Installations for residential self-consumption

The best maintenance that your solar installation can have is to have a good monitoring system that allows you to know that your solar installation is producing correctly at all times.

The only maintenance task that may be advisable is to try to clean the solar panels from time to time (mud and bird deposits). In any case, only clean the panels if access is sufficiently secure.

Generally, rainwater already cleans the panels since a 5° inclination of the panels is more than enough for the water to remove dirt from the solar modules. Residential installations typically have between 10° and 15°.

Rather than paying in advance for a maintenance service that will eat up part of the annual savings, we recommend keeping a good track of production and, if necessary, hiring our after-sales service.

We are currently preparing a premium monitoring solution that will allow us to carefully monitor production and set a few alarms that will alert us of any anomaly.

Current regulations require solar installations to stop working when they do not detect mains voltage for safety reasons.

Imagine that the electricity company wants to carry out maintenance work on the distribution network and cuts off the power supply to the entire street. If the solar installations were to continue to operate, they could cause electricity to flow back into the grid, which would endanger the workers who are working.

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There are backup solutions that allow the solar installation to continue working in case the power goes out to the house; However, these solutions involve installing a battery and permanently having a certain amount of energy available in the battery in case the backup system must operate.

These systems ensure an effective disconnection from the electrical grid, so the solar installation begins to function as an isolated system that cannot send energy to the grid.

In any case, this is problematic because the batteries have a high cost and if it also turns out that you can only use 50% because the other 50% must be saved in case the backup system has to start working, then the battery is even more expensive.

Therefore, our recommendation is not to consider backup systems if you do not have problems with frequent power outages.

If your doubt is between installing 10 or 12 panels at home, we will always recommend installing 12 panels and not precisely because we make a living installing 2 more panels.

The fact is that the marginal cost of adding 2 more panels now is minimal compared to the cost of adding 2 panels once the installation has been completed and legalized, since then we will have to move again, disconnect the roof wiring and reconnect it with the two additional panels, modify the project, carry out a new legalization, etc.

We are increasingly moving towards an electrification of demand with the arrival of the electric vehicle, aerothermal energy, etc... and therefore it is logical to think that in the future your electrical consumption will increase.

We recommend installing two more panels.

With the appropriate drill bit, the tile is drilled in its highest part until you reach the structural part of the roof below, whether it is made of mesh or concrete. It is in this structural part under the tiles where the screws that support the aluminum structure and the solar panels are attached. The tiles are therefore only pierced by the fastening screws that have a flat rubber gasket that is tightened with a female over the hole, giving it the tightness that will obviously prevent possible leaks.

Furthermore, since all the holes are below the modules, which act as a roof, and water never runs through the highest part of the tiles, they will not even get wet.

If your installation is up to 15 kW, in most cases you will not have to ask Endesa for connection permission.

However, if your facility is not located on urbanized land and has the basic facilities and services required by urban planning regulations, it will be necessary to request a connection study from the distribution company in the area, which has a cost of €100 + VAT

Furthermore, in these cases, it will be necessary to process a technical access contract with the distribution company, which regulates the technical conditions of connection to the distribution network. This is not an economic contract.

First of all, we must process a prior notice of works and we will have to pay the construction and works tax (ICIO), which has an approximate cost of 4% of the cost of the work before VAT (it depends on the tax ordinances of each town council). .

In any case, most town councils have a bonus of 95% of the tax value for those projects that incorporate solar panels into the home. We process this bonus.

In addition, you will have to pay the urban planning license fee, which costs approximately 1.5% of the cost of the work before VAT (normally between €50 and €100).

Some municipalities also ask to deposit a small deposit for the management of the debris, which is returned upon completion of the work and to present the certificate from the waste manager who has received the debris.

Once the prior works communication has been processed, we must open the work center in case there is ever a work inspection or a serious accident occurs on the work site. This procedure has no cost, but it has a very high price if they hook you into working without having completed the procedure.

Now we can begin the installation, although some town councils illegally process what they call a deferred works statement that forces us to wait for its resolution due to the approval of the previous works statement.

Once the installation is done, we will begin the legalisation procedures; Firstly, the registration of the installation in the Registry of Technical and Industrial Safety Installations (RITSIC) at no cost, and finally the registration in the Self-Consumption Registry of Catalonia with a cost of €32.

All residential installations carried out until 31/12/2023 have the possibility of deducting 40% of the investment (with a maximum of €3,000) if they demonstrate with an energy certificate prior to installation and a subsequent one, that they have achieved savings 4'% of non-renewable primary energy.

It can also be achieved if you achieve an A or B energy classification in the energy certificate after installation.

Now, achieving these savings solely with solar installation is frankly complicated, since they can normally be achieved when acting on the thermal envelope of the building or making investments in the air conditioning system by installing aerothermal heaters.