Homes
Independent advice on solar, battery storage, EV charging and heat pumps for homeowners in Grantham, Lincolnshire and the surrounding counties.
Eco Connect Services is an independent renewable energy consultancy based in Grantham. We do not install anything, we do not sell equipment, and we do not hold or claim any installer accreditation. Everything on this site is written to be useful to you whether or not you ever contact us.
We look at your property, how your household actually uses energy, and what you are trying to achieve, and we tell you what is worth pursuing and in what order. Where work is appropriate, it is carried out by a vetted delivery partner, and the final technical advice and the quotation come from them.
Most of what a homeowner needs at the start is already written down below. Read it. If it answers your question and you decide to do nothing, that is a perfectly good outcome and it costs you nothing.
Every rule, threshold and scheme named on this site is linked to the government or regulator source it came from, with the date we checked it. Where we could not verify something, we say that instead of guessing.
There is no correct order to think about this in, and there is no single first product. What there usually is, is one question that is actually bothering you. Find it below and start there. The four groups underneath cover solar, battery storage, EV charging and heat pumps, and each guide is written to be read on its own.
If you do not know which group you are in, that is itself a useful answer, and the section at the bottom of this page is for you.
Seven guides, ordered so that the ones people usually need first come first. None of them is trying to sell you a system.
If you would rather start with what the technology is and where it fits, the solar overview is here: /solutions/solar-pv/
A battery is usually the second decision, not the first, and it is the one where the sales case and the useful case diverge most. Five guides.
The battery storage overview is here: /solutions/battery-storage/
Two guides. The first is the question almost everyone asks, and the answer is more qualified than the question expects. The second is the one that decides whether it can be done at your property at all.
This is the newest part of the knowledge hub and the one where we take the most obviously inconvenient position: a heat pump is often not the first thing a property needs. Fabric, insulation and the existing heating system usually come first, and the grant does not ask that question.
What actually decides suitability, what the Boiler Upgrade Scheme does and does not require, and where to check each rule yourself.
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Oil and LPG heated properties get £9,000 rather than £7,500 towards a heat pump, and it ends on 31 March 2027. One condition catches people out.
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Orientation, running costs, comparison with a gas boiler, and where the grant sits.
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If none of the four groups above is obviously yours, the honest answer is that you probably have a property question rather than a product question, and those are worth an hour of conversation before anything else.
A consultation is a structured conversation about your property, your energy use and what you are actually trying to fix. It does not commit you to anything, and a recommendation to do nothing yet is a legitimate result of it. We do not install, so there is no system at the end of it that we benefit from you buying.
The useful part of independent advice is the part that costs someone a sale. Some of the things we would say to a homeowner before anything else:
Almost every disappointing installation we hear about started with a decision to buy a thing rather than a decision to solve a problem. Work out what you are trying to fix first, because it changes the answer.
Size it to what your household actually uses and when it uses it. A large array over a house that is empty all day exports most of what it makes, and export is worth considerably less than the electricity you avoid buying.
A quotation that expires tonight is a sales technique, not a price. Anything genuinely worth doing is still worth doing next week, and nothing on this site will ever ask you to decide on the day.
If a property loses heat quickly, a new heating system inherits that problem. That applies to heat pumps most of all, and it is why our heat pump guide starts with the building rather than the machine.
A payback number is only meaningful against a specific property, a specific pattern of use, a specific tariff and a specific date. We do not publish averages and call them estimates, and neither should anyone quoting you.
Information correct as of: 19 August 2026.
Grant schemes, planning rules and connection requirements change. Every rule and scheme named in our guides is dated and linked to the government or regulator source it was taken from. Check the source before you rely on it.
Eco Connect is an independent advisory business. It does not carry out installations, holds no installer accreditation, and nothing on this page is planning, legal or tax advice.
Start with a free renewable consultation. We will listen to what you want to achieve, ask a few practical questions and help identify the most useful next step.
