Italy

The country installed 35 MW more solar in the first three months of the year than it did in the same period a year earlier. Its cumulative capacity surpassed 22.1 GW by the end of March.

“RES1 has not worked,” said operators commenting on Italy’s auction scheme for renewables. The lack of concrete projects to be submitted to the auctions is due to a combination of factors primarily based on “excessive bureaucracy,” and the impossibility of ground-mounted PV projects in agricultural areas to get incentives, they added. Nonetheless, things could soon change, especially if an RES2 scheme is implemented.

Italy’s Fincantieri has joined forces with Faist Group to produce lithium-ion batteries. Through the joint venture Power4Future, the two companies want to reach a production capacity of 2 GWh over the next five years.

Through the 10-year power supply deal, the renewable energy company will sell the power generated by a 41 MW solar park located in the southern region of Apulia to the Italian unit of Belgium-based chemical company Solvay. The solar plant is planned to be linked to 10 MW/20 MWh of storage.

The auction was, once again, largely unsubscribed. The Italian authorities selected eight solar projects planned in the regions of Emilia-Romagna and Sicily. Enel Green Power was the largest winner with seven projects. The lowest bid came in at €0.0685/kWh.

The trade body has highlighted a lack of explicit PV industry support in EU member states which already host domestic manufacturers, such as Germany, France, Austria, Belgium and Lithuania, and says the focus on green hydrogen could exacerbate the solar trade deficit with Asia.

Nicola Rossi, head of innovation at Enel Green Power, has told pv magazine how the company is seeking to combine microalgae cultivation with solar power generation. The integration scheme is aimed at minimizing interferences with the PV plant and maximizing the benefits in microalgae yield

The Ferrero Rocher maker will buy the energy generated by two agrivoltaics projects planned in Sicily as it aims to halve its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

Two PV farms planned in Sicily by Canadian Solar, with a total 12 MWp generation capacity, will sell the electricity they produce to Axpo Italia under a ten-year PPA at a fixed rate which the Chinese-Canadian company did not reveal.

The Italian PV world remains cautiously skeptical about the €220 billion post-pandemic recovery plan that Rome presented last week. It outlines steps for agrivoltaics, but retains preferential treatment for the gas sector (biomethane and hydrogen), and notes the marginal role of batteries and pumping systems. However, the green policies are not final and could still be shaped by related decrees and non-financial measures.