How much does a 3-5 kWp solar system produce in Malta?

Most questions about solar in Malta are really one question: how many kilowatt-hours will come off the roof, and what are they worth. The first half is arithmetic. The second half depends on how much electricity your household already burns, because Enemalta's residential tariff is a cumulative ladder and solar takes units off the top rung first.

The only number you need to multiply

PVGIS v5.3, run on 16 October 2026 using the SARAH3 database with the standard 14 per cent system losses, gives these specific yields for Malta:

• South, 32 degrees (optimal): 1,668 kWh per kWp per year
• South, 30 degrees: 1,667
• Flat (no tilt): 1,476 — about 11 per cent below optimal
• East, 30 degrees: 1,376 — about 17 per cent below optimal
• West, 30 degrees: 1,393 — about 16 per cent below optimal
• Gozo, optimal angle: 1,677

Pick the line that matches your roof, multiply by your system size in kWp, and you have your modelled annual output. That is the whole method.

Two things worth noticing straight away. First, tilt barely matters: 30 degrees and 32 degrees differ by one kilowatt-hour per kWp. Second, orientation matters far more than most people expect — an east-facing pitch gives up roughly a sixth of the year's production against south.

The table

All figures in kWh per year, rounded to the nearest ten. These are model estimates from a single PVGIS run, not measured output and not a guarantee. They assume a clean, unshaded array at the stated tilt and orientation.

The 3.5 kWp row is there because that is reported as the average domestic system size in Malta — a figure seen in search results for the NSO's PV statistics page rather than verified on the page itself, so treat it as an indication of what neighbours have rather than a hard benchmark. The same source gives national installed capacity as 268,016.5 kWp.

Where that output lands on your bill

Enemalta's residential rates as at 6 February 2026, including 5 per cent VAT, are cumulative over the billing year:

There is also a fixed service charge of €65 a year single-phase, €195 triple-phase, and an eco-reduction for small households.

Because the bands are cumulative, a kilowatt-hour you do not buy is worth whatever your top band costs, not your average rate. That is the single most important thing to understand about solar economics here, and it means two identical 4 kWp systems can be worth wildly different amounts of money.

Three worked cases, assuming for illustration that the units are consumed in the house rather than exported:

• A household using 4,500 kWh a year. Everything above 2,000 kWh sits in the 0.1298 band. Displacing 2,500 kWh saves 2,500 × 0.1298 = €324.50. You cannot save more than that from band displacement, because the remaining 2,000 kWh are only worth 0.1047 each.
• A household using 9,000 kWh a year. The top 3,000 kWh sit at 0.1607. Displacing them saves €482.10, after which further displacement drops into the 0.1298 band.
• A household using 12,000 kWh a year — a pool pump, a few air conditioners, maybe an EV. The first 2,000 kWh displaced come off the 0.3420 band and are worth €684 on their own. The next 4,000 come off at 0.1607, worth €642.80.

The ladder is steep at the top. The jump from 0.1607 to 0.3420 more than doubles the value of a displaced unit, which is why heavy consumers see a very different return from modest ones even with the same roof and the same array.

Generation is not the same as saving

The table above is production. Savings are a different quantity, and the difference is timing. Solar peaks in the middle of the day; many households peak in the evening. Units you generate but do not use at the moment of generation are exported and paid at the feed-in tariff rather than deducted from your consumption at the band rate above.

No source used here establishes what proportion of a Maltese household's generation is typically self-consumed, so this article does not give one — and you should treat any figure quoted to you as a sales assumption unless it comes with the household data behind it. A battery changes that split, which is the subject of our battery guide. Our savings and payback calculator handles the self-consumption and export arithmetic with the inputs made explicit; the battery and sizing tabs open directly.

On grants: the 2026 REWS RES grant closed to applications on 12 September 2026, with battery options closing on 13 July 2026. A further round has been announced but has not been detailed — no rates, caps or dates are published, and nobody can tell you what it will contain.

Roof realities in Malta and Gozo

Rooftop PV is permitted development under Class 1(iv) of the Development Notification Order, S.L. 552.08, provided the installation is DC15-compliant. That removes a planning step that trips people up elsewhere, but it does not remove the other constraints.

Most Maltese roofs are flat, which is why the 1,476 kWh/kWp line matters so much. A flat array loses about 11 per cent against optimal; tilt frames recover that but take more roof area per kWp because of inter-row shading, so on a small terraced roof the flat figure may be the realistic one. Apartment installations are bound by condominium rules on common roof space regardless of what the planning law permits. And in Gozo — where the modelled yield is a negligible nine kilowatt-hours per kWp higher — every panel, inverter and frame crosses on the ferry, which shows up in scheduling rather than in production.

If you want the array laid out on your actual roof outline rather than estimated from a table, our free roof planner, SpecYourSolar, does that, and a free roof survey checks the things a model cannot see. How the installers doing that work are verified is set out at CheckYourSolar.