Law 82-21 in Morocco: solar self-consumption and selling your surplus, the practical 2026 guide

Three years. That is how long it took between the vote on law 82-21 in February 2023 and the publication of its implementing decree in March 2026. During those three years, plenty of people in Morocco put panels on their roofs with no clear framework for connecting them. That period is over, and the text deserves a close read: it allows a lot, but not everything you read in the press.

At Econiva Consulting we have been installing solar in Morocco since 2014, so we knew the before and the after. This guide covers the questions our customers ask us every week in Casablanca, Marrakech, Agadir and Rabat.

What changed with the March 2026 decree?

Decree No. 2-25-100, published in Official Bulletin No. 7489 on March 9, 2026 and in force since June 9, 2026, finally makes law 82-21 on electricity self-production applicable. It sets the power thresholds and the administrative regimes. Together with the ANRE decisions of early 2026, it completes the framework for selling surplus power to the grid.

Some context. Law 13-09 of 2010 opened up private production of renewable electricity, mainly for large projects. Law 58-15 of 2016 cracked the door open for surplus sales on medium voltage. But for a homeowner with ten panels on the roof, nothing was really provided for. Law 82-21, promulgated on February 10, 2023, created the first complete framework dedicated to self-production, for individuals and companies alike, at every voltage level. Only the decree was missing. Now it is here.

Two definitions to keep things straight. Self-production is the legal term: generating electricity to cover your own consumption. Self-consumption is the same act seen from the billing side: using what your panels produce directly instead of buying those kWh from ONEE or your local utility. In everyday Moroccan practice, the two words describe the same thing.

Who can self-produce electricity in Morocco?

Everyone: households, businesses, farmers, on low, medium or high voltage. What changes with your situation is the administrative regime. Under 11 kW connected on low voltage: a simple declaration. From 11 kW to 5 MW: prior connection approval. Above 5 MW: an authorization. Isolated sites with no grid connection file a declaration whatever their capacity.

For a home, remember one thing above all: 11 kW on low voltage is already a very large residential system. Most Moroccan homes install between 3 and 6 kWp. In other words, almost every residential project falls under the lightest regime, the declaration. No authorization to request, no ministry file.

What is the 20% rule?

The law caps the power you can inject and sell to the grid at 20% of your system's annual production. In practice, if your panels produce 8,000 kWh a year, you can sell at most 1,600. The rest has to be consumed on site, or stored in batteries and used later.

Why the cap? Lawmakers want to encourage self-consumption, not turn every rooftop into a disguised commercial power plant. You can debate the level of the cap, but the logic is clear, and it has a direct consequence for sizing: a system is calculated on your actual consumption, not on how much roof you have. An oversized system would produce a surplus you could neither sell in full nor use. That is money sitting on your roof for nothing.

Watch out for a common misunderstanding too: the 20% rule is not net metering. Your meter does not run backwards, and the kWh you inject do not wipe out the kWh you consume on your bill. When it applies, the surplus sale is a separate transaction, at a separate tariff.

How much is the surplus bought back for?

For customers connected on medium and high voltage, ANRE has set the surplus buyback tariff at around 0.21 DH/kWh in peak hours and 0.18 DH/kWh off-peak, for the period from March 2026 to February 2027. For low voltage, meaning households, the tariff does not exist yet: ANRE will set it once the technical framework is in place.

Let's be straight about the numbers. You buy your electricity at between 0.90 DH/kWh in the first bracket and close to 1.60 DH/kWh above 500 kWh a month. The grid will buy your surplus back at around 0.20 DH. A kWh you consume yourself is therefore worth five to eight times more than a kWh you sell. Selling the surplus is a bonus that recovers value from power that would otherwise be lost, not a revenue model. Anyone selling you a system on the promise of a monthly cheque from ONEE is telling you a story.

What are the steps for installing at home?

For a house, the process comes down to a prior declaration with your grid operator, as long as you stay under 11 kW on low voltage. No authorization, no trip to the ministry. The operator is ONEE in most cities, Lydec in Casablanca, Redal in Rabat, Amendis in Tangier and Tetouan.

In order, here is how a project unfolds:

1. The sizing study. We start from your last twelve months of bills to work out the capacity you actually need. This step determines everything that follows, and with us it is free, at your home.
2. The prior declaration. The file describes the installation: capacity, inverter, connection diagram. It goes to your grid operator before work starts.
3. The installation. One to three days of work for a house, with equipment that meets the operator's requirements, in particular the inverter's grid disconnection protection.
4. Commissioning. Checks, inverter settings, and production monitoring from an app. The day the low-voltage buyback tariff is published, a properly declared installation will be ready to benefit.

A word on equipment: in a declaration file, the choice of inverter and the quality of the connection carry more weight than the brand of the panels. Our guide on choosing a solar installer details what a serious quote must spell out in black and white.

What does it change for a home?

First, legal certainty: your grid-connected system now has a clear status, declared and above board. Next, a prospect: the day ANRE publishes the low-voltage buyback tariff, your surplus will become a small income. But the economics do not change: direct self-consumption is what pays your panels back.

Take an illustrative calculation. A house paying 900 DH a month burns a good share of its kWh in the upper brackets of the ONEE scale, at roughly 1.38 to 1.60 DH per kWh. A 3 kWp system produces on the order of 350 to 450 kWh a month in Morocco, depending on region and orientation. If most of that production replaces kWh from the upper brackets, the bill drops sharply: the Moroccan market quotes savings of 60 to 80% on this kind of profile. These are 2026 benchmarks, not guarantees, and that is exactly what an on-site study is there to verify. For price ranges on equipment and installation, see our guide to solar panel prices, and for the full payback calculation, our article on solar payback.

The simplest lever costs nothing: shift consumption to the sunny hours. Run the washing machine during the day, program the electric water heater for noon, filter the pool in the afternoon. Every kWh you use while the panels are producing is a kWh you do not buy at 1.60 DH. For evening consumption, storage is the question, and it deserves a real calculation: our battery comparison shows when a battery makes sense and when it needlessly stretches the payback.

And for a business?

Businesses are where the decree changes the most. A site connected on medium or high voltage can now self-produce and sell its surplus today, at the ANRE tariff of roughly 0.18 to 0.21 DH/kWh, within the 20% cap. Whether you need a declaration or connection approval depends on capacity, and grid usage fees apply, on the order of 0.06 DH per kWh on medium-voltage distribution.

The economic case lies elsewhere than in the surplus sale. A factory, a cold storage warehouse, a hotel or a clinic consumes mostly during the day, exactly when the panels produce. On these profiles, 85 to 95% of production is used on site without a battery. Payback periods observed on the Moroccan market in 2026 run from 5 to 8 years depending on project size and load profile, on equipment warrantied for far longer. Again, these are orders of magnitude: every site deserves its own study, with real load curves.

How Econiva handles the paperwork for you

The rules are recent and the counters still apply them unevenly from one utility to the next. Keeping track of that is our job, not yours. On every grid-tied self-consumption project, we prepare the declaration or approval file, supply the technical datasheets the grid operator requires and follow the file through to commissioning. When the low-voltage buyback tariff is published, our declared customers will be first in line.

If you want to know what law 82-21 allows in your specific case, with your bills and your roof, the simplest step is a free home study. We work in Casablanca, Marrakech, Agadir and Rabat: request your free study, or send a WhatsApp message to +212 661-764046, and a technician comes to you.

Econiva Consulting team · June 30, 2026