# Solar Power



## tarponjohn (Sep 18, 2010)

I am building a farm house in Nazare region and would like to be offgrid with solar power ...anyone got experience in this area?


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## LeoFunchal (Apr 11, 2021)

I am seeing a lot of questions about solar power here and thought I would clarify with some my experiences. So you cannot have solar power off grid in Portugal where power is available locally to you, the solar array must be on grid. It is somewhat complicated to get the bureaucracy part done as you need a solar certified engineer to fit and certify. There is however a work around, those folks over at the EU came up with a directive that everyone can adhere to. You can fit a 200 watt to 1.5 kw (1500 watt) solar array to your house "on grid" and with almost no paperwork. You need to then fill out an online form with the Direcao Geral de Energia e Geologia, Home and do what they call a mere communication (mera comunicacao) and you may want a native to help you with that.
A few things I learnt on my journey are that you will want a generation meter that links with your solar inverter so as to "limit export to 0 percent". Storing electricity is too expensive right now to be economically viable, but you CANNOT export this unused energy. If you do export, an old style meter where you see the rotating disc will start to rotate backwards, and will not please the folks at EDP (they will come around and fit a digital one). Secondly newer digital meters are sneaky as they count electricity that goes through it but it doesn't know what direction that is, so if you did export, you would be billed for all power you export.... ask me how I know!
If you want to store electricity, send it through to a heat water, preferably to a heat pump water heater like those upright Ariston type things, they slowly turn 1kwh in to 3 or 4 kwh of hot water (depending on outdoor temps). It doesn't draw too much power and on a sunny day can be fully powered by the array. Thermal water heating systems seem to be less viable now but that's just my opinion. Good luck...


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