# Solar on a Cretan roof: the scheme changed, the grid is full, and the subsidy has closed

> Net metering shut to new applicants in 2023 and what replaced it pays you differently. The Crete interconnection solved the island's power supply without freeing up connection capacity — and the workaround is a system that gives its surplus away.

- Canonical URL: https://honestcrete.com/buying/solar-panels-and-net-metering-crete-home/
- Author: Fotis (Honest Crete, Heraklion)
- Section: Buying property in Crete · Stage: Owning
- Rules verified: September 2026 · Updated: 2026-09-09 · Published: 2026-09-09
- How to cite: "Honest Crete — Solar on a Cretan roof: the scheme changed, the grid is full, and the subsidy has closed (rules verified September 2026), https://honestcrete.com/buying/solar-panels-and-net-metering-crete-home/"
- Disclosure: Honest Crete does not sell or list property and nobody here is an estate agent. Enquiries sent from this section go to a licensed, registered estate agent, not to us. No article names a developer or a specific property. Adverts on these pages are labelled as adverts and buy no say in the text.
- Sources:
  - Ministry of Environment and Energy (September 2024) — the net billing ministerial decision: households up to 10.8 kW receive surplus as a credit on the electricity bill, above 10.8 kW as cash at market prices; virtual net billing and collective self-consumption permitted: https://ypen.gov.gr/ypegrafi-i-ypourgiki-apofasi-gia-tin-aftokatanalosi-energeias-net-billing/
  - Ministry of Environment and Energy (July 2026) — first legal route for balcony photovoltaics up to 800 W and standalone household batteries, both exclusively for own needs, without injection into the grid: https://ypen.gov.gr/gia-proti-fora-dynatotita-gia-fotovoltaika-sto-balkoni-kai-aftonomes-bataries-se-noikokyria-kai-epicheiriseis/
  - HEDNO / ΔΕΔΔΗΕ (last modified July 2025) — net metering implementation: single-phase supplies capped at 5 kW; zero feed-in connections permitted on saturated networks where saturation stems from nominal capacity or voltage limits, but not short-circuit levels; cites the 2021 ministerial decisions: https://www.deddie.gr/en/support/implementation-of-net-metering-by-self-producers/
  - HEDNO / ΔΕΔΔΗΕ (October 2024) — net billing and virtual net billing applications opened nationwide under decision ΥΠΕΝ/ΔΑΠΕΕΚ/93976/2772, Government Gazette Β΄5074/05.09.2024; applications made online with TAXISnet credentials: https://www.deddie.gr/en/hedno-announcement-on-net-billing-applications/
  - IPTO / ΑΔΜΗΕ (May 2025) — the 1 GW Crete–Attica high-voltage direct-current interconnection began transferring power on 24 May 2025; the electrical isolation of Crete is completely lifted: https://www.admie.gr/kentro-typoy/deltia-typoy/se-leitoyrgia-i-ilektriki-diasyndesi-kritis-attikis
  - Region of Crete (June 2026) — even after the second interconnection, new investment meets the absence of available network; the Regional Council asks for electrical space reserved for local self-generation by residents, municipalities, farmers and small businesses: https://www.crete.gov.gr/stayros-arnaoytakis-i-kriti-paragogos-katharis-energeias-me-epikentro-ton-politi-apaiteitai-orthologikos-diamoirasmos-toy-ilektrikoy-choroy/
  - Greece 2.0 recovery-fund portal (read September 2026) — the household rooftop photovoltaic programme is marked inactive, applications having closed on 15 May 2024; budget €208m, subsidy 65 per cent for households and 90–100 per cent for batteries: https://greece20.gov.gr/?calls=fotovoltaika-sti-stegi
  - HEDNO / ΔΕΔΔΗΕ (read September 2026) — public tool showing the indicative renewable hosting margin per substation and transformer, updated daily: https://apps.deddie.gr/WebAPE/index.html

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Solar on a Cretan house is a good idea attached to two moving parts, and both moved recently. The scheme a new installation joins is not the one most published advice describes, and the island's electricity grid has been through a transformation that solved the problem everyone talked about while leaving the one that actually blocks a rooftop system. Neither of those is a reason not to install. Both are reasons to model the payback on what exists now. Rules as they stood in September 2026, checked against the Ministry of Environment and Energy, the distribution operator, the transmission operator and the Region of Crete.

I am not an electrical engineer or an energy consultant and this is not technical or financial advice. What follows is what the published rules and the grid operator say; the arithmetic for a specific roof needs a quote.

**Solar in one minute.** New household systems get **net billing**, not net metering — applications for the old scheme closed **30 June 2023**. At or below **10.8 kW** the surplus is credited on the bill; above it, paid in cash. Since July 2026 households sit in **synchronised offsetting**, so value depends on **using the power while it is generated**, not on an annual kWh balance. **HEDNO** does the connection, online with TAXISnet. Crete's **1 GW interconnection** went live in **May 2025** — but the Region was still reporting **no available network capacity in June 2026**, and anything above about 10 kW has been effectively blocked since 2022. The workaround is **zero feed-in**. **No household subsidy is currently open.**

## The scheme changed, and the change matters

Under net metering, your exported kilowatt hours were banked and set against what you later imported. It was generous and it suited holiday houses perfectly: generate all summer while nobody is there, draw it down in winter. That scheme closed to new applicants on 30 June 2023.

What replaced it is **net billing**. Your surplus is valued in money rather than in kilowatt hours, and for a household at or below **10.8 kW** it is credited against the electricity bill; above 10.8 kW you are paid cash at market prices. Since a further amendment in July 2026 the schemes have been reorganised into four variants, with households in the ≤10.8 kW band sitting in **synchronised** or **virtual-synchronised** offsetting — which is a technical way of saying that what matters is **simultaneity**: power consumed at the moment it is generated is worth full retail value, and power exported is worth a market price that is lower.

For a permanently occupied Cretan house with air conditioning, a pool pump and a family, that is fine and often better than fine — the load is in daylight and the sun is reliable. For a holiday house empty for eight months, the case is much weaker than the old arithmetic suggested, and a battery starts to matter more than extra panels.

One correction worth making because it circulates: **households cannot use virtual net metering**. The operator's eligibility list is public-benefit legal entities, registered farmers and motorway concessionaires. A homeowner offsetting generation at one property against consumption at another is not on it.

## The Crete grid problem, which is not the one you have heard about

The headline is genuinely good news. The 1 GW high-voltage direct-current link between Crete and Attica began transferring power on 24 May 2025, and the transmission operator states that the island's electrical isolation is completely lifted. Crete is no longer running on its own generation.

The problem for a rooftop is different and it has not gone away. In June 2026 — thirteen months after the link went live — the Region of Crete was publicly describing new investment as meeting "the absence of available network", with capacity tied up in pending requests and already-licensed large projects, and its Regional Council was voting to ask for electrical space **reserved for local self-generation** by residents, municipalities, farmers and small businesses. Before that, the transmission operator had told Parliament that Crete's saturated designation had not been lifted, and the Eastern Crete section of the technical chamber had described the grid as locked for anything above 10 kW since 2022.

Supply and connection capacity are two different things, and the interconnection fixed the first. Whether your specific substation can host you is a per-transformer question, and the distribution operator publishes an indicative hosting-margin tool updated daily — which is the right place to look before anyone quotes you.

## Zero feed-in, the workaround worth understanding

On saturated networks the operator permits connections on a **zero feed-in** basis, where saturation stems from nominal capacity or voltage limits rather than from short-circuit levels. From May 2024 that route was opened for self-consumption in Crete, the Peloponnese, Evia and the Aegean islands, sized up to 100 per cent of the supply's agreed capacity.

Zero feed-in means the system exports nothing: an inverter setting prevents it. The trade is straightforward. You get no payment for surplus, because none leaves the property. In exchange, **no offsetting contract is signed at all**, which removes most of the paperwork and the twenty-year tie-in that comes with a compensation arrangement — and, crucially, it is a route that exists where the ordinary one is blocked.

For a Cretan house with real daytime load, sized honestly against consumption rather than against roof area, zero feed-in is often the sensible system rather than the consolation prize.

New since July 2026, and useful for apartments: **balcony photovoltaics up to 800 W of injection** and **standalone household batteries**, both strictly for own needs with no grid injection. That is the first legal route for a flat owner who cannot get the block to agree — apartment-block installations still require **100 per cent owner consent**, which is a large part of why Greece has around 37,500 self-consumption installations against a national target of 250,000.

## Permits, roofs and the thing that will stop you in a village

Solar water heaters — far more common on Cretan roofs than panels, and far better value — need **no building permit and no small-scale works approval**, and new buildings are in any case required to cover 60 per cent of domestic hot water from solar thermal under the energy performance law.

Photovoltaics are not in that exemption list, and there is a rule that catches a great many buyers of the exact houses this site's readers buy. Under the 2010 ministerial decision on solar installations in and around buildings, an **architectural control opinion** is mandatory in designated traditional settlements, historic city districts, on listed buildings and in areas of exceptional natural beauty. On pitched roofs, panels must follow the roof slope, must not rise above stair or lift heads, and must keep half a metre from the parapet.

That is a real constraint across much of the Cretan hinterland and every old town core. A restored stone house in a designated village is not a free canvas, and the design that gets approved may not be the design that pays back fastest.

## What it costs, honestly

This article gives no euro-per-kilowatt figure, because there is no non-commercial source for one. The numbers in circulation come from the closed subsidy programme, and those were **grant ceilings per kilowatt banded by household income**, not market prices — quoting them as installation costs would be straightforwardly wrong.

What can usefully be said is what to ask for: a quote that states the system size, the connection route (net billing or zero feed-in), whether the substation has hosting margin, and what the connection charge will be. The operator's published figures of roughly €400–800 plus VAT for connection, with a fifteen-day offer, thirty to a hundred and twenty days of works and activation within fifteen days, are stated for the old special rooftop programme rather than confirmed for net billing — so treat them as an order of magnitude.

And check whether a subsidy has reopened rather than assuming. The household rooftop programme closed to applications in May 2024 and is marked inactive; the energy-saving programme currently shows only a completion deadline for beneficiaries already admitted. Both have reopened before.

## The honest downside

This is a subject where the official information is unusually poor and the commercial information is unusually motivated. The July 2026 amending decision is described by the ministry's own press release without a verifiable decision number. Whether Crete's formal saturated designation still stands in 2026 is not stated in anything current — only that the Region says there is no capacity in practice. Whether household net billing on Crete today requires zero feed-in rests on a source from before the interconnection. And the whole payback calculation now turns on simultaneity of generation and use, which for a holiday house is the least favourable case and the one every installer's spreadsheet will present most favourably. Get the hosting margin checked first; everything else is arithmetic that only works if there is a connection at the end of it.

*Disclosure:* Disclosure: Honest Crete does not sell or list property. Enquiries sent from this section go to a licensed estate agent, not to us; the full statement is below. Nothing in this article names an installer, a supplier, a developer or any other business, and it never will.

**The verdict.** **Worth it if** the house is lived in through the year with real daytime load, the substation has hosting margin, and the roof is not in a designated settlement — or if zero feed-in sized to your own consumption makes the numbers work anyway. **Skip it if** the house sits empty eight months a year and the model you are shown assumes the old net metering arithmetic.

## Quick answers

**Can I still get net metering in Greece?**

No. Applications for net metering closed on 30 June 2023 under law 5037/2023. New household installations fall under net billing, governed by the ministerial decision published in September 2024, which values your surplus rather than banking it as kilowatt hours.

**What is the difference between net metering and net billing?**

Net metering banked your exported kilowatt hours against what you later imported, so an empty house in winter still built credit. Net billing values the surplus in money and, for households up to 10.8 kW, credits it against the bill — which makes the economics depend on consuming while the sun is shining rather than on the annual total.

**Is there a size limit for a household solar system in Greece?**

10.8 kW is the dividing line for how surplus is treated: at or below it the credit goes on the bill, above it you are paid cash at market prices. Separately, HEDNO's net metering rules cap single-phase supplies at 5 kW, and the old special rooftop programme capped Crete at 6 kWp.

**Has the Crete interconnection freed up grid capacity?**

It solved supply, not connection capacity. The 1 GW link to Attica began operating in May 2025 and the island's electrical isolation is lifted, but in June 2026 the Region of Crete was still describing an absence of available network, with capacity tied up in pending requests and licensed large projects.

**What is zero feed-in solar?**

A connection that consumes everything it generates and exports nothing. Because no offsetting contract is signed, it avoids most of the paperwork and the twenty-year tie-in, and it is permitted on saturated networks where the saturation stems from capacity or voltage limits. You get no payment for surplus because there is no surplus leaving the property.

**Is there a subsidy for solar panels in Greece right now?**

Not for households. The rooftop photovoltaic programme closed to applications in May 2024 and is marked inactive; the energy-saving programme shows only a works-completion deadline for beneficiaries already admitted. Check for a new call rather than assuming the old percentages still apply.