The questions we get asked most

The SEAI Solar PV Grant is worth up to €1,800. It is paid at €700 per kWp for the first 2 kWp installed, then €200 for each additional kWp up to 4 kWp. So a 2 kWp system gets €1,400 and a 4 kWp or larger system gets the full €1,800.

Your home needs to be in Ireland and to have been built and occupied before 1 January 2021. You need a BER assessment on file (there is no minimum rating), and the work has to be carried out by an SEAI-registered installer. Lumen Solar is an SEAI-registered Solar PV company, so your installation qualifies. One thing to watch: you have 8 months from grant approval to complete the installation, so apply when you are ready to go ahead, not just to see what you would get.

We guide you through it. You apply to SEAI yourself. It is a short online application, and we give you every detail it asks for. We then handle the installer declarations, the ESB Networks notification and the completion documents that release the payment. No work should start before your grant approval is issued, and we make sure that order is kept right.

It depends on the roof and the equipment, which is why we quote from a survey rather than a price list. Domestic solar is zero-rated for VAT until at least 31 December 2026, and the €1,800 SEAI grant comes off what you pay. Your quotation names the exact equipment and the exact price, with the payback calculation and its assumptions written down.

For the domestic SEAI grant, the money is normally paid to you by SEAI after the installation is completed and the post-works documentation, including the BER assessment, has been submitted. Your quotation from us shows the full price and the grant separately, so it is clear what you pay and what comes back.

Solar PV normally improves a BER, because it reduces the calculated primary energy use of the home, and a post-works BER assessment is part of the SEAI grant process anyway. On insurance, tell your insurer you have added solar, as with any alteration to the building. Cover for panels is routine.

Yes. Solar PV responds to daylight, not heat or direct sunshine, so panels generate on bright overcast days as well as clear ones. Output is strongly seasonal in Ireland, with summer generation far higher than winter, which is why we size a system around your year-round consumption pattern rather than a headline figure.

The SEAI Non-Domestic Microgen Scheme supports non-domestic solar installations up to 1000 kWp, with a maximum grant of €162,600. Support is tiered by system size, so the rate per kWp reduces as the system gets larger. Businesses, farms, schools, public sector bodies, community groups and non-profits can all apply.

Not both for yourself. The grant follows whoever owns the system, so you cannot claim it on an array someone else has funded. Under a Power Purchase Agreement the provider owns the system and claims the SEAI Non-Domestic Microgen Scheme, worth up to €162,600, and that value should show up in the unit rate you are quoted. It is one reason buying outright is usually the stronger option where the capital is available: you keep the grant, the system itself and all of the electricity. Ask any PPA provider, ourselves included, to show you how the grant is carried through into the rate.

Usually not. Rooftop solar on houses is exempt from planning permission, with no area limit, since October 2022 — and that applies anywhere in the country, including inside the 43 Solar Safeguarding Zones around airports and aerodromes, which cap other kinds of building but not houses. The exceptions for a house are protected structures and Architectural Conservation Areas. Rooftop solar on industrial, commercial and agricultural buildings is exempt from planning permission with no area cap outside the 43 Solar Safeguarding Zones near airports and aerodromes. Inside a zone, the exemption for these buildings stops at 300m² of panels — counting anything already installed — so a larger array needs permission. Ground-mounted arrays and protected structures have separate rules, and we confirm the position for every site as part of our survey.

A typical domestic installation is completed in a small number of days on site once the system is designed, the grant offer is in place and materials are scheduled. Commercial and farm projects run longer and are phased around your operations. We give you a specific timeline in your quotation rather than a generic estimate.

Yes, and several points is a different job to one home charger. Total site capacity, dynamic load sharing across the points, access control and per-user usage reporting all have to be designed together rather than installed one at a time. Workplace charging pairs well with a commercial array, because staff cars are parked on site during the daytime hours when the system is producing, so more of the generation gets used on site.

We do. Under a Power Purchase Agreement the panels on your roof belong to us, and the electricity they produce is sold to you at a rate agreed in the contract. There is no capital outlay for you to budget for and no asset on your balance sheet.

We do, for the life of the agreement: monitoring, servicing, repairs and component replacement. You pay for the electricity the system actually generates and you use, so if it underperforms that is our problem, not yours. That is the main difference from owning the system yourself.

Not always. For most organisations that can fund the capital, owning the system is the stronger position over its full life. You keep all of the electricity, you are eligible for grant support and capital allowances, there is no ongoing payment once it is paid for, and any future rise in electricity prices works in your favour. A PPA makes sense where the capital is tied up elsewhere, but the total cost over the full life is generally higher than owning.

Both are contract terms, and both should be settled in writing before you sign. So should the term length, how the unit rate is set and whether it escalates, who is responsible if the roof needs work, and what happens to the equipment if the provider ceases trading. Those are questions worth putting to any PPA provider, us included. We will not quote generic terms on a web page. We model your site and put the actual numbers in front of you.

It depends which scheme you are under. For TAMS, your farm advisor lodges the application and we supply the system specification, quotes and documentation it needs. For the SEAI Non-Domestic Microgen Scheme, the application is made before work starts and we provide the installer detail and the completion documents that release the payment. Either way, no work should start before approval is issued. That means TAMS approval from the Department of Agriculture, or the SEAI letter of offer, and we make sure that order is kept.

Farm solar is supported through the Solar Capital Investment Scheme (SCIS) under TAMS 3, administered by the Department of Agriculture rather than SEAI. It is grant-aided at 60% against a ring-fenced investment ceiling of €90,000, so the maximum grant payable is €54,000. Systems are grant-aided up to 62 kWp, and battery storage is eligible up to a capacity equal to 50% of the array’s rated size in kWp.

No. One scheme per project. Solar Capital Investment Scheme (SCIS) under TAMS 3 funding cannot be combined with the SEAI Non-Domestic Microgen Scheme for the same investment, so the choice has to be made before you apply. TAMS is grant-aided at 60% up to a maximum of €54,000 and supports systems to 62 kWp; the SEAI scheme runs to 1000 kWp with a maximum of €162,600, which matters if the holding needs a larger array than TAMS covers. We work out which is worth more on your specific project before anything is submitted.

Export payments come from your electricity supplier under the Clean Export Guarantee, not from the government. When we commission your system we notify ESB Networks (the NC6 or NC7 form), which is what registers you as a microgenerator; your supplier then applies its export rate to your account. With a smart meter your actual export is measured; rates vary by supplier, so it is worth comparing. The first €400 a year of export income is exempt from income tax, an exemption currently legislated to the end of 2028.

Enough to cover your evening and overnight consumption, and not much more. Capacity you cannot cycle daily earns nothing. For many Irish homes that lands somewhere between 5 and 15 kWh, but the real answer comes from your consumption pattern, which is what we model at survey stage before recommending a size.

You have three options and most systems use all of them: use it in the building as it is generated, store it in a battery for later, or export it to the grid. Exported electricity is paid for by your supplier under the Clean Export Guarantee. The rate you receive is set by your electricity supplier, so it is worth comparing.

Not necessarily. A battery makes the strongest case where a lot of your consumption happens in the evening, after generation has dropped off, or where you want backup during an outage. If your building consumes most of its electricity during daylight hours, which is common for businesses and farms, a battery matters less. We model your consumption before recommending one.

Only if the system is specified for it. Backup requires compatible equipment and additional wiring so the system can safely disconnect from the grid and continue supplying your building. Not every battery installation includes this by default, so tell us at the outset if outage protection matters to you.

Usually yes, though it depends on your existing inverter and consumer unit. Some systems accept a battery directly, others need an additional AC-coupled unit. We can assess a system we did not install and tell you what is possible before you commit to anything.

Yes, where the equipment is specified to do it. A solar-aware charger adjusts its draw to follow what the array is producing, so the car takes surplus that would otherwise be exported. That only works if the charger, inverter and metering are specified to talk to each other, which is the difference between an integrated installation and a charger bolted to the wall beside one. An EV suits solar well because it usually does not matter when the charging happens, as long as the car is ready by morning.

That is the first thing we check, before any hardware is specified: your main fuse rating, board capacity and existing load. Some properties need work there first, and it is far better to know that at survey than on installation day. Where capacity is tight, a load-managed charger throttles itself when the rest of the building is drawing heavily, which often avoids an upgrade you would otherwise need. Earthing arrangements for EV charging are specific too, and are one of the most common things done badly on cheap installations.

We install glass-glass panels, with glass on both faces rather than a plastic backsheet, and they carry a 30-year performance warranty. A performance warranty and a product warranty are two different things: the performance warranty covers the output over time, and the product warranty covers the panel itself. Your quote names both terms for the exact panel we are fitting. The inverters and batteries we fit are warranted for 10 years or more, and you should still expect an inverter to need replacement at least once over the life of the system.

Very little, but not none. Irish conditions bring moss, lichen, salt and agricultural dust, and soiling reduces output gradually enough that owners often do not notice. Periodic inspection, cleaning where needed, and monitoring that catches faults early will keep an array performing across its full life.

Rain does a fair job on light dust. What it does not shift is the dirt that costs you output: baked-on bird droppings, moss and lichen on the panel edges in damp shaded spots, spring pollen films, and harvest dust on farms. A panel’s cells are wired in series, so a soiled patch pulls down the section of the panel it sits on. Bypass diodes limit that to part of one module, but on a string inverter the effect still shows up across the array, so the loss is out of proportion to the amount of dirt.

A standard suburban roof often only needs attention every year or two. Farms, coastal properties, houses under trees and roofs with bird activity need it more often. The better guide is your monitoring data rather than the calendar: if output has slipped against the same months last year and the weather has not, soiling is the usual suspect. If your panels are visibly clean and producing on benchmark, we will tell you to keep your money.

Please do not. Pressure washers force water past the edge seals and can crack the glass. It is the most common way owners damage their own panels. Abrasive brushes take the anti-reflective coating off, and it does not grow back. Bleach and strong detergents degrade the seals and can void the panel warranty. We use deionised water and soft-bristle brushes. If you have safe ground-level access, plain water and a soft brush is fine and we will happily tell you how. Anything at height should be left to people equipped for it.

Yes. You give us viewer access to your monitoring portal, which every major brand supports, and nothing has to change on the roof or in the inverter to start. The analysis reads the data your system is already logging. Almost every modern system records a stream of performance data that nobody ever looks at.

Four things, run every week rather than at an annual visit. Your generation is checked against a weather-adjusted model of your specific system, so a shortfall is flagged even in a month that simply felt cloudy. Strings are compared against each other, which narrows a problem down before anyone climbs a ladder. Inverter fault codes, derating events and communication dropouts are read from logs your app never shows you. And your long-run degradation trend is tracked, so genuine ageing is separated from losses that can be fixed.

The software does the part nobody keeps up by hand: weather-adjusted yield models, string comparison, fault-code history and degradation trends, run every week across every system we watch. The judgement about what to do with a flag stays with our engineers. The practical payoff is that when a visit is needed it is a targeted one. The analysis says which string or which component, rather than sending someone up for a general look.

We are based in Blyry Business & Commercial Park in Athlone and work across the Midlands and nationwide. Athlone, Mullingar, Tullamore, Longford, Ballinasloe, Roscommon and the surrounding counties are our home patch, and we travel further for commercial and farm projects.

Call us on the number at the top of this page or send an enquiry through the site. We will talk through what you need, arrange a free site survey, and give you a written quotation with the system design, the equipment specified and the grant position set out clearly.