Thinking of installing Solar panels, read on!

12POSTS

last week

Do you intend installing Solar panels in the Malaga region of Spain?

I would like to share our experience with you.

We bought our house in 2024 and decided to install solar panels, therefore help the plant and receive a reasonable financial return. We are achieving the first objective but not the second.

We have a contract with Iberdrola, and just assumed we had a fair return, how wrong could we be. I recently decided to investigate, when I looked at the invoice for May 2026. The credit from Iberdrola for the KWH’s sent to the grid for May-26 was 18 euro, by our calculations it should have been 52 euro. During May we generated 932KWH’s of energy, of which 755KW hours were exported to the grid for credit.

The contract states that we will be paid 0.07 euro per KWH, I believe that I am correct in saying, by my calculations that we are receiving only 0.024 euro per KWH.

I was unaware that Iberdrola calculate the monthly invoice in a way that is very beneficial to them, but disastrous for the consumer. They of course including energy used, various costs and charges, including 5% electricity tax, they then add 21% vat tax to the total. It is only then that you receive a refund for the energy exported to the grid.

I might add, for the period of 2024, the system somehow failed to work correctly, we were charged for the energy used, as well as the energy exported, our bills were sky high, it took months to sort out, and we did not obtain a refund, although we tried.

We paid 7300.00 euro for the solar system to be installed, and whilst only receiving a credit of 18 Euro for one month in summer, I will leave you to calculate how long it will take to recover our investment! It is too painful for me to calculate.

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SergioCDM Active member

28POSTS

last week

@neilfrost38

Thank you for sharing your experience. Many homeowners focus on the savings from self-consumption when calculating the return on investment, but the compensation for excess electricity exported to the grid is often much lower than expected.

One important lesson from your story is that people should carefully review the compensation terms before signing a contract and compare offers from different providers. The advertised rate per kWh may not reflect the actual amount that ends up on the final bill.

It would be interesting to know whether other solar panel owners in Spain have had similar experiences with Iberdrola or if they have found suppliers offering better compensation for surplus energy.

jchilton Active member

53POSTS

14 hours ago

@neilfrost38

Just to show the flipside of the coín, I have so far had a good experience with my solar panels installed in 2021, despite the installetion company going bust shortly after without providing the necessary pre installation energy certificate which would have given me a sizeable deduction in my Renta.

I opted out of selling my excess to Endesa as calculations showed the income would be minimal. Instead they balance out what I have exported with what I have consumed at the end of each month but without crediting any excess. In summer, with a pool and electric car to charge I only pay EUR 25 + IVA for the meter (which is unavoidable) and for 3 months in winter a max EUR 10 more. I would recomnend just switching all appliances and heating to electric and that way use up all your excesses. With these measures I calculated my investment will be amortized after 8 years