Grant support is usually the first thing people ask about, and it is also the thing most often described inaccurately online. Rates change, schemes get renamed, and figures written three years ago are still sitting on websites today as if nothing has moved.
This is a straight summary of where the three main supports stand, and — more usefully — the conditions that actually decide whether you qualify.
If you own a home: the SEAI Solar PV Grant
The domestic scheme is worth up to €1,800, and it is paid on a tiered basis:
- €700 per kWp for the first 2 kWp installed
- €200 per additional kWp, up to 4 kWp
In practice that means:
| System size | Grant |
|---|---|
| 2 kWp | €1,400 |
| 3 kWp | €1,600 |
| 4 kWp or larger | €1,800 |
Above 4 kWp the grant does not increase. That does not make a larger system a bad idea — it just means the additional capacity is funded entirely by you, and should be justified by your consumption rather than by the grant.
For 2026 the rate was confirmed to hold at €1,800 — the first year since the scheme began that the domestic solar rate has not been reduced. The stated plan, though, is for reductions to resume from 2027 as the scheme winds down towards the end of the decade, with the 2027 level expected to be confirmed at Budget time in October. If you have been circling the decision, the grant will likely never be better than it is this year.
Two adjacent facts worth knowing: the first €400 per year you earn exporting surplus electricity is exempt from income tax (extended to the end of 2028), and there is no battery grant — that scheme ended in February 2022, whatever an old article may tell you.
What decides eligibility
Three conditions do most of the work:
- The home was built and occupied before 1 January 2021. This is the one that catches people out most often. It is about when the property was completed and occupied, not when you bought it.
- There is a BER assessment on file. There is no minimum rating — the assessment simply has to exist.
- The work is carried out by an SEAI-registered installer. If the installer is not on the register, there is no grant, regardless of the quality of the work.
There is also a sequencing rule that matters more than it sounds: wait for your grant offer letter before any work begins. Starting early is one of the few ways to lose an otherwise valid claim.
Separately from the grant, a 0% VAT rate applies to the supply and installation of solar panels on private homes, so that reduction should already be reflected in the price you are quoted rather than added afterwards.
If you run a business: the Non-Domestic Microgen Scheme
The non-domestic scheme supports installations up to 1,000 kWp (1 MW), with a maximum grant of €162,600.
Support is tiered by system size, and the rate per kWp steps down as the system gets larger — so the grant is proportionally most generous at the smaller end. Because the band structure is revised from time to time, we would rather work out your actual entitlement against the current SEAI application guide at quotation stage than publish a table here that may be out of date by the time you read it.
Eligibility is broad. Businesses, farms, schools, public sector bodies, community groups and non-profits can all apply, provided the building is a non-domestic premises in Ireland and the installer is SEAI-registered.
For companies, the grant is usually not the only support worth modelling. Capital allowances treatment can matter as much as the grant itself to the overall position, and that is a conversation for your accountant with the specification in front of them.
If you farm: the Solar Capital Investment Scheme
Farm solar sits outside SEAI entirely. It is supported through the Solar Capital Investment Scheme (SCIS) under TAMS 3, administered by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.
The headline terms:
- Grant rate of 60%
- A ring-fenced investment ceiling of €90,000
- So the maximum grant is €54,000
That distinction between the ceiling and the grant is worth being precise about, because it is very commonly misreported — including, until recently, on our own site. €90,000 is the maximum spend the grant is calculated against. The maximum payment is €54,000.
The ring-fencing is the genuinely valuable part: the solar ceiling does not consume the investment ceilings available to you for other farm buildings or machinery under TAMS.
Systems are grant-aided up to 62 kWp, and battery storage is eligible, capped at 50% of the solar PV output in kWp. TAMS cannot be combined with the SEAI Non-Domestic grant for the same investment — it is one scheme or the other.
Timing matters here in a way it does not for the SEAI schemes: TAMS applications are processed in tranches, and the remaining closing dates for 2026 are 4 September and 4 December. Missing one pushes approval — and the installation behind it — back by months.
The part grants do not decide
It is easy to let the grant drive the design, and that is usually a mistake. The grant is a fixed contribution; what determines whether a system is worth installing is how much of the electricity you generate you actually use on site.
A building that draws power steadily through daylight hours — a dairy parlour, a workshop, a refrigeration load, a manufacturing line — will consume most of what it generates. A house that is empty from eight until six will export a large share of its summer output unless a battery is part of the design.
That is the question we start with on a survey, before anyone talks about panel counts.
Where to check
Scheme terms change, and this page reflects the position as of July 2026. Always confirm the current figures directly:
If you would rather not work through it yourself, that is fine too — talk to us and we will tell you what you qualify for, including if the answer is nothing.