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A slight hope in Spain

Spain’s Congress has passed the law which intents to cut the number of full load hours for existing photovoltaics (PV) installations reactively. Now the Senate may achieve some “palliative” corrections.

The Senate rejected the retroactive law and now a slight hope is back in solar Spain. Image: SunEdison.

Although the Spanish PV industry has done a lot to prevent it, the Congreso de los Diputados, Spain’s most powerful part of its two-chamber parliament, has approved the law RDL 14/2010, which will introduce heavy restrictions on the remuneration of existing PV installations in Spain. Even a manifestation of hundreds of solar activists a day before in front of the Congress didn’t change minds of delegates. However, the Senate rejected the law and now a slight hope is back in solar Spain.

However, Tomás Díaz, head of communication at Spain’s biggest solar organization ASIF, is not very optimistic. “There will be some palliative but no substantial corrections,” he told pv magazine. One possible result could be the extension of the timeframe for paying the feed-in tariff from 28 to 30 years; another a slight extension of the number of full load hours. But the factor of reactivity will not be cancelled, he said.

The only juridical way to prevent that law from coming into effect would be a complaint of unconstitutionality, which has not yet been filed. The only pending action at the Supreme Court is one against the limitation of the remuneration framework by a decree of last November.

Díaz also told pv magazine that ASIF intents to file a complaint to the European Commission in order to provoke an EU proceeding against Spain because of reactivity. But until today this process hasn’t been started.