What if your home could help power the future?
Most houses only use electricity. A growing number of Irish homes now make some of their own, and are paid for what they do not use.
Somebody with a roof that gets the sun for most of the day. Somebody whose car charges in the driveway overnight. Somebody who had a new meter fitted and never thought about it again.
This Discovery is for anyone who wants to know what their own house could do — and what is worth doing now rather than later.
It is not about buying panels. It is about understanding what your property is already capable of.
Your house does one thing with electricity today. It buys it.
It could do four.
The first three are easier to arrange than the last one, and that is the order we will take them in.
Not because the technology changed. Because the roof and the meter did.
The rules on the roof relaxed. You no longer need planning permission for solar panels on a house, and there is no limit on how much of the roof they cover. There is no VAT on them either.
The meter arrived. More than four in five Irish homes now have a smart meter, fitted by ESB Networks.
And the meter is the part that matters. Without one, nobody can measure what your house sends back, so nobody can pay you for it.
More than 140,000 households in Ireland are already being paid for the electricity their roofs produce. This is not a trial. It is running.
There is a grant of up to €1,800 towards panels, and no VAT to pay on them.
Not every house qualifies. It has to have been built and lived in before 2021. And the grant can only be claimed once at any address, so if a previous owner claimed it, it has already been used.
It gets smaller each year and finishes in 2029, so waiting costs you some of it.
A smart meter lets your supplier charge different prices at different hours. Night is cheaper than evening.
If you have an immersion, a dishwasher or a car in the driveway, moving them to the cheap hours costs nothing and changes the bill.
Which hours are cheap, and how cheap, depends on your supplier. It is worth checking what yours offers.
On a bright day the roof usually makes more than the house is using. Whatever is left over goes back out to the grid.
Every electricity supplier in Ireland has to pay you for it. How much they pay is up to them, and it can change, so it is worth seeing what others offer.
The first €400 a year you earn this way is free of income tax, up to the end of 2028. Above that it is taxed like any other income. You do not need to declare the exempt amount at all.
A battery holds what the roof makes in the afternoon so the house can use it that evening.
There is no grant for a home battery. There is one for the panels, but not for storing what they make. Worth knowing, because it is easy to assume otherwise.
Less than people expect, and that is the point.
The kettle still boils. The heating works the way it always did. Nothing in the house has to be used differently.
What changes is quieter. The immersion comes on at three in the morning instead of six in the evening. The car charges while everybody sleeps. On a bright Saturday the house runs itself for a few hours and the meter turns the other way.
Once it is set up, there is very little to think about. The app is interesting for a while, and then it is just there.
None of this is technical. It is all about your own property.
Which way the roof faces, and what shades it. A roof in shade for half the day makes less than the same roof in the open. This decides more than the equipment does.
Whether you have a smart meter. Without one, everything still works — you just will not be paid for what you send back.
Whether the grant has already been used on the house. It can only be claimed once at any address.
The age of the house. Built and lived in before 2021, or the grant does not apply.
How long it takes. Your installer applies to ESB Networks before anything goes on the roof, and that takes a few weeks. Afterwards the house needs a new BER assessment before the grant is paid.
If you live close to an airport. There are areas near airports and helipads where roof limits still apply, because of glare. Most homes are nowhere near one.
And one that is not about your property at all:
SEAI’s own words: it “does not approve, guarantee, or warranty a company or their works.”
The State pays part of the cost. It does not stand behind whoever does the job. Choosing the installer is still entirely yours.
PlotNua does not size systems, quote for equipment, or estimate what you would earn. Export rates are set by suppliers and change, so we do not print one.
Everything above can be arranged in Ireland today. Everything below cannot.
Using the car as a battery. An electric car holds far more electricity than a home battery, so sending some of it back to the house is an obvious idea.
It is not available here. Powering your house from your car is not approved for Irish homes, and selling power from a car back to the grid is not expected here for a few years yet. If an installer tells you otherwise, ask them to show you the approval.
Homes working together. Streets of houses with panels and batteries can be coordinated to behave like one small power station. It has been tested in Ireland. It is not yet something a homeowner can join.
Three examples. None of them Irish, all of them real.
In Britain, a unit about the size of a boiler holds hundreds of small computers. They do paid work for other companies, and the heat that produces warms the household’s water.
In the United States, a company installs computing equipment at houses alongside a battery, using the electricity the house is not using. The owners are not paid in cash — they get the equipment and cheaper electricity instead.
Also in the United States, a solar company now lets the batteries in its customers’ homes help supply large data centres at busy times. Those households are paid for it.
Computing uses a lot of electricity, and the amount is rising. New power stations take years to build. Houses already have roofs, connections and space.
It is too early to say whether any of it reaches Ireland. What is clear is that the things that would make a house ready for it — a working roof, a battery, a smart meter — are the same things worth having anyway.
When this Discovery is ready, we’ll begin with your roof, your meter and what your home already uses.
Enter your Eircode and answer three short questions: the style you like, where it should be made, and your budget.
We take what you tell us about the property and compare it with the research we have already done.
A clearer view of what your property can take, and practical next steps.
Recommendations cannot be bought, and payment never determines who appears or ranks more highly.