Since November 2024 self-consumption in Cyprus has its own regulatory framework. Two points decide most projects: neighbours acting jointly must be inside the same building, and a self-consumer able to inject nothing into the grid has a right not to be curtailed.
Putting panels on a roof in Cyprus used to be a question about a subsidy scheme. It is now a question about a regulatory framework, and the difference matters, because a scheme is discretionary and a framework confers rights.
The rights come from two statutes. Section 38(1) of the Promotion and Encouragement of the Use of Renewable Energy Sources Law, Law 107(I)/2022, gives consumers the right to act as renewable self-consumers, individually or through aggregators, without being subjected to discriminatory or disproportionately burdensome procedures. Sections 9 and 122 of the Electricity Market Regulation Laws, Law 130(I)/2021, give the regulator the power to put that into effect.
Where the rules actually live
They are not in the statutes. They are in two regulatory decisions of the Cyprus Energy Regulatory Authority, published as statutory instruments:
- Regulatory Decision 02/2024, the Regulatory Framework for the Activity of Active Customers and Renewable Energy Self-Consumers, published as ΚΔΠ 375/2024 in the Official Gazette, Supplement III(I), issue 5907 of 15 November 2024
- Regulatory Decision 01/2025, the amending decision, published as ΚΔΠ 243/2025 in issue 5961 of 1 August 2025
The amending decision says how the two are to be read: together, and cited as Regulatory Decisions 02/2024 and 01/2025. Reading the 2024 framework on its own gives an incomplete answer.
This is why energy questions in Cyprus are answered badly so often. The operative rules sit in instruments that are not in the statute books and are not indexed with the legislation, and a reader who stops at the Law finds only the power to make them.
Two roles, not one
The framework distinguishes the active customer from the renewable energy self-consumer, and applies to both. They participate in the electricity market, and the framework requires them to apply the Market Rules and the transmission and distribution rules rather than sitting outside them.
The framework also establishes registers of active customers and of renewable energy self-consumers.
Acting jointly means the same building
Self-consumers may act jointly, which is the arrangement most owners in an apartment block or a mixed-use development want. The framework defines the geographical proximity that permits it, and the definition is short and hard: geographical proximity means the boundaries of the same building.
That single sentence disposes of a great many schemes. Two adjacent buildings under common ownership are not within it. A development of separate blocks is not within it. Where the parties want to share generation across more than one building, the arrangement has to be built on something other than joint self-consumption, and the framework contemplates virtual offsetting of electricity accounts separately.
The framework also requires a responsible representative to be designated for those acting jointly, and calls on the Distribution System Operator to draw up a guide.
The right not to be curtailed
The most valuable provision for anyone sizing an installation is the one the 2025 amendment was made to implement.
Section 38(2)(d) of Law 107(I)/2022 provides that renewable self-consumers who have the technical capability of zero injection of energy into the network have the right that the electricity they produce and which remains within their own installations is not curtailed in cases where curtailment is applied for reasons of securing the system.
Read that against how curtailment is usually experienced. When the network is constrained, generation is cut. A self-consumer who can demonstrate zero injection is asking to keep running on its own power while exporting nothing, and the provision says that consumption cannot be cut for a network reason that its own generation is not contributing to.
Whether an installation qualifies is an engineering question before it is a legal one, and the answer is designed in rather than argued afterwards.
That right now sits beside a curtailment order that is written down and published. Law 70(I)/2026 added provisos to section 47 and to section 70(1)(l) of Law 130(I)/2021 allowing each system operator, where curtailment is necessary to keep the system secure and reliable, to follow an order of curtailment fixed on impartial and equal criteria which take account of the security, reliability and efficiency of both systems and, where feasible, of the cost to the Renewable Energy Sources and Energy Saving Fund and the cost of greenhouse gas emissions. The criteria are submitted jointly by the two operators, approved by CERA and posted on the operator's website. An operator that curtails must inform the affected users and state the reasons, and must avoid any conflict of interest in taking the decision.
The two provisions answer different questions and both are worth knowing. Section 38(2)(d) of Law 107(I)/2022 is about whether a zero injection self-consumer can be curtailed at all; the 2026 provisos are about where anyone else stands in the order when curtailment happens, and they turn that order into a document that can be read and, if it is wrong, challenged.
Capacity limits, and the schemes that came before
The framework contemplates that limits may be set on the maximum capacity of a generating installation, with the Distribution System Operator submitting a proposal on them. Anyone sizing a project on the assumption that capacity is a matter for the owner alone should check where that stands at the time.
Existing offsetting schemes are not swept away. The framework provides that they continue to apply their own terms, so an installation already operating under a net metering arrangement is governed by that arrangement rather than by the new framework by default. Which regime an installation is in is therefore a question of fact about when and under what it was connected.
Some substation capacity is now reserved for self-consumers by statute. A proviso added to section 73(3)(d) of Law 130(I)/2021 by Law 70(I)/2026 requires the Transmission System Operator, when preparing the ten year development plan for the transmission system, to allocate a part of the capacity of transmission substations exclusively to renewable generating installations belonging to renewable self-consumers, on criteria set by notification of the Minister after consultation with CERA and both system operators. The same amendment requires every change to the ten year plan to go to public consultation beforehand and to be published, and requires the plan to include all the works needed to connect and operate renewable generation and storage for which preliminary connection terms have been issued. For an installation waiting on capacity, the plan and the reserved share are the documents that say whether waiting is worth it.
What sits alongside it
Three further regulatory decisions of the same period bear on the same projects: Regulatory Decision 03/2024 on demand response through aggregation, ΚΔΠ 376/2024; Regulatory Decision 04/2024 on citizen energy communities and renewable energy communities, ΚΔΠ 377/2024; and Regulatory Decision 02/2025 on flexible connection agreements to the transmission and distribution systems, ΚΔΠ 260/2025.
The last of those is the one to look at where a connection is refused or offered on conditions, because a flexible connection is the alternative to being told there is no capacity.
The building permit that is deemed to have been issued
A great deal of self-consumption solar no longer needs anyone at the district office to issue anything. Section 3(1) of the Streets and Buildings Regulation Law, Cap. 96, is the provision that forbids building without a permit, and between January 2025 and March 2026 it acquired a ladder of provisos under which the permit is deemed issued. Four of the rungs matter to a self-consumer, and each has conditions that have to be met cumulatively.
On an existing building's shell. The second proviso already treated photovoltaic systems installed on the shell of an existing building belonging to a single owner as permitted. Law 3(I)/2025 extended that to a building belonging to two owners who are spouses or civil partners within the meaning of the Civil Partnership Law, and adjusted the third proviso, which deals with buildings in multiple ownership, so that the spouse and civil partner case is carved out of it.
On a farm. The fourth proviso, inserted by Law 3(I)/2025 and widened by Law 227(I)/2025, deems the permit issued for self-consumption photovoltaics where the conditions in a Ministerial order under section 4B are met and, cumulatively: the systems are of maximum total capacity 100kW, whatever area they cover; they are installed on the roof or surface of an agricultural storehouse, tank, greenhouse or other agricultural or livestock building, or on the ground in the same parcel as the building they serve, or on a roof or ground in an adjoining parcel, or in a different parcel altogether connected to the distribution system by any method, including virtual net-billing and virtual net-metering; and the owner or possessor of the parcel holding the agricultural building is registered in the Register of Farmers and Agricultural Holdings and carries on agricultural activity, or is an irrigation committee, an irrigation association or a Community Council.
Ground-mounted systems under that proviso may not exceed 150 centimetres in height from the adjoining ground. Agrivoltaic systems are the exception and may exceed it. Law 227(I)/2025 added the definition: agrivoltaics means the simultaneous use of land both for semi-transparent photovoltaic panels and for agriculture, including elevated solar arrays above crops and greenhouse solar arrays. It added definitions of virtual net-billing and virtual net-metering at the same time, which is what makes the different-parcel route in the fourth proviso work.
The fifth proviso removes the benefit in one situation, and it is a situation that arises often on Cyprus farmland: the fourth proviso does not apply where a building has been erected illegally on the parcel and is used exclusively as a dwelling.
On any ground or any roof. The sixth proviso, inserted by Law 180(I)/2025, deems the permit issued for self-consumption photovoltaics installed on the ground of a parcel or on the roof of a building, subject to the conditions in a Ministerial order under section 4B, and that order may not set a maximum area. As enacted in October 2025 it was confined to small and medium sized companies as defined in section 141A(1)(a) and (b) of the Companies Law. Law 23(I)/2026 deleted that limb in March 2026, so the proviso is no longer confined by the identity or size of the owner.
On a car park canopy. The seventh proviso deems the permit issued for an electricity storage installation combined with a renewable generating station whose own licences are already in place, and for a data centre at that station. Law 23(I)/2026 added a third limb: photovoltaic systems for self-consumption and/or for commercial purposes on the roofs of lawful canopies over public or private car parks licensed exclusively as parking or to serve a lawful development. Here too the Ministerial order under section 4B may not cap the area.
Two cautions run through all of it. A deemed permit is deemed only if every cumulative condition holds, so the question on any given installation is which proviso it is under and whether it satisfies all of that proviso's limbs. And each of the recent provisos is subject to a Ministerial order under section 4B, so the order is a document to read before relying on the deeming, even though it cannot impose an area cap where the section says it cannot.
Sharing energy with the people around you
Since April 2025 a household, a small or medium sized business or a public body may share renewable electricity with others nearby without becoming an energy supplier. Section 122A of Law 130(I)/2021, inserted by Law 56(I)/2025 to implement Directive (EU) 2024/1711, gives all households, small and medium sized enterprises and public bodies the right to take part in energy sharing as active customers, without discrimination, within a geographic area. The right is subject to the customer's freedom to choose a supplier under section 116 and to the licensing requirements in sections 26 and 27 on the terms CERA sets under section 28.
The geographic area is not in the statute. It is fixed by an Order of the Minister published in the Official Gazette, and by the same Order the Minister may extend the right to further categories of final customer, so the Order rather than the section decides whether a particular arrangement is available.
Participants may share renewable energy between themselves under private agreements or through a legal entity, provided that taking part in energy sharing is not their main commercial or professional activity. They may appoint a third party as organiser of the sharing, to deal with suppliers and network operators on tariffs, charges, taxes and levies, to support the management and balancing of flexible loads behind the meter, to contract with and invoice the participants, and to install and operate the generating or storage installation, including metering and maintenance. The organiser may own or operate a renewable generating or storage installation of up to 6 MW without being treated as an active customer, unless it is itself one of the participants, and must provide its services without discrimination and on transparent prices, tariffs and terms.
The provision that makes sharing worth doing is the netting. Section 122A(6) requires the Minister, on a reasoned report from CERA, to take measures ensuring that participants may deduct the shared electricity injected into the network from their own total metered consumption within a period no longer than the imbalance settlement period, subject to non-discriminatory taxes and levies and to cost reflective network charges. Participants keep every right and obligation they have as final customers, get access to optional model contracts on fair and transparent terms, get out of court dispute resolution under section 128 for disputes with the other participants, and are protected against unfair discriminatory treatment by market participants or their balance responsible parties.
Two figures decide whether supplier obligations follow. Where renewable energy is shared between households, section 122A(6)(c) exempts the participants from a supplier's obligations up to an installed capacity of 10.8 kW for a single household and 50 kW for an apartment building. The Minister may raise those limits by Order to 30 kW and 100 kW, or reduce the apartment building limit to 40 kW in duly justified special circumstances where the average size of apartment buildings is smaller. Regulations under section 138 are contemplated for the organiser and third party provisions.
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Information we may need later
Once we confirm we can act, we will explain what to provide. The following information is for the subsequent review, not your first message.
Send the connection application and any response from the operator, the single line diagram and the proposed capacity, the ownership position of the roof or the land, and if more than one owner is involved, the building. The first question is which regime the installation falls into, because the framework, an existing offsetting scheme and an energy community are three different answers with three different sets of rules.
Questions we are asked
Where are the Cyprus self-consumption rules actually written?
Not in the statutes. In Regulatory Decision 02/2024 of the Cyprus Energy Regulatory Authority, published as ΚΔΠ 375/2024 on 15 November 2024, as amended by Regulatory Decision 01/2025, ΚΔΠ 243/2025 of 1 August 2025. The two are read together.
Can my generation be cut when the grid is constrained?
Section 38(2)(d) of Law 107(I)/2022 gives self-consumers with the technical capability of zero injection the right that electricity produced and remaining within their own installations is not curtailed where curtailment is applied to secure the system.
Does the framework change my existing net metering arrangement?
Not automatically. The framework provides that existing offsetting schemes continue to apply their own terms, so which regime governs an installation depends on when and under what it was connected.
Is there a limit on how big an installation can be?
The framework contemplates that limits may be set on maximum capacity, with the Distribution System Operator submitting a proposal. It is a point to check at the time rather than to assume.
Related reading
This work sits within our energy practice. The permitting and grid sequence for a larger project is set out in developing a solar project in Cyprus, and the licensing and market background in energy projects in Cyprus. For charging points rather than generation, see installing electric vehicle charging points.
This article is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. Laws and their application can change, and individual circumstances differ. For advice on your own matter, contact Klitos Platis at klitos@kleanthousplatis.com or telephone +357 22 680 330.
Klitos Platis
Advocate, Partner
Kleanthous & Platis LLC, Nicosia · Published 31 July 2026
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