Solar PV for municipalities: design for a public tender, grid connection and electricity sharing

30 October 2026 · 4 min read

Municipal solar PV is not built like a company plant: it goes to a public tender, often covers several buildings at once and follows the budget cycle. What the design must meet so the municipality can tender, connect and share electricity between its buildings.

Where municipalities build solar PV

Most often on the roofs of their own buildings – schools, nursery schools, the town hall, a sports hall, a cultural centre, a wastewater treatment plant – and on municipal land. The advantage is daytime consumption: the town hall and the school need electricity exactly when the panels produce it. The drawbacks tend to be older roofs and the fact that each building is a separate consumption point with its own grid connection.

Design for a public tender

A building paid for with public money is procured under the Public Procurement Act, and the design is the basis of the tender documentation. Two rules follow:

No brand names. Technical specifications must not refer to specific suppliers or products unless this is necessary, and even then the contracting authority must allow an equivalent solution (Section 89 of Act No. 134/2016 Coll.). We therefore describe panels, inverters and mounting systems by parameters – power, efficiency, dimensions, loads, warranties – chosen so that several manufacturers available in the Czech Republic can meet them.
Bill of quantities. For a public works contract, the technical specifications are defined by the design documentation and by a bill of works, supplies and services with quantities to the extent set by Decree No. 169/2016 Coll. (Section 92 of the Act). Bidders price the bill, so the bids are comparable.

A design for a tender must be complete. Whatever is missing is added during construction as extra work – and extra work is hard to justify in a public contract.

Roof, fire safety and lightning protection

Before designing, the roof build-up and load capacity must be known, and on flat roofs also the wind resistance of ballasted mounting systems; for older school and office buildings a structural assessment decides. Solar PV becomes part of the building's fire safety solution – clearances on the roof, cable routing, shutdown for firefighters. And because these are civic amenity buildings, which Decree No. 146/2024 Coll. explicitly names among the buildings to be protected against lightning, we also assess lightning protection: panels on the roof change the existing system too. More in the article on lightning protection for solar PV.

Grid connection and electricity sharing

Each building has its own consumption point and the plant on it has to be connected separately – a connection application is filed for each point. Smaller outputs fit into the existing service connection; a larger plant on municipal land may need a medium-voltage connection. The procedure is described in the article on the grid connection application.

A municipality can share surplus electricity from one building with its other consumption points – for example from the school to the town hall or the treatment plant. Sharing is registered with the Czech Electricity Data Centre (EDC), and interval metering at the participating points is a condition. It is an accounting operation: shared electricity reduces the electricity bought from the supplier, while distribution charges are still paid. The sharing rules are evolving, so we check them in their current wording when designing.

Budget, grants and timing

Municipalities plan investments within an annual budget, usually approved at the end of the year. A design prepared in autumn therefore lets the project go into the budget and the tender go out in spring. If the municipality counts on a grant, we prepare the documentation so that it can be attached to the application – with a cost estimate, a bill of quantities and a yield calculation. We always check the conditions of the specific call with the grant provider.

What we need from the municipality to start

a list of the buildings and plots under consideration,
electricity bills or a year of interval data for the consumption points,
building drawings, if available – especially roofs and switchboards,
an idea of the budget and whether a grant is expected.

From this we prepare a site check: on which buildings a plant makes sense, with what output, how to connect it and what scope of design will be needed. The whole service is described on the solar PV page.

FAQ

Can a municipality ask for a specific panel brand in the design?

Only exceptionally, and always with the option to offer an equivalent solution. It is more reliable to describe the required parameters – power, efficiency, warranties – and set them so that the municipality gets the quality it wants.

Does solar PV on a school pay off when there are summer holidays?

Summer surpluses can be shared with other municipal buildings, stored in battery storage or sold to the grid. We therefore size the plant on the consumption of the whole year and the options for sharing, not on one building alone.

Does municipal solar PV need a building permit?

It depends on the output, the location and the type of structure. Smaller rooftop plants can be built without a permit, larger and ground-mounted ones need one. We assess this at the very start under the current Building Act.

Planning a similar project?

Send us the site and your intent. We reply within 48 hours.

Request a design