With its abundance of sunshine and coastal breezes, Spain is the ideal place for making the best use of renewable energy to power a property. The pay-back period for recovering your initial investment in the plant and equipment is that much shorter, the longer-term running costs will be significantly lowered, and you are not harming the environment. In addition, any renewable energy improvements you have made to the property will result in a considerable appreciation in the property’s value when it comes time to sell.

Under new legislation, to be introduced by the Spanish government with effect from March of next year, all new domestic buildings will need to provide between 30 and 70 per cent of hot water needs using solar thermal energy, depending on the location of the property and the volume of hot water used. The obligation will also apply to buildings undergoing serious renovation.

In addition to the solar thermal obligation for all buildings, the new building codes will require that all commercial buildings over 4,000 square metres are equipped with photovoltaic (PV) panels to generate electricity. Thanks to existing laws governing the sale to the national grid of privately-generated electricity, PV is already growing quickly in Spain and this requirement looks set to increase its application even further.

Black solar panels can already be seen on rooftops all over Spain, in large towns and cities and in small villages. They can also be installed on open patios or any other part of a property, of course, and will work perfectly, provided they are angled towards the south.

The aim of the new building codes is to conserve energy, mainly by heating domestic water supplies. And the consumer’s matching interest in solar energy is simply one of cost. - given the spiralling prices of traditional energy sources such as electricity, oil and gas. The heating of water is one of the principal costs in any household, especially in a region where showers are frequently taken more than once a day. It is perhaps no surprise, therefore, that demand for the installation of solar panels is such that there is now a waiting list, with new requests for installations taking an average of a month to comply with.

The present government’s goal is to see fitted five million solar panels across the country by 2010 - this would require an installation rate of roughly 400,000 panels a year.

The government - and the industry as a whole - hopes that potential long-term savings in a largely sunny country like Spain will encourage people to make the initial investment and overcome worries about the cost of panels. Nevertheless, the government is also backing-up its policy objectives with generous incentives to home-owners who install photovoltaic solar panels that use silicon cells to create energy direct from sunlight. Currently, Spain produces an estimated 39MW of power from photovoltaic cells and this lags far behind the greyer-skied Germany and the Netherlands.

The Government-sponsored Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving (IDEA) will offer subsidies of 30% per cent and the official Institute of Credit will give loans of 80% over ten years. These incentives could see the cost of fitting panels to the average Spanish home drop from the current cost of some €1,624 (£1,100) to just €325 (£221), plus maintenance of €96 (£65) each year for a decade, and provide the householder with an energy saving of around €80 (£50) a year.

According to Javier García Breva, the director of IDEA, Sain will be able to cover 70%of the cost of heating hot water with these solar panels.” To try to encourage people, the Government has already signed a €1.2 million deal with Greenpeace to fit solar panels in 50 schools.

Estimates vary, of course, about the overall cost of solar panels, but on average a 100 square-metre home for four people would need two panels measuring two metres square. This could add up to €2,000 to the cost of the home, but is estimated to pay for itself within ten years in terms of savings on heating bills. With a smaller house, the savings could be less.

The Spanish authorities have been positively targeting the domestic consumer of energy as part of an overall, nationwide power strategy. In recent years, the country has been active on two fronts in the development of solar energy - the installation of PV power and the development of cells, modules and systems. Indeed, with respect to its solar cells, modules and systems, Spain joins Germany and France as the European leaders in the manufacture of the technology. Research and development in the design and application of PV technology are conducted extensively by Spanish universities, research institutes and manufacturing companies.

Currently, Spain’s installed PV capacity stands at some 39 MW of power, ten times its capacity at the beginning of 2000 and approximately level with the Netherlands and France. These three countries represent the second rank behind the European leaders (Germany, Italy and Switzerland). Spanish installed capacity comprises approximately 77% off-grid capacity, 16% on-grid centralised and 7% on-grid distributed.

One particular type of installation is helping to revitalise rural parts of the country: the establishment in isolated communities of stand-alone PV power plants, (consisting of, for example, a 10 kWp array, a 180 kWh battery bank and a power conditioner) which have their electricity distributed via micro-grids. During installation, other domestic services can be supplied - and sites that would otherwise have become depopulated are now much more viable once again.

39MW of power from photovoltaic cells and lags far behind Germany and the Netherlands