Panels, inverters and batteries

We are not going to publish a product database. MCS holds the certification records for over 330,000 products and its terms prohibit copying or redistributing them — so a comparison table built from that data would be somebody else’s data with our name on it. What we can do is teach you to read the datasheet you are handed.

There is an obvious page missing from this site: a database of every solar panel sold in Britain, with specifications, ranked.

We are not building it, and the reason is worth stating plainly. The certification records live in the MCS Product Directory, which lists over 330,000 certified products. Its terms say that “any copying, distribution, storing or transmission of any kind, or any sort of commercial use of the Content is strictly prohibited without the MCS Service Company Ltd’s prior written permission”, and that a user “may not re-sell nor make available to any third party the whole or any part of the information”.

Sites that publish those tables anyway are either licensed, or are hoping nobody checks. We are neither.

What you get instead

The specification that matters to you is not in a database. It is the manufacturer’s datasheet for the specific modules and inverter in your quote — and under MCS’s own installation standard, you are entitled to it.

MIS 3002 requires that, as a minimum, the installer communicates in writing before the contract is awarded: the performance estimate, the datasheet for the proposed solar modules, the datasheet for the proposed inverter, the datasheet for any module-level power electronics, the datasheet for any storage system, a drawing of the proposed module layout, and the sunpath diagram used where shading was modelled.

So the useful skill is not finding a table on the internet. It is reading the document you are already owed.

These pages teach that:

And when you have the datasheets, comparing quotes is where they get used.

Most people start here

How to read a solar panel datasheet

Every quote must come with one. Six numbers on it decide what you are buying, and only two of them get mentioned in the sales conversation.

Inverters explained

String, micro or hybrid; why 3.68 kW appears so often; and what clipping costs you. The component most likely to fail first is the one nobody asks about.

Reading the specifications

Sources

  1. MIS 3002: The Solar PV Standard, issue 6.0 MCS · Accessed 18 August 2026 Read locally. MCS restricts reproduction, so we cite clauses and quote sparingly.
  2. MCS terms and conditions MCS · Accessed 20 August 2026 The terms that decide what we can publish from the product directory.
Last verified: How we research this Suggest a correction
Was this page helpful?
Sign up to the newsletter