Frequently asked questions

The questions our sales line actually receives, answered plainly. If yours is not here, write to office@lumocasa.md and we will answer it directly.

Which roof types can you install on?

Ceramic and concrete tile, standing-seam metal, trapezoidal and corrugated sheet, bitumen shingle, and flat concrete decks. Each gets a different mounting method: hanger bolts fixed into the rafters under tile, clamps that grip the seam on standing-seam metal, sealed self-drilling fixings on trapezoidal sheet, and either ballasted frames or chemically anchored feet on flat concrete. The one covering we generally decline is old fibre-cement sheet, because it cannot be walked on safely and because disturbing it raises disposal questions we would rather not create for you.

Do I need a permit to install solar panels?

For a rooftop system on a private house, sized to your own consumption and connected under net metering, no construction permit is required. What you do need is the authorisation from the distribution operator to connect a generating installation, and we prepare and submit that application for you. Ground-mounted arrays, systems on listed or protected buildings, and installations above the net metering threshold follow a different route, and we will say so before you sign anything.

How does grid connection work?

After the contract is signed we submit a connection request to your distribution operator with the single-line diagram, the equipment datasheets and the inverter certificates. The operator reviews it, issues connection conditions, and after installation sends a technician to replace your meter with a bidirectional unit and to witness the commissioning. Only after that exchange is the system allowed to export. We manage the correspondence; you sign the forms.

What is net metering, exactly?

Energy you produce and use immediately never touches the meter. Energy you produce and do not use is exported and credited against energy you later import, kilowatt-hour for kilowatt-hour, within the settlement period set by regulation. It is a credit against consumption, not a cash payment, which is why we size systems to your consumption rather than to the maximum the roof will hold.

What size system do I need?

Start from your annual consumption in kilowatt-hours, which is on your bill. As a rough rule, each kilowatt of installed capacity produces around 1,150 to 1,300 kWh a year on a well-oriented Moldovan roof. A household using 4,500 kWh a year is therefore looking at roughly 4 kW. If you are planning to add a heat pump or an electric car, tell us at the assessment stage and we will size for the future load instead.

What happens if a tree or a chimney shades part of the array?

Partial shading costs more than its area suggests, because a shaded cell drags down the string it sits in. We deal with it in one of three ways: laying the array out to avoid the shaded zone, splitting the array across two inverter inputs so the affected string is isolated, or fitting module-level power electronics so each panel operates independently. We model the shading at survey and tell you what it costs in annual yield before you commit.

Do I need a battery?

Not to save money on your bill. Under net metering the grid already acts as your store, and a battery pays for itself slowly on arbitrage alone. What a battery buys you is continuity: nominated circuits stay live through a grid outage. If outages on your feeder are frequent and disruptive, storage is worth it. If they are rare, put the money into a larger array instead.

Will the system work during a power cut?

A plain grid-tie system will not. It is required by the connection conditions to disconnect when the grid goes down, so that it cannot energise lines that a utility crew believes are dead. To have power during an outage you need either a hybrid inverter with a backup output and a battery, or a separately switched generator arrangement. We fit the former routinely.

How much maintenance does a system need?

Very little, but not none. The array should be inspected once a year: fixings torque-checked, terminations examined for heating, the inverter’s firmware brought up to date, and the modules cleaned. Dust and agricultural deposits are the main cause of gradual yield loss on Moldovan rooftops, and a dirty array can lose five to eight percent of its output before anyone notices. Our maintenance contracts cover exactly this.

What warranties do I get?

Three separate ones. The modules carry a manufacturer product warranty, typically 12 to 15 years, plus a performance warranty guaranteeing around 87 percent of rated output at year 25. The inverter carries a manufacturer warranty of 5 to 12 years depending on the model, extendable at purchase. On top of both, LumoCasa gives a ten-year guarantee on the installation work itself — the mounting, the cabling, the terminations and the workmanship. If a fixing leaks, that is ours to fix.

How long do the panels last?

Modules degrade slowly rather than failing suddenly. A quality monocrystalline module loses roughly 0.4 to 0.5 percent of its output per year, so after 25 years it still produces close to 87 percent of what it did when new. Inverters are the shorter-lived component; plan on replacing one once during the life of the array, at a cost of roughly 12,000 to 30,000 MDL depending on size.

Can I add more panels later?

Yes, if the system was designed for it. Adding capacity means either headroom in the existing inverter or a second inverter, and it means notifying the distribution operator, because your connection is authorised for a stated capacity. Tell us at the design stage that you may expand, and we will specify an inverter and a mounting layout that leave room. Retrofitting expansion onto a system that was sized exactly to its array is possible but rarely economical.