Salary-sacrifice solar, batteries and EV chargers for your team.
Perx is the salary-sacrifice module inside Orbis IO, built on the Heva platform. Same installer network, same HMRC tax treatment — delivered alongside Orbis's fleet intelligence offering so businesses can run salary sacrifice for cars, chargers, batteries and solar through one employer relationship. Operated by our parent company Covase Ltd, a BVRLA-member fleet & leasing broker established in 2003.
As covered this week in The Express, MSN, Solar Power Portal, Birmingham Live, Transport + Energy and FemaleFirst — Read our take →
What Perx delivers to the employer
No employer cost
The scheme is gross-deducted from employee salaries. No setup fee, no per-employee licence, no committed budget on the employer side.
≈£2,500 NI saving, per participating employee, per year
Employer Class 1 secondary National Insurance at 13.8% is removed from the sacrificed slice of pay. Saving averages out at around £2,500 per participating employee, per year, across a typical participation mix.
No installer admin
Heva's partner network handles quoting, scheduling, grid permissions and commissioning end-to-end. Typical install window: two weeks from employee acceptance.
One employer relationship
Existing Orbis fleet intelligence customers run cars, chargers, batteries and solar through the same payroll integration — rather than four separate vendor relationships across four payroll lines.
What it looks like in practice
Three live examples from the Heva scheme this week. Salary sacrifice removes income tax and National Insurance from the slice of pay used to fund the equipment, which is why net monthly costs sit well below retail.
A home battery, installed in a rented property. Moves with the employee if they change address.
A 15kWh battery that stores cheap overnight electricity and releases it during peak hours.
The full stack — solar panels, battery and EV charge point — through one payroll line.
Worked examples from The Express, May 2026. Net costs are after income tax and NI savings; actual figures depend on individual tax position.
For the technical detail on home chargers in salary sacrifice — what HMRC says, what's included, what it costs — see our salary sacrifice home charger guide.
Who's already on it
NHS and the National Lottery Community Fund have signed up as Heva employers. Demand tripled in the month before the May 2026 press coverage.
Ryan Griffin, 29, MD of OVAGLAS Group (Yorkshire). Tried the scheme on his own house first — a Tesla Powerwall 3 and 6kW solar array, retail £17,000, net £8,700. Then opened it to his 20 staff. More than half signed up.
James Green, 36, sales manager at Forktruck Solutions (Crewe). 9.4kW solar plus Powerwall 3. £7,300 saved in tax, electricity bill down from £2,000 to £800 a year, and crucially kept under the £100,000 adjusted-net-income threshold — retaining £6,000/year in childcare support that would otherwise have been lost.
UK businesses with 20–500 employees.
Existing salary-sacrifice-for-cars schemes welcome — Perx is additive, not a replacement. You'll know it's right for you if any of these apply:
- Your CFO has been asking about the £2,500-per-employee NI saving the press are quoting.
- You already run EV salary sacrifice and want to expand the bundle to home energy without changing your existing fleet provider.
- Staff have started asking about the Heva press coverage and you need a coherent answer.
From first call to first install, in ~6 weeks.
15-minute call
We walk through your headcount, current benefits stack, and any existing salary-sacrifice provider.
Costed plan
We model the participation curve and the NI saving at your headcount — returned as a one-page plan.
Launch
Payroll integration, employee portal, first installs typically within 4–6 weeks of go-ahead.
Operator questions
What's the minimum headcount to launch Perx for our team?
There's no hard minimum, but Perx is most economical at 20+ employees because the employer NI saving scales linearly with participating headcount. At smaller scale the scheme still works — the employee tax-and-NI saving is independent of employer size — but the per-launch fixed effort (payroll integration, employee comms, portal setup) is roughly the same whether you're onboarding 5 employees or 200. Most launches we run sit between 30 and 250 participating employees.
Can we run Perx alongside an existing EV salary-sacrifice provider?
Yes. Perx is intentionally additive. If you already have a company-car salary-sacrifice arrangement running with another provider, leave it where it is — Perx covers the home-energy components (solar, battery, EV charger) as a separate line in the same payroll. The two schemes coexist on a single payslip; employees can take one, the other, or both. We deliberately don't compete with incumbent EV-only schemes; expanding the bundle is the faster route for most employers.
What happens to the agreement if an employee leaves the company mid-contract?
Three standard options, agreed upfront with the employee at sign-up: transfer the sacrifice agreement to their new employer if the new employer operates a compatible scheme; settle the residual balance personally and keep the equipment (or, for batteries and EV chargers, take them to a new address); or return the equipment for a pro-rata settlement. The choice is the employee's. Employer exposure is limited to the months of sacrifice already taken — no balloon liability sits with the employer.
How long does payroll integration take?
Typically 2–3 weeks of elapsed time, with a couple of hours of involvement from your payroll team. Perx integrates with the major UK payroll platforms via standard salary-sacrifice deduction lines — the technical work is on our side. We deliver the deduction file each pay run; your payroll team reviews and posts it. Once the integration is live for one component (cars, charger, battery, solar) adding the others adds zero further integration cost.
Who owns the installed equipment — employer, employee, or finance partner?
The finance partner — typically Covase or a partnered funder — owns the equipment for the duration of the salary-sacrifice contract. The employer never holds title to the equipment, which keeps it off the employer's balance sheet and avoids any depreciation or asset-disposal liability. At contract end the employee usually has a settlement-and-keep option, which is the most common outcome for solar and battery components.
What does Perx cost the employer per launch?
Nothing direct. There is no setup fee, no per-employee licence, and no minimum spend. The employer-side cost is the internal effort to introduce the scheme to staff and run the payroll deduction file — typically a few hours per month of HR/payroll time once the launch is complete. The employer NI saving covers any internal admin cost from the first participating employee.
Start with a 15-minute call.
Most Perx launches start with a 15-minute call. No agenda, no sales sequence — we'll talk through whether the participation mix at your headcount actually delivers the NI saving the press are quoting.
Operated by Covase Ltd · BVRLA member #2181 · Established 2003
Book a call →Not the decision-maker? Send this page to your employer.
A lot of the visits to this page are from employees who'd like their employer to offer Perx. We've drafted an introduction email you can edit and send to your HR, payroll or finance lead.
Email my employer about Perx →Or if you'd rather speak to us directly: hello@orbisio.co.uk · 0345 369 7105
Perx is provided by Covase Ltd, powered by Heva Energy. Tax savings are indicative and depend on individual circumstances. Vehicle and energy product availability subject to eligibility.