Solar Grants and Regulations

At a glance

The short version: Germany is the only one of the three with a coherent, stable framework for small-scale solar. France has become the hardest market for a new installation to pay back on subsidy alone. The UK is workable but depends entirely on which supplier you export to.

United Kingdom

What you can claim

Zero-rated VAT. Residential solar installations, including panels, inverter, battery and labour, carry 0% VAT until 31 March 2027. This applies to everyone with no eligibility test and no application. On a typical installation it saves somewhere between £1,000 and £1,900 against the standard 20% rate. If a quote shows 20% VAT added, query it before signing.

Smart Export Guarantee. Licensed electricity suppliers with 150,000 or more customers must offer a tariff paying you for electricity you export to the grid. Rates vary enormously between suppliers, from a few pence per kWh at the bottom end to close to 30p on the best tariffs, and suppliers change them regularly. The SEG replaced the old Feed-in Tariff, which closed to new applicants in 2019 and paid considerably more.

The important point about SEG is that it is not a fixed national rate. Two identical systems on identical roofs can earn very different amounts depending purely on who supplies the household. Shop the export tariff as carefully as you shop the import tariff.

Means-tested funded installations. The Warm Homes Plan replaced ECO4 from April 2026 and extends funding to low-income households on means-tested benefits. In England, the Warm Homes: Local Grant can cover a substantial share or all of an installation for eligible households, typically requiring an EPC rating of D or below and a household income below a council-set threshold. Wales runs Nest separately. These schemes are genuinely worth pursuing if you qualify, and most households do not.

There is no universal cash grant for UK home solar, whatever lead-generation advertising suggests.

What the rules require

MCS certification. You need an MCS-certified installation to qualify for the Smart Export Guarantee. This is the single most consequential rule in the UK framework, because a non-certified install locks you out of export payments permanently.

Smart meter capable of recording export. Also an SEG requirement. Without export metering there is nothing to pay you for.

Grid notification. Your installer notifies the distribution network operator. For most domestic systems this is a straightforward post-installation notification rather than an application, but larger systems or weak local networks can require prior approval, which takes time.

Planning permission. Most roof-mounted domestic solar falls under permitted development. The main exceptions are listed buildings, conservation areas, and panels that protrude significantly beyond the roof plane. Ground-mounted arrays have their own size limits. Check with the local authority before assuming.

The catch

The zero VAT rate has an expiry date of 31 March 2027. Nothing has been announced about what follows it. If you are planning an installation and the timing is flexible, completing before that date is worth roughly a thousand pounds or more.

France

What changed in June 2026

France’s residential solar support regime changed fundamentally on 5 June 2026 under an arrêté dated 1 June. Two things happened at once:

The prime à l’autoconsommation, the installation grant that paid up to 80 €/kWc for systems of 9 kWc or less, was abolished for new applications. The surplus export tariff was cut to 1.1 c€ per kWh, and the quarterly revision by the Commission de régulation de l’énergie was replaced with a single flat rate.

The cut-off is the date your installer lodged the connection request with Enedis, not the date you signed a quote or paid a deposit. Applications lodged before 5 June keep the old prime and the old tariff for the full 20-year term. If you are unsure which side of the line your project sits on, ask your installer for the Enedis acknowledgement of receipt, or check the status in your Enedis customer account.

Anyone reading a French solar guide published before June 2026 is reading figures that no longer apply. A great many of them are still online.

What remains

Reduced VAT at 5.5%. Available since 1 October 2025 for installations of 9 kWc or less, but only where five conditions are met simultaneously:

1. Installed capacity of 9 kWc or less
2. Installed by an RGE-certified installer
3. Connected to the Enedis grid
4. Property completed at least two years ago, or new since October 2025
5. Panels certified to PPE2-V2 standard, meaning a carbon footprint below 530 kgCO2eq/kWc, lead content below 0.1% and cadmium below 0.01%

Miss any one of the five and the rate reverts to 20%. The old 10% intermediate rate was abolished for photovoltaics and no longer exists from 1 January 2026.

Tax exemptions. Small-scale self-consumption income remains exempt from income tax, and some local authorities offer property tax relief. Regional and departmental schemes exist and vary considerably; they are worth checking individually.

What does not apply to PV. MaPrimeRénov’ funds solar thermal, including hybrid PVT panels, but not photovoltaics. The éco-PTZ loan does not cover photovoltaics either, though it does fund solar thermal up to substantial amounts. Both are routinely misrepresented as PV subsidies by installers and comparison sites.

What the rules require

Déclaration préalable de travaux. Filed with your mairie using Cerfa form 16702, either on paper or online. The older 13703 form is obsolete. This is a declaration rather than a full permit for most roof installations, but it must be lodged and the response period observed before work starts.

RGE-certified installer. Required for the reduced VAT rate. QualiPV is the relevant specialism.

CONSUEL certificate of conformity. Required before the system can be commissioned and connected.

Enedis connection request. Handled through the online connection portal by your installer. As above, the date this is lodged now determines which support regime applies to you.

The economics now

With no installation grant and an export rate of 1.1 c€ per kWh, a French residential system now has to justify itself almost entirely on direct self-consumption. Exporting surplus to the grid is close to worthless. That changes the design brief: smaller arrays sized to actual daytime demand, load shifting, and battery storage all become more attractive than the oversized export-oriented systems that made sense under the old regime.

Germany

Balcony and plug-in solar

Germany is the only one of the three markets with a proper legal framework for plug-in solar, and it is the most permissive in Europe.

Power limits. Up to 800 W of inverter output feeding the household circuit, and up to 2,000 Wp of installed panel capacity, under § 8 (5a) EEG. The inverter caps what enters the circuit; the higher panel allowance exists so the system still produces usefully in poor light. The previous inverter limit was 600 W.

Registration. One step only. Register in the Marktstammdatenregister, the Bundesnetzagentur’s official plant register, within one month of commissioning. It is free, takes fifteen to twenty minutes, and the MaStR notifies your grid operator automatically. Since Solarpaket I took effect on 16 May 2024, separate registration with the local network operator is no longer required.

Plugs. Connection via a standard household Schuko socket is permitted in most cases under current standards, rather than requiring a special Wieland socket.

VAT. Zero, since January 2023, on systems up to 30 kWp. Advertised prices are final prices.

Old meters. An older non-digital electricity meter is generally no longer a reason to delay commissioning.

More than 1.2 million balcony systems were registered in the MaStR by early 2026, with roughly 400,000 added in each of the two preceding years. A realistic 800 W system produces somewhere between 500 and 800 kWh a year depending on orientation and shading, and if around 60% of that is consumed directly it displaces perhaps 300 to 480 kWh of grid electricity.

Rooftop systems

Feed-in tariff. For systems up to 10 kWp commissioned between 1 February and 31 July 2026, the rate is 7.78 ct per kWh for surplus feed-in, or 12.35 ct per kWh for full feed-in. Rates step down by 1% every six months. From 1 August 2026 they fall to approximately 7.71 ct and 12.23 ct. Larger systems receive proportionally less on the capacity above 10 kWp. Whatever rate applies at commissioning is locked for 20 years.

Solarspitzengesetz. In force since 25 February 2025. New systems above 2 kWp receive no feed-in payment during any quarter-hour when the wholesale electricity price is negative, from the first negative quarter-hour, with no threshold. In 2025 that amounted to several hundred hours. The lost periods are added to the end of the 20-year support term as partial compensation. New systems also face smart metering and controllability requirements; smaller systems without a smart meter may be limited to feeding in 60% of rated capacity in the interim. Systems commissioned before the cut-off retain their previous terms.

Income tax. Earnings from private systems up to 30 kWp have been exempt from income tax since 1 January 2023.

Financing. KfW programme 270 provides low-interest loans for solar installations and storage. Many federal states and municipalities add direct grants, particularly for battery storage, and the differences between them are substantial. Check your Land’s programme specifically.

The 2027 cliff

The fixed feed-in tariff for new installations is expected to end on 31 December 2026 under a planned EEG reform. Systems commissioned by that date secure the guaranteed 20-year rate. Systems commissioned from 2027 fall under a transitional arrangement paying roughly a cent per kWh less, with direct marketing obligations proposed above certain capacities.

A draft of the reform became public in February 2026 and the details are not settled, so treat the specifics as provisional. The direction of travel is not in doubt: 2026 is the last year of guaranteed fixed support for new German systems.