Romania

US energy specialist Enphase will produce micro-inverters at a Flextronics factory in Timisoara, Romania, from the first quarter of 2023.

The Romanian authorities have allocated a budget of €457.7 million ($506 million) for a new renewables procurement exercise. Selected wind and solar projects will be granted rebates ranging from €425,000 to €1.3 million per megawatt installed.

A lack of trained personnel, slow overhaul of PV rules, and a weak electricity grid could slow the emergence of solar as a solution to diminish Romanian dependence on Russian gas. The next two winters will be critical.

The project is planned to be located 35km from Bucharest, in central Romania. The plant will be close to grid infrastructure and is expected to occupy a surface of 150 hectares.

With Emergency Ordinance no. 143/2021, the Romanian government has restored legal certainty for bilateral power purchase agreements and has created more favorable conditions for solar power generators under net metering regime.

Romania will likely allocate several gigawatts of solar power through a range of procurement exercises over the next four years. According to the Romanian Photovoltaic Industry Association, there are currently between 20 GW and 30 GW of large-scale renewable energy projects in various stages of development, with several hundred megawatts potentially set to go online this year.

The scheme provides rebates for installations larger than 3 kW in size provided that the grant does not exceed RON20,000 for conventional projects and RON25,000 for projects in isolated areas.

Aukera Energy, launched as a brand today but staffed by clean energy professionals who have worked with backer AtlasInvest for at least a decade, says it already has more than 1 GW of solar and wind capacity under development in Italy, Poland and the U.K. and wants to almost treble the scale of that portfolio within 12 months.

The Euro trade body has promised to monitor the developing solar jobs market annually from now on, and pointed to Poland’s position at the top of the tree of EU member states for PV jobs last year as evidence the technology can still benefit from legislative backing.

CE Oltenia wants to build eight solar parks at three of its coal power plants and five of its coal mining sites by 2026. This new capacity should replace installed power from coal that the company wants to shut down over the next five years.