Solo Energy Solutions and EPC Upgrade Group: One Customer Journey Across Two Websites
How a bespoke WordPress build for a Southampton MCS installer grew into two linked sites, an EPC assessment front door and a solar, battery and EV upgrade business behind it, and what we are honest about while the newer site finds its feet.
The Challenge
Solo Energy Solutions is the renewable energy brand of Solo Electrical (South) Ltd, an MCS-certified and OZEV-approved installer based in Hedge End, Southampton, working across Hampshire and the South of England. It installs solar PV, battery storage and EV charging, and offers EPC and retrofit assessments.
The site launched in 2026 on a new domain with no history: no links, no content, no rankings. The keyword research set the shape of it. Grants and funding searches (“grants for solar panels”, “solar panel grants UK”) were the largest single gap, “ev charger installs” was the highest-volume term in the whole set, and the EPC and “domestic energy assessor” cluster was large and under-served. The build had to be a service-first site that could win those clusters from nothing, and the client’s marketing manager, Anthony, needed to be able to run it himself after handover.
Then the business changed shape. Energy assessments need an accreditation that Solo Electrical does not hold. Rather than claim one it did not have, the client set up a second company, EPC Upgrade Group Ltd, as the ECMK-accredited assessment business, with its own site at epcupgradegroup.co.uk: a deliberately lean, one-page site built to convert from its Google Business Profile, with EPCs from £83 and online booking. EPC Upgrade Group is the front door; Solo Energy Solutions is where the solar, battery and EV upgrades happen.
That created two problems worth solving properly. First, how to describe the relationship so that every page is accurate: Solo could not say it was ECMK-accredited, and EPC Upgrade Group should not pretend to be an installer. Second, how to give a brand-new one-page site a chance of being found when one-page sites, in our experience, struggle to rank.
The Solution
The Solo site: built to be the answer. soloenergysolutions.co.uk runs on a bespoke theme with scaffold-managed content, so every page’s copy, FAQs and SEO meta live in version control and are pushed to the site in one step. Every service page carries the CITATE fields: a liftable opening answer, definitions, sourced stats, named entities and a claim, with FAQ accordions that also emit FAQPage structured data. Forty-one FAQ sets, 123 questions and answers, across the site.
Grants and funding, without the overselling. The biggest search gap was also the one most polluted by “free solar panels” promises. The grants hub and its three guides (ECO4, the Smart Export Guarantee, and “is there really a grant for solar panels?”) give the sourced answer: no single grant, but a stack of schemes most households qualify for part of, with every figure linked to gov.uk, Ofgem or HMRC and a note on what changes at fiscal-year boundaries. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme is left out on purpose, because Solo does not install heat pumps.
EPC and retrofit, with the partner named. The retrofit assessment got its own page rather than being folded into the EPC page, because the two are different services with different searches. Both pages show the accreditation badges with a one-line disclosure beneath them, approved by the client, naming EPC Upgrade Group as the ECMK-accredited assessment partner. The same line appears under the homepage accreditation carousel whenever those logos show, so the claim is never made unqualified.
The two sites at a glance
One journey: assessment then upgrade
123 questions and answers with FAQPage schema
Calculators / Review Engine / Booking
EPC Upgrade Group by design
Tools the client runs. A roof-tracing solar savings calculator with a lead-capture gate; a Google reviews engine that stores reviews in its own table and tags them by service; a site search that type-aheads across pages, guides, FAQs and case studies and deep-links to the matching answer; a FAQ editor and CITATE meta boxes in wp-admin; and a conversion of scaffolded pages to native blocks so Anthony edits in the normal editor without a “convert to blocks” step.
The EPC Upgrade Group site: lean on purpose. One page, light-first, EPC from £83 above the fold, the three “what is” questions as visible sections rather than hidden in an accordion, a sticky call and book bar on mobile, and the accreditation shown beneath the hero. A small self-hosted booking plugin replaced the early Calendly link so bookings stay on the client’s own site. LocalBusiness, two Service nodes and FAQPage structured data describe the business, its areas and its price.
Linking the two. EPC Upgrade Group links to Solo for upgrades. Solo names EPC Upgrade Group on every assessment page and links to it from the partner disclosure. This case study and the content around it exist partly to give the newer site the context a one-page site cannot build for itself: who it is, who stands behind it, and why the two companies exist.
What Made This Different
Four things make this engagement different.
We built the disclosure before the badge. The ECMK accreditation is held by EPC Upgrade Group Ltd, not by Solo Electrical (South) Ltd. The easy thing was to put the logo on the Solo site. The right thing was a one-line disclosure under it, approved by the client, naming the partner and its company number, and shown anywhere the logo appears. Trust signals only work when they are true.
The honest answer wins the search. The grants cluster is full of “free solar panels” promises. Solo’s grants pages say there is no single grant and then explain the stack that does exist, with sources. That is the version of the answer an AI assistant can quote without being wrong, which is the point of the CITATE framework.
A one-page site is a choice with a cost, and we name the cost. EPC Upgrade Group was built lean on purpose, to convert from Google Business Profile and stay cheap until assessment volume justifies more. The trade is visibility in organic search. Our local SEO and WordPress work on it is about closing that gap without turning a one-page site into a thin twenty-page one: sitemap and Search Console, structured data, a single set of business details everywhere, and context built around it from sites that already have standing, including this one.
The client runs it. Scaffolded content, a FAQ editor, CITATE meta boxes, a logos and badges screen and a native-blocks editor exist so that Anthony can publish and correct without a developer. A site the client cannot operate is a liability dressed as a deliverable.
The Results
The site performs, and we re-tested it. Google PageSpeed Insights on the Solo homepage, 4 October 2026: mobile 91 (performance), 100 (accessibility), 100 (best practices), 100 (SEO); desktop 98, 100, 100, 100; Lighthouse Agentic Browsing 2 of 2. Those are the numbers after an October audit pass that found, in our own build, four things worth owning: the header was showing the starter theme’s placeholder logo because Customizer settings reset on every release (each version had been uploaded under a new folder name, and WordPress keys those settings to the folder); a Customizer background image stored as an http address, 328 KB, loading on every page; speakable and address fields in the structured data that did not match the page; and review dates below the contrast threshold. All four are fixed in the theme rather than by hand, so they cannot come back. An audit that only finds other people’s mistakes is not much of an audit.
Enquiries are the kind the build was designed for. Recent website enquiries include a landlord with a block of seven flats in Southampton asking for a communal, networked 7kW charger quoted to make use of the OZEV landlord grants; a holiday-property owner in the New Forest asking for a pay-per-use charger; and a homeowner with an existing 3.97kW solar array asking about battery storage. Those are commercial EV, OZEV grant and battery enquiries, three of the four clusters the research said to go after. The client has described them as good enquiries; we do not quote numbers until there are enough to mean something.
EPC Upgrade Group: early days, and we say so. The one-page site is live, with a sitemap and complete structured data. It is not yet ranking for its target searches. In our experience one-page sites struggle to rank, because there is only one page to match any search against and very little for Google to build context from. We would rather state that than hide it. The response is the one described in this case study: build the context around it, link it from a site that already has standing, and fix the small things that quietly hold a one-page site back.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who are Solo Energy Solutions and EPC Upgrade Group?
Solo Energy Solutions is the renewable energy brand of Solo Electrical (South) Ltd, an MCS-certified and OZEV-approved installer in Hedge End, Southampton. EPC Upgrade Group Ltd is a separate company set up by the same client as the ECMK-accredited assessment business. EPC Upgrade Group carries out EPC and retrofit assessments; Solo Energy Solutions carries out the solar, battery and EV upgrades that follow.
Why two websites rather than one?
Because the two businesses are different legal entities doing different jobs, and because an EPC customer is at the start of a journey while a solar customer is further along. EPC Upgrade Group is a lean one-page site built to convert from Google Business Profile with EPCs from £83. Solo Energy Solutions is the full site for upgrades. Each links to the other and both describe the relationship the same way.
Is Solo Energy Solutions ECMK-accredited?
No, and the Solo site says so. EPC and retrofit assessments are carried out by EPC Upgrade Group Ltd, the ECMK-accredited assessment partner, and that disclosure appears beneath the accreditation badges wherever they are shown on the Solo site.
Why is EPC Upgrade Group not ranking yet?
It is a new, one-page site. In our experience one-page sites struggle to rank because there is only one page to match any search against and little for Google to build context from. The site is live with a sitemap and complete structured data; the work now is building context around it, including from this case study, and fixing the small settings that hold a one-page site back.
What was built for the client to use themselves?
Scaffold-managed content pushed from version control, a FAQ editor, CITATE meta boxes for the opening answer, definitions, stats, entities and claim, a logos and badges screen, a native-blocks conversion so pages edit normally, site search, a roof-tracing solar calculator with lead capture, a Google reviews engine, and a self-hosted booking plugin on the EPC Upgrade Group site.
What results can you show?
PageSpeed Insights scores of 97, 94, 100 and 100 on the Solo site; 123 questions and answers across 41 FAQ sets with FAQPage schema; and website enquiries of the type the research prioritised, including commercial EV charging with OZEV grants and battery storage for an existing solar array. We do not publish traffic, ranking or revenue figures for either site, and we label EPC Upgrade Group’s rankings as early days.
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