Abbeyknockmoy

Abhaile Solar installs solar PV for homes and farms across Abbeyknockmoy and the surrounding parishes, covering Monivea, Barnaderg, Ryehill, Cummer, Colemanstown, Newcastle and out towards Moylough.

This is settled farming country with an older housing stock than the villages closer to the city, and that changes the conversation. A good share of the enquiries we get from around here come from people weighing up several jobs at once: a roof that’s coming due, insulation that was never done properly, an oil boiler on its last few winters, and solar somewhere in the mix. The order you do those in makes a real difference to what you spend and what you get back, so it’s worth thinking about before committing to any of them.

We’ve completed over 500 installations nationally with more than thirty years of electrical experience behind the business, and we handle the whole job ourselves from free survey through to grant payment.

Should the Roof Be Done Before the Panels Go On?

Sometimes, yes, and we’d rather tell you that at the survey than take the order.

A solar array is a twenty-five year proposition. If the slates or tiles underneath it have five or ten years left, the panels have to come off and go back on again when the roof is redone, which is a cost nobody budgets for and a completely avoidable one. On older farmhouses around Abbeyknockmoy we’re often looking at roofs where the covering is sound but the battens or the felt underneath are the weak point, and that isn’t visible from the ground.

What we check at survey is the condition of the covering, the state of the battens where we can see them, and whether the roof structure is sound enough to carry the additional load. If it all has years left, we get on with it. If the roof is borderline, the honest advice is usually to reroof first and fit the array onto a roof that will outlast it, or to use an outbuilding or a ground mounted frame instead and leave the house roof alone entirely.

Where Solar Fits Alongside Insulation and Heating Upgrades

If you’re planning more than one upgrade, sequence matters, and the general principle is to reduce demand before you spend on generating or heating.

Attic and wall insulation, draught-proofing and windows come first, because they cut how much energy the house needs in the first place and make everything after them cheaper to run. Heating comes next: a heat pump in particular performs badly in a poorly insulated house, and eligibility for heat pump support is tied to the building’s heat loss, so the fabric work usually has to happen first regardless.

Solar sits differently, because it doesn’t depend on the fabric of the house in the same way. Panels generate the same whether the attic is insulated or not, so there’s no technical reason to wait. The one thing worth thinking about is sizing. If you’re likely to move from oil to a heat pump in the next few years, or to add an EV, your electricity consumption is going to rise substantially, and a system sized for today’s usage may be undersized for the house you’ll actually have. That’s a good argument for building in a bit of headroom rather than fitting the minimum.

SEAI supports these works through separate grants, or through the one stop shop route where several upgrades are done together. We’ll tell you honestly where solar sits in your particular list rather than assuming it belongs at the top of it.

Smart Tariffs, Night Rates and Getting More From a Battery

This is the part most people don’t hear about until after installation, and it’s worth understanding beforehand because it changes what a battery is worth.

A battery’s obvious job is storing your own generation for the evening. Its second job, on a smart tariff, is buying electricity when it’s cheap and using it when it’s dear. Most suppliers now offer time-of-use tariffs with a considerably lower night rate and a higher peak rate in the early evening, and a battery can be set to charge from the grid overnight and discharge through the peak.

That matters most in the depths of winter, from roughly November to February, when generation is thin and a battery would otherwise sit half empty. Instead of being idle for the worst months, it keeps working on price difference rather than solar. Combined through the year, the two jobs together make a stronger case for storage than solar alone does.

The caveat is that tariff structures vary between suppliers and change from time to time, so the sums depend on what you’re actually signed up to. We’ll set the system up to suit your tariff, but check the terms with your supplier before switching on the strength of the numbers.

Farms and Outbuildings Around Abbeyknockmoy and Monivea

On most holdings around here the sheds offer more usable roof than the house, with less shading and a workable pitch. Whether that’s the right home for the array depends on roof construction and condition, and on which supply the buildings are on, since a system feeding the yard meter offsets the yard’s consumption rather than the house’s.

The return comes from daytime demand. Water pumps, cooling, ventilation and workshop tools all draw while the panels are producing, so very little is exported. Where a holding’s daytime load is light, as it often is on drystock, a smaller system sized against actual consumption will outperform a large one that exports most of what it makes.

What Households Here Save

Most households see electricity bills fall by roughly 50% to 70%, with your outcome set by how much generation you use directly rather than export.

Farming households and anyone home during the day are already consuming at the most valuable rate. Households commuting into Tuam, Athenry or the city have an empty house through the best generating hours, and for them storage is what turns midday output into evening savings. Where a house is also on a smart tariff, the battery earns its keep twice over.

SEAI Grants for Abbeyknockmoy Homes and Farms

The SEAI Domestic Solar PV Grant of up to €1,800 applies to eligible homes here as it does nationally, coming straight off the installation cost. Separate SEAI support covers other home energy upgrades such as insulation and heat pumps, and those are worth looking at together if you’re planning more than one job.

Farms and businesses fall under their own support, scaling with the size of the system installed. We complete and submit the solar grant application and the ESB Networks paperwork on your behalf.

From Enquiry to Grant Payment

Survey and proposal. Send your Eircode and a recent ESB bill, plus both bills if the house and yard are separately metered. We survey free of charge, assessing roof condition, orientation, shading, supply arrangement and any upgrades you’re planning, then issue a written proposal.

Installation and commissioning. We lodge the grant application, notify ESB Networks and agree a date. Our own team fits and commissions the system, connects it, configures it for your tariff and sets up your monitoring app.

Documentation and aftercare. We complete the paperwork, arrange the BER assessment where applicable and see the grant through to payment, with a five-year labour warranty on the work.

Solar Panel Questions from Abbeyknockmoy