calls with DNO connections engineers	The "real" answer	Doesn't scale; depends on personal relationships
Solar design tools (SolarEdge, OpenSolar, Aurora)	Design + proposals	None do grid screening or DNO logic

Typical workflow per site: 30 min to 4 hours. Done dozens of times per year per developer on sites that mostly never materialise.

What the specific named players actually use

Firm	Their reality today
BSR Energy	Standard DNO portal + Excel + relationships. No published tool.
Joju Solar	Civic / public-sector commercial; standard DNO heatmaps + pre-app studies. No tool.
Custom Solar (Yorkshire)	NPG portal + Excel + DNO contact. No tool.
Sungift Energy (SW)	Heavy NGED engagement; relationship-driven not tool-driven.
EvoEnergy commercial	More sophisticated internal Excel. No published software.
Anesco	Internal tools at utility-scale (>5MW), not commercial sub-5MW.

One caveat — IPP funds may have internal tools. Foresight, Bluefield, Atrato, Octopus Renewables very likely have internal Excel/Power BI tools built by in-house analysts. But they're bespoke, fragile, one-or-two-person-maintained, and fall apart on staff turnover. That's an opportunity, not a threat: our pitch becomes "replace your fragile internal tool with a maintained product priced like one analyst-day per month."

Three questions to validate in the first 5 discovery calls

"Walk me through how you screened your last 5 sites. What tools, how long, what cost?"
"What did you wish you'd known earlier on a site that turned out to be a dead end?"
"If a tool gave you a ±35% connection-fee estimate + queue position + curtailment risk in 60 seconds for £250, would you have bought one this quarter? How many?"

If 5 of 5 answer with "spreadsheets and we call our DNO contact" — the wedge is confirmed.

Tier 3 — channel multiplier (the asymmetric bet)

Channel	Count	Why it matters
Solar design tool vendors	3-5	SolarEdge Designer · Easy-PV · OpenSolar · PVsyst · Aurora Solar. Each has tens of thousands of installer users. Land one integration = 10× distribution overnight. Worth a parallel approach from day 1.
MCS installer networks/co-ops	~5-15	Referral relationships
Trade bodies	3	Solar Energy UK · REA · STA — content + sponsorship + endorsement

Revenue math — Year 1 / Year 2 / Year 3

£50-100k

Year 1 — wedge validation

10-15 paying customers. Mix of per-site + early portfolio subs. Proves WTP and unit economics.

£500k - £1M

Year 2 — scaled wedge

50-100 customers. Portfolio subscriptions compound. First channel partner signed.

£2-5M ARR

Year 3 — channel-driven

If a Tier 3 design-tool integration lands, distribution scales 10×. Owns the vocabulary in the middle market.

£15-30M+

Exit scenario

Acquisition by DNO Renewables (up-market move), Quantail (down-market move), a solar design tool, or an IPP wanting an internal tool.

First 5 discovery calls (this week)

#	Target type	Example firms	What we learn
1	Independent commercial developer	Sungift Energy · Custom Solar · BSR Energy	Price elasticity at £250-£395 per site
2	IPP / asset manager	Atrato Capital · Foresight Solar · Gresham House	Portfolio subscription appetite + comparative-ranking value
3	EPC with dev arm	EvoEnergy commercial · Anesco · Solarsense	Volume use + workflow integration needs
4	Energy consultant / landowner advisor	From Kevin Doyle's network	Whether the tool sells through advisors as a referral
5	Channel-partner candidate	OpenSolar UK partner · SolarEdge Designer power user	Whether the embedded-integration play is realistic

Bottom line

Not "all 3,000 UK solar installers." A concentrated ~300-550 high-intent direct buyers (Groups A + D) + 3-5 channel partners that gate access to tens of thousands more. £2-5M ARR business with a moat — and a credible £15-30M+ acquisition outcome. Move now, ship the wedge, sell the relief, own the vocabulary before someone else does.