Italy's iperammortamento 2026 for solar: it works for remote self-consumption too

Almost everything written about Italy's iperammortamento 2026 — the country's enhanced-depreciation relief — takes one thing for granted: that the plant sits on the roof or yard of whoever consumes the power. The implementing decree, signed on 4 May 2026, says something different, and more useful. Eligible assets include renewable self-production «for self-consumption even at a distance», storage systems included.

It is one phrase — at a distance — but it moves the perimeter. The relief applies even when the plant is not physically where the load is: a field a few kilometres away, within the same area di cabina primaria (primary-substation area), feeding one or more withdrawal points. It is the model we work on every day, and it is the angle the tax commentary handles badly, or not at all.

The window is open now

The relief covers investments completed between 1 January 2026 and 30 September 2028, with the completion notice filed to the GSE by 15 November 2028. Access is fully online, on the GSE platform, via SPID or CIE.

The part that drives the timeline is elsewhere: the comunicazione preventiva — the upfront notice — must be filed before the investment starts. This is not a relief you claim after the fact. Whoever starts buying and then thinks about the paperwork risks ruling themselves out. On a solar plant in remote self-consumption — where months pass between design, grid connection and GSE configuration — the iperammortamento has to be in the model from day one, not bolted on later.

«Even at a distance»: what it actually unlocks

Remote self-consumption decouples the point of production from the point of consumption, while staying inside the cabina primaria perimeter. In practice an energy-intensive company is not forced to find the square metres next to its plant: the array can sit where it makes sense to build it — better irradiation, available land, a cleaner connection — and the energy is still valued as self-consumption.

The fiscal point is that the relief follows the self-production asset, not its location. That opens two configurations that do not exist on-site:

• the company invests directly in a remote plant serving its own withdrawals;
• a third-party producer (or an ESCO) builds the plant and structures supply, with ownership of the asset — and therefore of the benefit — defined by contract.

The second is where structure matters more than tax: who capitalises the plant, who uses it, how the costs are split. More on that below.

What it is worth

The uplift is tiered, on the cost of the investment:

• +180% up to €2.5 million;
• +100% above €2.5m and up to €10m;
• +50% above €10m and up to €20m.

Almost any single-company self-production project lands in the first tier, where the full +180% applies. It is a super-depreciation: over the asset's tax-depreciation period you deduct far more than the cost actually incurred. The cash effect is not immediate like a tax credit, but on a multi-year asset it is substantial and predictable.

The constraint that rules out half the modules

This is where most optimistic models break. Only modules listed in the ENEA register (DL 181/2023), and belonging to two categories, are eligible:

• Type B — cells produced in the European Union, minimum cell efficiency 23.5%;
• Type C — bifacial heterojunction (HJT) or tandem cells, produced in the EU, minimum cell efficiency 24%.

Category A is excluded from the relief. And there is an operational detail the spreadsheets ignore: category B, eligible on paper, is today effectively empty in the register. Translated: in practice you buy category C, with the price and availability that follow. The economics of the relief are decided on the module bill of materials, not on the headline rate.

There has been some easing, but elsewhere. DL 38/2026 removed the Made in EU constraint on general capital goods: inverters, storage, transformers and balance-of-system components can come from any region. The provenance constraint — and ENEA listing in category b/c — remains only on modules and cells. It is a real simplification on the rest of the plant, but it does not move the bottleneck, which is still the modules.

The two caps the spreadsheets forget

Beyond the module constraint, the implementing decree sets two quantitative limits that change how you size the plant, and that most simulations ignore.

The first is a productivity cap: the plant's maximum expected output cannot exceed 105% of the energy needs of the production facility, computed on the average annual consumption of the previous financial year, thermal consumption converted to equivalent energy included. The logic is consistent with the word self-consumption: the relief covers the energy the production site needs, not a plant oversized to sell the surplus. On a remote self-consumption project the demand therefore gets measured first, and the sizing follows from it, not from the land available.

The second is a specific cost ceiling, tabulated in Annex 1 of the decree: the eligible cost per kW decreases with plant size and varies by module category. For type-b modules it runs from 1,420 euro per kW for plants up to 20 kWp down to 840 euro per kW above one megawatt, with the intermediate brackets in the table. Above the ceiling, the excess cost falls outside the uplift: the economics of the relief are computed on the eligible cost, not on the project capex.

Cumulability: where it fits, and where it does not

The general rule is easy to state and delicate to apply: the iperammortamento is cumulable with other incentives — national or European — on the same costs, provided the different supports do not cover the same cost shares and the total does not exceed the cost incurred.

In concrete terms, today:

• cumulable with the ZES Unica tax credit for the South and with the Nuova Sabatini;
• not cumulable with the old Transizione 4.0 and 5.0 credits on the same goods.

The real knot, in remote self-consumption with a third-party producer and supply under a PPA, is the cost carve-out: which costs are capitalised by whoever takes the uplift, and how the share covered by other instruments is kept separate. Getting the cost perimeter wrong — or stacking two incentives on the same share — is not an inefficiency, it is a finding. It belongs in the deal structure, before the appraisal.

The GSE procedure, in three steps

Access runs through a perizia asseverata — a sworn technical appraisal, or an attestation from an accredited body — and three filings on the GSE platform:

1. upfront notice, before the investment;
2. confirmation, with a down payment of at least 20%;
3. completion, by 15 November 2028.

Nothing exotic, but the sequence is binding: miss the upfront notice and there is no recovery after the fact. On a remote PV plant, where the self-consumption configuration itself has to be registered with the GSE, it pays to run the two processes in parallel, not in series.

Where we see it go wrong

From the builder's side, the recurring missteps:

• treating it as an on-site only relief, and missing the at-a-distance option the decree explicitly grants;
• sizing the plant on the land available instead of on demand, and discovering the 105% cap with the design done;
• modelling returns before fixing the module category — and finding out later that category C changes the maths;
• assuming it stacks with the 5.0 on the same goods;
• filing the upfront notice once the investment is already under way;
• a weak appraisal that does not hold up under review.

Italy's iperammortamento 2026, on solar in remote self-consumption, is a structuring problem before it is a fiscal one: who owns the asset, where it sits, how the costs are split, when you file. It is exactly the ground where a producer or an ESCO with project experience earns its place in the deal.

Sources

Implementing decree: ministerial decree of 4 May 2026, Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy jointly with the Ministry of Economy and Finance, implementing the 2026 budget law; the procedure runs on the GSE platform. Module register and categories a, b, c: Decree-Law 181 of 9 December 2023, art. 12, register kept by ENEA. Easing of the provenance constraint on general capital goods: Decree-Law 38 of 27 March 2026. Update of 31 August 2026: added the 105% productivity cap and the specific cost ceiling, both in the decree and missing from the first version of this article.