Quick answer: The UK Home Energy Cost Index is Green Reach Energy’s modelled snapshot of what eight home-energy upgrades cost in July 2026 — from £600 for infrared heating panels to £11,014 for a heat pump — with typical ranges, estimated annual savings and regional price differences for all 12 UK regions.
Every figure here is a modelled estimate, not a quote. We build each number from national installed-price baselines and a regional labour index, then sense-check running costs against the Ofgem price cap (26.11p/kWh electricity, 7.33p/kWh gas for July–September 2026). The full method — including what the model cannot tell you — is documented on our how we calculate costs page. We publish it because most cost guides never say where their numbers come from.
Headline figures: July 2026
The table below summarises the whole index. Savings are hedged deliberately — a household “could save up to” these amounts in the right conditions, and simple payback is just the modelled cost divided by the modelled saving.
| Upgrade | Modelled average cost | Typical range | Could save up to (per year) | Modelled simple payback |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Heat pumps | £11,014 | £7,159–£17,072 | £452 | 24 years (about 8 with the £7,500 BUS grant) |
| Solar panels | £6,496 | £4,222–£10,069 | £577 | 11 years |
| Double glazing | £5,530 | £3,594–£8,572 | £279 | 20 years |
| Conservatory roof replacement | £5,501 | £3,576–£8,527 | £351 | 16 years |
| New boiler | £2,804 | £1,823–£4,346 | £321 | 9 years |
| Insulation | £1,498 | £974–£2,322 | £381 | 4 years |
| Home EV charger | £754 | £490–£1,169 | £803 (vs petrol) | around 1 year |
| Infrared heating panels | £600 | £390–£930 | £250 | 2 years |
Two patterns hold across every product we model: London installations average around 20% above the national figure while Northern Ireland sits about 8% below, and labour — not hardware — drives most of that gap. You can test any combination of upgrades against your own home with our savings calculator.
Browse the index
- Solar panel statistics — installed costs, regional prices, SEG export rates and payback
- Heat pump statistics — costs before and after the £7,500 Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant
- Boiler statistics — replacement costs and what changed after ECO4 closed
- Insulation statistics — a low-cost upgrade with one of the fastest paybacks in the index
- Double glazing statistics — whole-home window costs across 12 regions
- Home EV charger statistics — the only upgrade with a modelled payback under a year
- Infrared heating statistics — the smallest ticket item we track
- Conservatory roof statistics — replacement costs and modelled savings
- UK energy grant statistics — verified BUS, Warm Homes and VAT figures plus DESNZ and MCS uptake data
A note on honesty
We are an information site, and this index is desk research: modelled averages, clearly labelled, refreshed when the price cap changes. It is not a survey of real installations, and we have no installer billing data behind it. Where we quote official statistics — Ofgem rates, Boiler Upgrade Scheme amounts, DESNZ and MCS uptake numbers — we link the source and date it. If a number on this site has no source next to it, it is our model, and it says so.
How to use the index well: treat the mid-point as a sanity check on quotes rather than a target price, expect your own quotes to land anywhere inside the typical range, and read the regional column as a labour-cost signal, not a promise. Each product page above repeats its figures with fuller context, and every one links back to the methodology so you can judge how much weight the numbers deserve.
Download the dataset
The full Cost Index — 9 upgrades × 12 UK regions, July 2026 — as CSV: gre-cost-index.csv. Free to reuse with attribution (CC BY 4.0) — please credit Green Reach Energy and link the methodology. Figures are modelled estimates, not quotes.