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Net billing in Cyprus: what changed, and what it means for a new solar system
Systems installed today connect under net billing. Exported energy earns the wholesale rate; imported energy costs retail. That single change moves the centre of gravity of a solar business from how much a system produces to how much of its own energy it uses.
What changed
Net metering and the older support schemes closed to new applicants on 31 December 2025. Since 1 January 2026, a new photovoltaic system in Cyprus connects under net billing.
This applies to new connections. Existing net-metering contracts continue until they expire, and transition at that point. So if you are quoting a system today, you are quoting into net billing — but a customer with a system from 2023 is not automatically on it, and it is worth being precise about that in conversation.
Net metering and net billing are not variations of the same thing
Under net metering, energy you exported was credited against energy you later imported at roughly one to one. A kilowatt-hour was a kilowatt-hour, whichever direction it travelled. Sizing a system to cover annual consumption was a reasonable strategy, because the grid effectively acted as a free battery across the year.
Under net billing, the two directions are priced separately, and they are not close:
| Net metering (closed to new systems) | Net billing (new systems) | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy you export | Credited against later imports, roughly 1:1 | Earns the wholesale rate, approximately €0.04–0.06/kWh |
| Energy you import | Offset by your export credits | Costs the retail rate, approximately €0.25–0.35/kWh |
| What sizing optimises for | Annual production | Self-consumption |
Rates above are indicative ranges as at August 2026 and are shown to illustrate the size of the gap, not to price a specific installation. Wholesale export rates vary; retail import cost is a stack of components that change on their own schedules. Model a real quote against the customer's actual tariff, not against a range.
The practical consequence is the ratio. A kilowatt-hour the customer uses on site is worth roughly five times one sent to the grid. Every design decision that raises self-consumption is worth about five times more than one that raises raw production.
What this does to system design
Three things change in how a system is specified.
Sizing stops being about annual yield
A system sized to match annual consumption will now overshoot during the day and undershoot in the evening, and the overshoot is paid at the low rate while the shortfall is bought at the high one. Matching the shape of consumption matters more than matching its total.
Batteries move from optional to central
Under net metering a battery competed with a grid that stored energy for free. Under net billing it captures the spread between the export rate and the import rate on every cycle, which is where the economics now live. That is also why how well a battery is controlled — not just whether one is fitted — starts to show up in the payback.
Timing becomes a lever
Shifting a load into daylight hours, or discharging a battery into the evening peak instead of exporting at midday, changes what the same hardware earns. Under net metering this was close to irrelevant. It is not any more.
The Cyprus numbers worth knowing
Useful reference points when modelling a system here:
- Solar resource: roughly 1,650 kWh per kWp per year is the usual Cyprus planning figure.
- Net billing annual fee: €47.23 plus VAT per kWp per year.
- VAT on electricity: 9%.
- Grid carbon intensity: 0.707 kg CO2 per kWh, which is what avoided-emissions figures are calculated from.
Retail import cost is not one number. It is an energy charge, a fuel adjustment that moves, a network charge, ancillary services, a public service obligation levy, and fixed supply charges — then VAT. This is why a flat cent-per-kilowatt-hour assumption produces a payback figure that quietly drifts away from the customer's actual bill.
Tariff components are published by the EAC and change on their own schedule. Any figure here is a reference point, not a quote. Nothing on this page is a guarantee of savings or of payback period.
Credits and settlement
Exported energy accrues as a monetary credit rather than as banked kilowatt-hours. Credits are settled monthly, and unused credit has a finite life — Helios models a 36-month expiry window and sweeps expired credit accordingly. For a customer this means credit is not indefinitely bankable, and a system that exports heavily can accumulate credit it never gets to spend.
What this changes for an installer
Three habits carried over from net metering are now worth revisiting.
- Quote against the real tariff. A proposal built on an average rate will be wrong in the direction the customer notices — their bill.
- Sell the self-consumption rate. It is the number that now determines the outcome, and it is measurable after commissioning rather than only projected before it.
- Measure after handover. Under net metering a system that underperformed quietly still roughly broke even against the meter. Under net billing, underperformance and poor self-consumption both cost real money, and neither is visible without monitoring.
Where Helios fits
Helios was built for this specific market condition. The parts that bear directly on net billing:
- A tariff engine driven by data, not code. EAC components, fuel adjustment and wholesale export rates are configuration. When a rate changes, nothing needs rebuilding.
- Savings computed from the customer's actual tariff rather than a flat assumed rate. Where a site reports production only, self-consumption has to be estimated, and the product marks those figures as estimated rather than presenting them as measured.
- A battery-aware self-consumption calculation, so the number reflects what the battery actually did.
- Virtual net billing settlement — a monthly credit ledger with the 36-month expiry sweep applied.
- An ROI calculator and bill estimator for the quoting stage, implemented once in the backend and once in the browser with enforced parity between them, so the number in a proposal matches the number in the app.
If the numbers cannot be computed honestly — no usable import price, for instance — the product shows no figure rather than an invented one. That principle matters more under net billing than it did before, because the gap between a plausible estimate and the real bill is now much wider.
Read next
The Helios Platform covers monitoring, savings reporting and the installer CRM. Helios Edge EMS is the on-site controller for solar-plus-battery sites, which is where the self-consumption economics above are actually won or lost. The FAQ answers the questions installers ask most often.
Talk to us.
Book a demo and we will walk through how a system's economics look under net billing, using your own figures.