Italy’s solar incentive scheme, “Conto Energia”, has at last started to pay dividends. After the Italian PV market failed to meet expectations in 2007, with newly installed capacity of just 9 MW, the Italian government took the decision last year to enact a modified version of its solar incentive scheme. The new look “Conta Energia” introduced nine basic feed-in tariffs according to system size and application type, running from 0.36 €/kWh for non-integrated systems bigger than 20 kWp, up to 0.49 €/kWh for integrated systems of between 1 and 3 kWp. The new scheme also significantly eases the bureaucratic process for the feed-in tariff.
As a result, the Italian PV market has finally taken off, with installed capacity of PV systems financed by means of the “Conto Energia” incentives now exceeding 700 MW over the whole territory.
GSE, the publicly-owned company promoting and supporting renewable energy sources in Italy, has explained that this capacity relates to 56,285 plants that entered into service since the incentive system known as “Conto Energia” was launched in September 2005. According to GSE, the regions with the highest installed capacity are Puglia (96.5 MW), Lombardy (84.8 MW) and Emilia Romagna (61.9 MW). Meanwhile, Lombardy has the highest number of plants (8,630), followed by Emilia Romagna (5,293) and Veneto (5,166).
Italy is the world’s second largest PV market after Germany and the Italian government has set what were initially considered to be ambitious goals for PV. The Government’s intermediate target for 2016 was 3,000 MWp of installed power, while it established an 8,500 MWp objective for 2020. However, with market growth of more than 480% during 2008, the intermediate target for 2016 could be smashed as early as 2012.
Despite the financial crisis, Solar Plaza anticipates in a report on the Italian PV market issued in October that the market will grow a further 32% in 2009 and that grid parity should become a fact of life in Italy before 2020, meaning that solar electricity will eventually be able to compete with electricity from the grid without the need for the “Conto Energia” incentives.
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