Italy deployed 362 MW of solar in H1

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Italy installed around 259 MW of solar in the first six months of this year, according to new figures from ANIE Rinnovabili and additional data from grid operator Terna.

However, this total does not include a 103 MW solar plant that Danish developer European Energy built in the southern region of Apulia: The project began commercial operations in late June.

That means that the country's new capacity additions for the first half actually surpassed 362 MW, compared to 231 MW in the first six months of 2019 and just 191 MW in the first half of 2018.

Most of this year’s capacity was deployed in May and June, with new monthly additions hitting 69.2 MW and 71.6 MW, respectively. In April, during the Covid-19 lockdown, new installations only reached 2.7 MW.

According to the latest statistics, PV projects that do not exceed 1 MW in size account for almost all of the new capacity, at 221.7 MW. Solar parks over 1 MW in size accounted for just 37.3 MW of the total.

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Residential PV systems up to 20 kW in size still accounted for the largest share, at around 109.9 MW of capacity. PV systems ranging from 20 kW to 100 kW accounted for 41 MW of the total. Meanwhile, commercial and industrial PV installations ranging from 100 kW to 1 MW hit 70.5 MW in the first six months of the year.

The parts of the country with the highest development volumes were the Lombardy region, which brought 47.6 MW of new solar online, and the southern region of Veneto, with 35.6 MW. Sicily and Emilia-Romagna finished the first half of the year with 31 MW and 23.9 MW, respectively.

The provisional figures indicate that Italy exceeded 21.3 GW of cumulative solar capacity at the end of June. The nation’s National Integrated Plan for Climate and Energy aims for 50 GW of solar by 2030.

*article was updated on Sep. 16, 2020, to reflect that the region with the second largest amount of newly PV capacity in the first half of the year was Veneto and not Sicily, as we previously reported.

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