Solar installation in the Canton of St. GallenNotify the commune.

Permit: notification to the commune

At federal level, Art. 18a of the Spatial Planning Act and Art. 32a and 32b of the Spatial Planning Ordinance set out when a notification is enough. The Canton of St. Gallen provides its own notification form for this. We fill it in and submit it with the attachments to the building permit authority of the commune where the building stands. The commune checks the details and communicates the result within 30 days. For the fire protection permit, the submission also goes through the commune. The responsible body is the cantonal building insurance of St. Gallen (Gebäudeversicherung St.Gallen).

For cultural and natural monuments of cantonal or national importance, a building permit is always needed. For protected townscape areas and protected individual objects, the canton has clarified the permit practice together with the communes. It works with a traffic-light system: in green areas, solar systems are relatively unproblematic, while in red areas, the most sensitive roofscapes, they are possible only in exceptional cases. Whether and when the new practice applies depends on your commune. We clarify this before the quote.

Subsidies in the Canton of St. Gallen

The federal government pays the one-off payment (Einmalvergütung, EIV) through Pronovo. Since 1 April 2025 there has been no base amount. It is CHF 360 per kWp for add-on systems under 30 kWp and CHF 400 per kWp for integrated systems.

We are not aware of a cantonal subsidy programme for photovoltaic systems. Many communes and regions in the canton do have their own programme, which differs from commune to commune and can change. Energieagentur St.Gallen offers a subsidy calculator for this. We check the current position for your commune and apply for the contributions.

On taxes: under federal law (Art. 9 para. 3 StHG), investments in renewable energy on existing buildings are treated like maintenance costs, as far as they are deductible for the direct federal tax. The cantonal tax office sets the details. We recommend clarifying your project beforehand with the tax office or your tax adviser.

Grid operator and power price

In the Canton of St. Gallen, SAK (St. Gallisch-Appenzellische Kraftwerke) supplies 15 communes at 29.3 ct./kWh. There are also the St.Galler Stadtwerke (30.6 ct.), Regionalwerk Toggenburg (24.8 ct.) and several village utility corporations. The cantonal median is 29.8 ct./kWh excluding VAT (household category H4, ElCom 2026), which is 2.1 ct. above the Swiss median of 27.7 ct.

Your grid operator pays for the electricity you feed in. The rate differs from one utility to the next, so we calculate with the tariff of your utility.

Building stock in the Canton of St. Gallen

Around 59% of residential buildings in the canton were built before 1980, and about half are still heated with fossil fuels. If you install a heat pump, you need more electricity and benefit especially from your own solar power. We plan the two so that they fit together.