Solar PPA for plastics & rubber processing

2026 indicative PPA profile

Typical system size	300-800kWp
Year-1 tariff	11-14 p/kWh
Year-1 saving	£50k-£140k
Parent sector	Factories & Manufacturing

Moulding and extrusion run on electricity you can generate

Plastics and rubber processing is, at its core, an electrically-driven business. Injection-moulding machines cycle their heater bands and clamping continuously; extruders hold barrel temperatures for entire shifts; and the process chillers work constantly to reject the heat that moulding puts back in. The upshot is a dense, machine-hours-led daytime demand with little of the seasonal swing seen elsewhere in manufacturing — a load a rooftop array can offset hour for hour while the plant is running.

Where a PPA and a heat-pump retrofit stack together

This is one of the clearest process-electrification candidates in the factory portfolio, and it is where a power purchase agreement combined with a heat-pump retrofit gives the biggest single impact. As gas-fired drying and space heating are swapped for heat pumps, on-site electrical demand climbs — and cheap self-generated solar is exactly what keeps that switch economic. Every additional kilowatt-hour the heat pumps draw becomes one more the array can supply at PPA rates rather than grid rates, so the two investments reinforce each other instead of competing.

Sizing, tariff and the roof

Typical systems sit in the 300 to 800 kWp range across the long single-span roofs common to moulding and extrusion halls, with PPA tariffs of 11 to 14 p/kWh and annual savings of £50,000 to £140,000. Two sensible next steps before committing: run your own figures through the solar savings calculator, and read how the PPA mechanism actually works so the split between generation, self-consumption and any export is clear before you begin shortlisting PPA providers.