Your Guide to Installing Solar Panels on Your Spanish Home

With energy prices continuing to rise, many Spanish property owners are looking for new ways to reduce their expenses. One option that can help to lower the cost of your energy bills is to install solar panels on your Spanish home. Not only is solar power a renewable source of energy, it is also considerably less expensive than traditional energy in Spain right now: The price of electricity in Spain’s wholesale market was set at €544.98 per megawatt hour for Tuesday March 8th 2022, an all-time record for Spain’s energy sector. And it is thought these figures are only going to increase. With that in mind, here’s everything you need to know about installing solar panels on your Spanish home:

Will I Be Taxed for Installing Solar Panels?

Between 2013 and 2019, Spain was well-known for its controversial policy of ‘taxing the sun’. This is because in 2013 the then-ruling Popular Party introduced legislation that said any individual or company that hooked their solar panels up to the national grid must be metered and taxed for this. Failure to do so would result in significant fines. This law was widely condemned, and meant that many Spanish home owners were deterred from this kind of green energy usage.

Luckily, this controversial solar tax law was abolished in 2019, making installing solar panels and being self-sufficient easier, and more appealing, than ever before.

How Much Will It Cost to Install Solar Panels?

The cost of purchasing solar panels has dropped considerably in the last decade. Now, you can expect to pay between 50 and 70 percent less than you would have ten years ago. Prices continue to fall, and remain incredibly competitive. To give you an idea of the costs involved, you can expect to pay between 260 euros and 441 euros per solar panel that is installed on your home, depending on the brand you choose. Here are some examples:

• Sunpower SPR-X21-345: €441
• Panasonic VBHN325SJ47: €275
• Aleo X59: €350
• QCells Q.Peak-G4.1 305: €260
• REC 280TP: €379

How much these panels will cost to install, how many you will need, and whether you need any additional building work to enable these to be added to your home with all depend on the size and structure of your property. This makes it impossible to ascertain what the project will cost, but according to Spanish website Cronoshare, the total price paid for solar panel installation in single-family homes in Spain ranged from €2,000 to €10,000.

Remember, when calculating the costs involved in your own build, that the price of the panals is only a small part of your overall installation costs. You will also need to consider labout costs, wiring, and meter installation. Don’t be deterred though: some regions will offer home owners grants of up to 60% of your installation in order to promote green energy usage. Visit your local town hall to find out if any of these grants are available in your region.

Connecting to the National Grid

Pre-2019, all solar panels were required to be connected to the national grid, but now that obligation has been removed. Despite this, the majority of solar panels are connected to the national grid. There are many advantages to this: the main ones are that you get money back if your solar panels produce excess electricity and if they don’t produce enough energy to power your home you can use power from the grid as a back-up plan. Without this grid support, you will need to have a robust, independent, energy storage system in place.

What Subsidies Are Available for My Installation?

If you install solar panels in your first or second home that are meant for individual consumption then you may be eligible for a 20 percent tax deduction on your installation costs. If you can prove that your installation has an energy efficiency improvement in a residential area then this deduction could be increased to as much as 60 percent.

Encouraging renewable energy usage is a key focus for many regions. For this reason, before you begin your installation, you should check your autonomous community’s website to find out if there are other subsidies you can benefit from. A key example of this is in Madrid, where local authorities are offering to cover 30 percent of the cost of solar panel installations of up to €15,000. Similar schemes are in place in both Barcelona and Seville where the city halls are giving 50 percent IBI deductions for homeowners who install solar panels.

How Many Solar Panels Will I Need?

The number of solar panels you will need for your Spanish property depends on the size of your property. If you have an average-size single-family home when it is suggested that, in order for your property to be self-sufficient, you should install at least three solar panels. Factors that could impact that number are:

• Your average energy consumption (higher level consumers may need additional panels)
• The amount of roof space you have available, and the orientation of you building
• The configuration of your building and your existing wiring.
• Any agreement you already have in place with your electricity company

Please note that if you don’t have a suitable roof space, you can still have solar panels! Some homeowners are adding panels to their gardens, and are even teaming up with their neighbours to have them installed in shared green spaces.

How Much Money Could I Save?

There are many green benefits to installing solar panels, but in the current financial climate, one of the main reasons that home owners are thinking of installing solar panels is to save money. So, how much money could you save?

A 2022 study by solar panel company Solarwatt found that a family of four living in a 120sqm property in Spain would save an average of around €8,420 in electricity costs over the course of five years, if they installed solar panels. In most cases, this means that the installation cost would be repaired in less than five years.

To find out more about what it’s really like to live on the Costa del Sol, or for expert advice and support on making the move, why not get in touch with our property specialists today? We love to help people just like you find the Spanish property of their dreams.