Italy

The Italian authorities have awarded four solar projects in yet another undersubscribed renewables tender, with the nation’s top clean energy association criticizing the auctions for being uncompetitive. The lowest price for PV came in at €0.064 ($0.075)/kWh.

Developers installed 259 MW of new solar in Italy in the first six months of the year, according to ANIE Rinnovabili. But that doesn’t include a 103 MW plant that was connected to the grid in late June in the southern region of Apulia.

According to a new study, PV may reach an installed power of 144.5 GW in Italy by the end of the first half of the century, followed by onshore and offshore wind with 59.6 GW and 17.6 GW, respectively. The research is based on a new computational model that identifies the best spatial distribution of renewable energy sources in an individual country or electricity system while avoiding problematic concentrations of technologies

France’s EnerGaïa Forum will be held Dec. 9-10 in Montpellier, while Italy’s Key Energy event will be held in Rimini from Nov. 3-6. Australia’s top PV industry event will not take place in 2020.

A 103 MW solar park built by Danish developer European Energy has been connected to the grid after a year of construction work. The project had been started in 2011 and at one stage appeared doomed, when a national feed-in tariff program ended.

The country installed 10 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 21 GW by the end of March.

The Italian cabinet has accepted a request from the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities to cancel approvals granted by the Lazio regional government for two large-scale PV projects. Lazio’s Tuscia area is a potential solar hub for the Italian energy system.

The utility scale renewable energy tender saw wind prevail again, with 18 projects with a total generation capacity of 406 MW. Solar secured four projects with a combined capacity of 19.3 MW but did offer the lowest bid.

The Italian government has raised the tax breaks it offers for building renovations and energy-requalification projects – potentially including storage-backed rooftop PV systems – to 110%. The new measure is part of the Relaunch Decree, which is a package of guidelines aimed at reviving the Italian economy in response to the Covid-19 crisis.

The Italian market saw a year-on-year increase in new installations as several unsubsidized solar parks came online. Most of last year’s new capacity arrived in November and December. The regions with largest volumes were big-solar magnets Apulia and Sardinia.