Cyprus solar curtailment hits 47% in 2025

CyprusGrid, an energy analytics platform focused on Cyprus’ electricity sector, reported that the country curtailed 306 GWh of renewable energy generated by green power plants connected to the country’s distribution network in 2025.

These plants are predominantly solar photovoltaic facilities, except for 12.5 MW of biogas units and 24 MW of wind power, which is also connected to the distribution network.

This means that 47.44% of the country’s solar and biogas energy generation last year was wasted. “To put it into practice, we are talking about energy that could roughly cover the annual needs of more than 51,000 households,” said Andreas Procopiou, founder of CyprusGrid.

March was the month the distribution network curtailed the highest amount of green energy, with a record 38,155 MWh. The average monthly volume of cuts nearly doubled to 25,513 MWh per month in 2025, up from 13,916 MWh per month in 2024.

Cyprus curtailed 166,997 MWh of its renewable energy in 2024, corresponding to 29% of the green energy generated by assets linked to the distribution network. Therefore, Cyprus curtailed last year around 83% more MWh than it did in 2024, Procopiou explained.

Curtailment is not limited to utility-scale projects. CyprusGrid says that residential PV accounted for 10% of curtailed energy in 2025. “The residential component matters because it affects households and small prosumers directly and raises sensitivity around fairness and consumer expectations,” Procopiu stated.

For solar PV investors specifically, Procopiou told pv magazine that perhaps the worst of all is the dwindling ability of each installed MW of solar power to contribute to the country’s energy demand. CyprusGrid found that the contribution to total demand per 1 MW of installed PV capacity was 0.027% in 2023, 0.024% in 2024 and only 0.021% in 2025. This decline does not imply poorer resource quality, Procopiou said, but instead reflects that constraints and curtailment reduce delivered energy per incremental MW.

In simple terms, Cyprus is adding more PV capacity each year, but the installed PV capacity contributes less energy in the energy system per incremental MW. Procopiou concluded that unless Cyprus invests seriously in flexibility and network capability, the country’s energy transition cannot work.

Cyprus currently does not have any large-scale battery storage. In February, the country’s Ministry of Energy, Commerce and Industry launched a subsidy scheme for energy storage systems that can be added alongside existing renewable energy plants, however to date, the ministry hasn’t published a report detailing any progress of the scheme.

Investors have expressed willingness to install battery storage without subsidy support but there has not been any progress on this front either.

The state-owned Electricity Authority of Cyprus (EAC) is looking to develop and possess its own battery storage facilities, which local private investors see as a threat to the effort to liberalize the electricity market and open it to competition. As an EU member, Cyprus is bound to EU policy that states vertical integrated state-owned utilities that own the networks, like EAC, are not allowed to own storage facilities. EU policy instead mandates member states to open the electricity market to competition.

Until this deadlock is resolved, cheap Cypriot solar production is being cut and replaced by more expensive and polluting energy production, while the country is also wasting funds to buy emission allowances. With reasonable assumptions, the 2025 cuts are estimated to correspond to more than 200,000 tonnes of CO₂ and around €15 million ($17.5 million) in additional cost of carbon emission allowances.

While CyprusGrid’s report concerns assets connected to the distribution network, the platform also collects and analyzes publicly-available data published by Cyprus’ transmission network. Procopiou told pv magazine that Cyprus’ 133.5 MW of wind power capacity linked directly to the transmission grid also faced curtailments, wasting 9.5 GWh of its wind energy last year.