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Home battery installation in an Aberdeen flat, sited to the fire safety standard.
Home battery installation across Aberdeen. We survey where the enclosure can legally sit before quoting. NICEIC approved, City and Guilds Level 3 qualified in electrical energy storage. 54,916 Aberdeen households live in a flat. The fire safety specification for home batteries, PAS 63100, rules out rooms people sleep in, cupboards that open into them, escape routes protected or otherwise, and lofts and voids absolutely. Between them that is most of the spare wall a tenement flat actually has.
Every battery page in this city assumes you have a garage.
We read fourteen of them. Nine target Aberdeen directly. Between them they discuss cost, payback, brands, tariffs, warranties and power cuts at considerable length, and one runs to nearly three thousand words. Across all fourteen, the phrase "PAS 63100" appears zero times. So does "means of escape". So does "building warrant", unless you count the word warranty, which is what every single hit turned out to be.
One page lists the property types it serves: detached, semi detached, terraced, new build, rural, renovation. Flats are not on the list. Another offers "Flat (top floor)" and "Flat (mid or ground)" in its quote form and then never mentions a flat again in the copy. A third fills the last third of its page with its own liability insurance schedule.
So this page does the thing nobody has done: it goes through the actual clause, location by location, and tells you what survives. Sometimes the answer is one spot. Occasionally it is none, and we will say so rather than sell you something that should not be there.
Battery systems designed, installed and commissioned by Steven Watt, who holds the City and Guilds Level 3 Award in the Design, Installation and Commissioning of Small Electrical Energy Storage Systems (610/4840/9), awarded April 2026. NICEIC Approved Contractor, enrolment 620239.
More of this city lives in a flat than in a house.
Which matters, because a flat is precisely where the fire safety rules bite hardest. The locations they exclude are the locations a flat has.
Against 54,441 in a house or bungalow, of 109,450 households in total. Census 2022, table UV402.
The 2022 census counted 54,916 Aberdeen households in a flat, maisonette or apartment, against 54,441 in a house or bungalow. That is the single fact the rest of this page turns on.
A mid floor or top floor tenement flat has no garage, no outbuilding and frequently no private external wall at ground level. What it does have is a hall, a press, a loft above and a common close. Those are the four places a battery cannot go.
Across the fourteen pages we examined, the word tenement appears once, and only in a related article teaser. The entire Aberdeen market treats a home battery as a garage appliance for a detached house.
The nine locations PAS 63100 rules out, word for word.
It is short, it is unambiguous, and no competitor page in Aberdeen reproduces any part of it. Note that the specification uses "shall" throughout.
"Batteries shall not be installed in any of the following locations:
- arooms in which persons are intended to sleep;
- broutes used as a means of escape that are not defined as protected escape routes, including landings, staircases and corridors;
- ccorridors, shafts, stairs or lobbies of protected escape routes;
- dfirefighting lobbies, shafts or staircases;
- estorage cupboards, enclosures or spaces opening into rooms in which persons are intended to sleep;
- foutdoors (ground-mounted or wall-mounted in a suitable enclosure) within 1 m of: 1) escape routes; 2) doors; 3) windows; or 4) ventilation ports;
- gvoids, roof spaces or lofts;
- hwithin 2 m of stored flammable materials and fuel storage tanks or cylinders; and
- icellars or basements that have no access to the outside of the building."
(g) is absolute
Voids, roof spaces and lofts, with no qualification and no exception. That kills the single most common suggestion made to a top floor flat owner who has run out of ideas.
(e) is the one nobody sees coming
It bans a cupboard that merely opens into a bedroom, even though the cupboard itself is not a bedroom. In a two bedroom tenement flat that removes most of the usable presses in the hall.
(b) and (c) together leave no gap
They cover escape routes whether or not they are formally protected. Your own hallway is the means of escape from your flat. There is no clever reading that gets a battery into it.
(f) is not a get out either
Mounting outdoors sounds like the answer until you measure a metre from every door, every window and every ventilation port on a tenement rear elevation.
The one no page in the United Kingdom has written down
Here is the reasoning rather than a quotation, because PAS 63100 does not name the close. Clause 6.5.5(c) prohibits "corridors, shafts, stairs or lobbies of protected escape routes". Under the Scottish Building Standards Technical Handbook, section 2.9, a tenement common stair is a protected zone. Reading the two together, the close falls squarely inside 6.5.5(c). And even if you argued it were not protected, 6.5.5(b) catches it anyway as a landing, staircase or corridor used as a means of escape. Either route gets you to the same place.
Which is awkward, because in a great many Aberdeen tenement flats the close, or a meter cupboard on it, is the only sizeable spare wall in the building. It is the obvious answer, and it is not available.
Is any of this actually the law?
No, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. PAS 63100 says so about itself, in its own foreword: "This PAS is not to be regarded as a British Standard", and "Compliance with a PAS cannot confer immunity from legal obligations." MCS put it more bluntly still, noting that PAS 63100 "has no current standing in any UK regulations".
So why does it decide where your battery goes? Because it is the specification the industry, and more to the point insurers and warranty providers, treat as the fire safety benchmark. It was developed by BSI and sponsored by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, and published in March 2024. It reaches the MCS installation standard for storage indirectly, through the IET Code of Practice, which MIS 3012 requires the installation to be designed and installed in accordance with.
Which gives you the honest position. An installer can put a battery in your loft. Nothing will stop them on the day. What you will have is an installation that departs from the recognised fire safety specification, in a location the specification prohibits without qualification, in a building where several other households sleep. That is a conversation with an insurer you do not want to have.
One thing PAS 63100 does not do is address flats as a distinct case. It confirms at clause 3.1.6 that flats and maisonettes are in scope, and then contains no section on common closes, shared escape routes or multi dwelling buildings. Its energy cap at 6.5.7 is even worded around a dwelling house. So the reasoning that gets you from the clause to the close is reasoning, and we have shown you ours rather than dressing it up as a quotation.
Two scope exclusions worth knowing
PAS 63100 does not cover dwellings over 200 square metres, or storage in high risk residential buildings. Aberdeen's multi storey blocks sit outside its scope, and a battery in one is a specialist fire engineering question rather than a standard domestic install.
We will not tell you where that line falls, because the specification itself does not define the term. The phrase appears once, in the exclusion list, with no cross reference. Anyone quoting you a storey count or a height for it is importing a definition from somewhere else.
So what is left in a real Aberdeen flat?
Two columns, and we would rather you saw the shorter one first. Then the three further tests the survivor still has to pass.
The locations that get through
- Utility room or kitchen on an external wall. The realistic candidate in a flat, and it must still pass all three tests in 6.5.1.
- Balcony, drying green or private rear external wall, where it exists. Clause 6.5.2 fire performance and fire stopping, the 6.5.5(f) 1 metre clearances, and consents all apply.
- A garage, outbuilding or outdoor position, which is why this is a far easier job in Cults, Bieldside, Milltimber, Kingswells or Bridge of Don than it is in Rosemount or Ferryhill.
The locations that are already gone
- Any bedroom. Clause 6.5.5(a).
- A cupboard opening into a bedroom. 6.5.5(e), which catches most hall presses in a two bedroom flat.
- The flat's own hallway. 6.5.5(b). It is your means of escape.
- The common close, stair, landing or close cupboard. 6.5.5(c) read with the Scottish handbook 2.9 protected zone, or 6.5.5(b) either way.
- The loft, roof space or any void. 6.5.5(g), absolutely, with no exceptions in the text.
- The under stair cupboard. 6.5.5(b) or (c). In a flat it almost always opens onto the hall.
- A cellar or basement with no outside access. 6.5.5(i).
And the surviving candidate still has to pass three tests at once
Clause 6.5.1 says outdoors is preferred, and that indoors is permitted only at a location that satisfies all three of the following. Not two. All three.
Not precluded by 6.5.5
Everything in the list above. This is the easy one, and it is already where most flats stop.
Fresh air ventilation to outdoors
Clause 6.5.4: all indoor locations shall have it, and the outdoor port must be at least 1 metre from the edges of any door, any window, or any other ventilation port. In a granite tenement, this is usually the clause that ends the conversation. The specification even notes that dwelling air tightness requirements "might preclude batteries being installed in habitable parts of a dwelling".
Fire resisting separation
Clause 6.5.3: at least REI 30 to the BS EN 13501 series, separating the battery location from every location in the 6.5.5 list. In practice that means from your hall and from every bedroom.
On top of that, clause 6.5.6 requires an interlinked smoke or multi sensor detector where the battery sits somewhere infrequently visited such as a store cupboard, to BS 5839-6, and the specification's note puts that at Grade D2, Category LD2 as a minimum. In an older flat that may mean upgrading the alarm system as part of the job.
For a mid floor or top floor Aberdeen tenement flat with no garage, no outbuilding and no private ground level external wall, the compliant options frequently reduce to one, and sometimes to none. We would far rather tell you that at survey than take a deposit and discover it later. If your flat is one of the ones where it works, it works properly. If it is not, there are other things worth doing with the money and we will tell you what they are.
Dimensions and weight matter more in a flat than anywhere else.
Published manufacturer figures, because in a tenement the question is genuinely whether it physically fits the one wall that passes the clause.
| Unit | Size (H x W x D) | Weight | IP | Mounting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SolaX T-BAT H 5.8 V3 | 715 x 474 x 150mm | 61.5 kg | IP66 | Wall or floor, stackable, indoor or outdoor |
| Fox ESS EP5 | 625 x 380 x 147mm | 50.5 kg | IP65 | Floor or wall, indoor or outdoor |
| Alpha ESS SMILE-G3-BAT-3.8S | 435 x 610 x 212.5mm | 39.2 kg | IP21 | Floor or wall, indoor only |
Read from the manufacturers' own published datasheets. We also fit SolarEdge, and we have deliberately left its figures off this table because we could not open the current datasheet to verify them, and we are not going to print numbers we have not checked. We will pull the correct sheet for whichever unit is proposed for your flat and put the figures in the written quote.
The bit about your wall
Look again at those weights. Between 39 and 62 kilograms, carried on a bracket less than half a metre wide. That is a concentrated point load, and in an Aberdeen tenement it is going onto either lath and plaster on timber studs, or granite.
The MCS battery installation standard is direct about it: components "shall be mounted on surfaces that are structurally sound and can support the weight... Both point loading and weight distribution shall be taken into consideration. If there is any doubt whatsoever then a qualified structural engineer shall be consulted." Wall mounting is required to comply with BS EN 62109-1.
Our position, stated as judgement rather than as a standard, because no published guidance covers Scottish tenement construction specifically: lath and plaster on studs is not a mounting substrate for this, and we will not pretend otherwise. Granite is sound but needs the right resin or mechanical anchors, correctly set. Where the wall is doubtful we floor mount instead, or we tell you the location does not work. PAS 63100 itself, incidentally, says nothing at all about structural loading. We checked the whole document.
The qualification for storage specifically.
Across fourteen competitor pages, not one names an installer or a qualification beyond a badge word. Here is ours with the certificates.
Anyone can claim qualifications. We will show you the certificates. Click either image to view the original document.
Held by Steven Watt
- City and Guilds Level 3 Award in the Design, Installation and Commissioning of Small Electrical Energy Storage Systems (610/4840/9), awarded April 2026
- City and Guilds Level 3 Award in the Installation and Maintenance of Small Solar Photovoltaic Systems (610/4841/0), awarded April 2026
- City and Guilds 2391-52, inspection and testing
- HNC Engineering Systems
- NICEIC Approved Contractor, enrolment 620239
- OZEV Authorised Installer
MCS, and exactly how it works here
Every installation we complete is fully MCS registered through our Q-Smart partnership. Q-Smart is a Competent Person Scheme. Faithful Spark Electricians carries out the installation and Q-Smart issues the MCS certificate.
Worth being precise about, since two pages in this market describe themselves as "MCS affiliated", which is not a thing. MCS registration either exists for an installation or it does not.
That first award is the reason this page opens with a clause number rather than a payback figure. Design, installation and commissioning of small electrical energy storage systems is a distinct qualification, and knowing which locations the fire specification excludes is squarely inside it.
What else governs the job in Scotland.
The energy caps, the standard the installation is certified to, the grid application, and the consents. This is the part written for Scotland rather than copied from a page written for somewhere else.
20 kWh per enclosure, and what applies to a flat
20 kWh is the maximum stored by batteries within a single enclosure, and that figure comes from PAS 63100 clause 6.1.3, not from the IET Code of Practice as it is often credited.
80 kWh is the total per dwelling, but only where batteries are in a detached garage or outbuilding, outdoors, or an attached garage with REI 60 separation. Clause 6.5.7(a).
40 kWh is the total per dwelling in all other cases, which is the figure that applies to a flat. Clause 6.5.7(b). It sits far above anything a domestic install would reach, so the binding constraint is the 20 kWh per enclosure limit and, far more so, the siting rules above.
Amendment 4, and a brand new chapter
The installation is designed, tested and certified to BS 7671. The current amendment is A4:2026, published 15 April 2026, with the previous edition withdrawn on 15 October 2026. A4 introduces, for the first time, a dedicated chapter on stationary secondary batteries, which is Chapter 57 in Part 5. Until A4, home battery work was governed by BS 7671's general rules plus PAS 63100 and the IET Code of Practice.
We are not going to quote clause content from Chapter 57 on a public page, because the standard is copyright and we are not reproducing it. We will note one thing NICEIC has published that is worth knowing: there is no requirement in BS 7671 for an AFDD on a circuit supplying a battery storage system, whatever anyone tells you. More on Amendment 4.
The MCS installation standard for storage
MIS 3012, published 1 January 2025, is the battery installation standard, covering electrical energy storage systems up to 50kW in permanent buildings. It requires the installation to be designed and installed in accordance with the latest edition of the IET Code of Practice for Electrical Energy Storage Systems, now in its 3rd edition, and sets a precedence order: BS 7671 first, then MIS 3012, then the Code of Practice.
PAS 63100 is not directly referenced by MIS 3012 at all. It reaches it through the Code of Practice, and the word used there is "should" rather than "shall". Which is precisely why we have been careful on this page to tell you what is a requirement, what is a recommendation, and what is our own reading.
Grid connection: G99 through SSEN
Your distribution network operator in Aberdeen is SSEN, Scottish Hydro Electric Power Distribution. Battery storage almost always exceeds the 3.68kW per phase threshold for the simpler G98 notification, so it needs a G99 application approved before the system is energised, not notified afterwards. We submit it as part of the job. Not one Aberdeen competitor page names SSEN at all.
There is no Part P here, and no Building Control to notify
Part P is a section of the Building Regulations for England and Wales. Scotland has Building Standards, administered by the local council, and the mechanism is a building warrant rather than a notification. There is no Building Control body to notify here.
The warrant exemption in Schedule 3 of the Building (Scotland) Regulations 2004 is built around Type 1, work to or in a house. A flat is not a house, so the exemption is not available and a building warrant from Aberdeen City Council Building Standards should be assumed for work in a flat. The duty to obtain it sits with the owner ordering the work rather than the contractor. Across the fourteen competitor pages we examined, the words "building warrant" appeared zero times. Every apparent hit was the word warranty.
Aberdeen is Aberdeen City Council, a separate authority from Aberdeenshire with its own building standards team. Cults, Kingswells, Peterculter, Bieldside and Milltimber are Aberdeen City. Westhill, Ellon and Portlethen are Aberdeenshire.
Inside your own flat, your neighbours do not get a vote
A battery mounted inside your own flat, wired only within your own flat, touches no scheme property. Nothing in the Tenements (Scotland) Act 2004 gives your neighbours a say over what you fix to your own internal wall. That is a meaningful difference from roof solar in Aberdeen, where a common roof means unanimous consent from every affected owner.
The moment you touch common property, though, there is no statutory shortcut. Section 19 of the Act does give a flat owner a right to lead cable through, or fix equipment to, parts of the tenement, but only for services prescribed by Scottish Ministers, and the only regulations ever made under it are the Heating Services Regulations 2018, which prescribe exactly two things: heating from a district heat network, and communal heating. Electricity supply, renewables and battery storage are not prescribed. So you fall back on the title deeds, and failing that on the Tenement Management Scheme, which in practice means your neighbours' agreement.
Battery storage has no permitted development class
Scotland's householder microgeneration permitted development rights, set out in Planning Circular 1/2024, cover classes 6C through 6HC: heat pumps, wind turbines, solar panels, biomass and CHP flues. Battery storage is not mentioned anywhere and has no class of its own.
Which means an externally wall mounted battery on a tenement is not obviously permitted development and may well need planning permission. PAS 63100's own note to clause 6.5.2 says as much, that externally mounted equipment "could require planning consent". Add Aberdeen's central conservation areas on top and an external mount becomes a planning question, not just an engineering one. Inside your flat, none of this arises.
First call to commissioned battery.
Usually three to six weeks. In a flat, step two is the one that decides whether there is a job at all.
- 01
A conversation
House or flat, which floor, whether there is a garage or any private external wall, and roughly what you spend. Five minutes usually tells us whether a flat has a realistic location.
- 02
The siting survey
Every candidate location against clause 6.5.5, then the surviving ones against the three tests in 6.5.1: ventilation to outdoors with the 1 metre clearances, REI 30 separation, and the wall itself. We tell you the answer even when the answer is no.
- 03
Your meter data
A year of half hourly consumption from your supplier, free to request. It sizes the battery against your real usage rather than a round number.
- 04
Written design and fixed price
Location with the reasoning, unit with its published dimensions and weight, mounting method, any alarm or ventilation work, the consumer unit position, and the price. In writing.
- 05
Consents where they apply
Building warrant for a flat. Planning where anything is going on an external wall. Co owner agreement only where common property is touched, which for an internal installation is usually not at all.
- 06
G99 application to SSEN
Submitted and approved before installation is booked.
- 07
Install, certify, hand over
Testing and certification to BS 7671, the MCS certificate issued by Q-Smart under our partnership, monitoring set up, and charge windows configured to your tariff.
Fitted prices, with the VAT date right.
Most of this market gives no price at all. One of the few that does has the VAT end date wrong by a day, which tells you how carefully it was written.
Systems
| 10kWh battery, no solar required. Standalone, or added to an existing array. Wall or floor mounted in whichever compliant location the survey identifies. | £3,500 to £5,000 |
| 15kWh battery. Higher consumption households and heat pumps. Note the 20kWh per enclosure cap in clause 6.1.3 if you are thinking bigger. | £5,000 to £7,000 |
| 4kWp solar with a 10kWh battery. Both together where the roof is available to you. See the Aberdeen solar page for the roof ownership question first. | £10,000 to £12,000 |
| 5kWh to 10kWh retrofit to an existing solar array | £3,500 to £5,000 |
Options & Included
| Interlinked alarm upgrade to Grade D2 Category LD2 where clause 6.5.6 requires it | Quoted at survey |
| Ventilation provision where an indoor location needs a compliant fresh air port | Quoted at survey |
| EPS backup output for essential circuits during an outage, chargeable option | Quoted at survey |
| Consumer unit upgrade, where the existing board cannot take the new circuit | From £550 + VAT |
| G99 application to SSEN, we submit it | Included |
What Moves The Number
Overwhelmingly the location. A compliant utility room on an external wall with an existing route to outside is a straightforward job. The same flat with no compliant location and a proposed external mount becomes a fire stopping exercise, a planning question and a consent conversation before anybody unpacks a battery. After that: whether the board can take the circuit, whether the alarm system needs upgrading, the cable run length, and the capacity itself, which should come from your meter data rather than a round number.
Call 07304 027013The VAT position, precisely. Qualifying residential battery installations are zero rated, including standalone batteries with no solar, on hardware and labour as a single supply. That relief runs until 31 March 2027 and reverts to 5% on 1 April 2027. Not 1 April 2027 as the end date, as one competitor has it. There is no VAT to add to any battery figure above; the consumer unit line is separate electrical work and carries VAT normally.
On the savings claims you will read. One page in this market promises 30 to 50% off your bill and says you can "even achieve 100% off grid". Realistic battery only arbitrage on a Scottish time of use tariff, after round trip losses, is a few hundred pounds a year. The smaller number is the true one, and we would rather give you that.
Battery storage across Aberdeen City.
Flats and tenements through Rosemount, Ferryhill, Torry, the West End and the city centre, and houses out through Cults, Bieldside, Milltimber, Peterculter, Kingswells, Bridge of Don, Danestone, Dyce, Bucksburn, Kincorth and Cove Bay.
Solar Panels Aberdeen · Battery Storage Peterhead · Battery Storage Fraserburgh · Battery Storage Ellon · Solar PV & Battery Storage · EV Chargers Aberdeen · EICR Aberdeen · Electricians in Aberdeen · All Areas We Cover
The sibling pages go deeper on other angles: tariff shifting and what happens in a power cut, cold weather charge limits, and what a battery does to an existing Feed in Tariff. Our general guide covers whether battery storage is worth it in Scotland.
What Aberdeen flat owners ask us.
If yours is not here, phone and ask it. We would rather tell you your flat has nowhere compliant than sell you a battery for the loft. Call 07304 027013 or get in touch.
Can you install a home battery in a flat?
In principle yes. PAS 63100:2024 confirms at clause 3.1.6 that flats and maisonettes are in scope. In practice the siting rules remove most of the locations a flat has. Clause 6.5.5 prohibits bedrooms, cupboards opening into bedrooms, escape routes whether protected or not, lofts and voids absolutely, and basements with no outside access. In a mid or top floor tenement flat with no garage, that usually leaves a utility room or kitchen on an external wall as the only candidate, and it still has to pass three further tests. Sometimes the answer is one location and sometimes it is none.
Can a home battery go in a loft?
No. PAS 63100:2024 clause 6.5.5(g) prohibits installation in "voids, roof spaces or lofts", with no qualification and no exception in the text. It is one of nine locations the specification rules out outright. This matters particularly for top floor flat owners, because a loft is the first thing people suggest when they have run out of wall.
Where can a home battery not be installed?
PAS 63100:2024 clause 6.5.5 lists nine locations. Rooms in which persons are intended to sleep. Routes used as a means of escape that are not protected escape routes, including landings, staircases and corridors. Corridors, shafts, stairs or lobbies of protected escape routes. Firefighting lobbies, shafts or staircases. Storage cupboards or spaces opening into rooms in which persons are intended to sleep. Outdoors within 1 metre of escape routes, doors, windows or ventilation ports. Voids, roof spaces or lofts. Within 2 metres of stored flammable materials or fuel storage. And cellars or basements with no access to the outside of the building.
Can a battery go in a cupboard off a bedroom?
No, and this one catches people out. Clause 6.5.5(e) prohibits "storage cupboards, enclosures or spaces opening into rooms in which persons are intended to sleep". The cupboard does not have to be a bedroom itself. If its door opens into a bedroom, it is excluded. In a two bedroom tenement flat that removes most of the usable hall presses at a stroke.
Can a battery go in the common close of a tenement?
No. PAS 63100 does not name the close specifically, so this is the two documents read together. Clause 6.5.5(c) prohibits "corridors, shafts, stairs or lobbies of protected escape routes", and the Scottish Building Standards Technical Handbook at section 2.9 treats a tenement common stair as a protected zone. Even if it were not protected, clause 6.5.5(b) catches it as a landing, staircase or corridor used as a means of escape. Both routes reach the same answer, which is unfortunate given the close is often the only spare wall in the building.
Do I need my neighbours' permission for a battery in a tenement flat?
Not for a battery inside your own flat wired only within your own flat, because it touches no common property. That is a real difference from roof solar, where a common roof requires unanimous consent. The moment cabling passes through common property or anything is fixed to a common wall, you need agreement, and there is no statutory shortcut: section 19 of the Tenements (Scotland) Act 2004 only applies to services prescribed by Ministers, and the only regulations made prescribe district heat network heating and communal heating. Electricity and battery storage are not prescribed.
Does a home battery need planning permission in Scotland?
Inside your own flat or house, no. Externally is a different matter. Scotland's householder permitted development rights for microgeneration, in Planning Circular 1/2024, cover classes 6C through 6HC: heat pumps, wind turbines, solar panels, biomass and CHP flues. Battery storage is not mentioned and has no permitted development class of its own. So an externally wall mounted battery is not obviously permitted development and may need planning permission, which PAS 63100's own note to clause 6.5.2 also flags. Aberdeen's conservation areas add a further layer.
Do I need a building warrant for a battery in an Aberdeen flat?
Assume yes. The warrant exemption in Schedule 3 of the Building (Scotland) Regulations 2004 is built around Type 1, work to or in a house. A flat is not a house, so the exemption is not available to you and a building warrant from Aberdeen City Council Building Standards should be expected. The duty to obtain it sits with the owner ordering the work, not the contractor. Note that Part P and Building Control do not exist in Scotland at all.
Is PAS 63100 a legal requirement?
No. Its own foreword says "This PAS is not to be regarded as a British Standard" and "Compliance with a PAS cannot confer immunity from legal obligations", and MCS has stated that it "has no current standing in any UK regulations". It is the BSI specification, sponsored by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and published in March 2024, that the industry and, more importantly, insurers and warranty providers treat as the fire safety benchmark. It reaches the MCS battery installation standard indirectly through the IET Code of Practice.
How big a battery can I have at home?
PAS 63100 clause 6.1.3 caps stored energy at 20 kWh within a single enclosure. Clause 6.5.7 then caps the total per dwelling at 80 kWh where the batteries are in a detached garage or outbuilding, outdoors, or an attached garage with at least REI 60 fire separation, and at 40 kWh in all other cases. For a flat the applicable figure is 40 kWh, which is far above any realistic domestic install, so the binding constraints in practice are the 20 kWh per enclosure limit and the siting rules.
How much does a home battery weigh, and will my wall take it?
The units we fit run from around 39 to 62 kilograms on a bracket less than half a metre wide, which is a concentrated point load. The MCS battery installation standard requires components to be mounted on surfaces that are structurally sound and can support the weight, with both point loading and weight distribution taken into account, and says that if there is any doubt whatsoever a qualified structural engineer shall be consulted. Wall mounting must comply with BS EN 62109-1. In our judgement, and no published guidance covers Scottish tenement construction specifically, lath and plaster on timber studs is not a mounting substrate for this. Granite is sound with the correct anchors. Where the wall is doubtful we floor mount.
Do I need a smoke alarm near a home battery?
Where the battery is somewhere infrequently visited such as a store cupboard, yes. PAS 63100 clause 6.5.6 requires a smoke detector or multi sensor fire detector in that location, interlinked with the fire detection and alarm system in the rest of the dwelling, conforming to BS 5839-6. The specification's note puts the recommended system at Grade D2, Category LD2 as a minimum, and acknowledges that in existing premises this may mean a new system or an upgrade to an existing one. We price that in rather than discovering it on the day.
Tell us which floor you are on.
Call Steven directly on 07304 027013 or use the form. Tell us whether it is a house or a flat, which floor, and whether there is a garage or any private external wall. In a flat that is usually enough for us to say on the phone whether there is a realistic location, before anybody books a survey. NICEIC Approved Contractor, enrolment 620239. OZEV Authorised Installer. City and Guilds Level 3 Award in the Design, Installation and Commissioning of Small Electrical Energy Storage Systems, plus 2391-52 inspection and testing and an HNC in Engineering Systems. Every installation fully MCS registered through our Q-Smart partnership. £2M public liability insured.
Request a Free Siting Survey
Faithful Spark Electricians · 17 Thomson Road, Peterhead, AB42 3FJ · 07304 027013 · Company registration SC821026 · NICEIC Approved Contractor, enrolment 620239 · OZEV Authorised Installer, EVHS/WCS14254 · SELECT Member · MCS registered through our Q-Smart partnership · BS 7671 18th Edition · 0% VAT on qualifying residential battery installations until 31 March 2027 · £2M public liability insured