Italy

The country’s cumulative PV capacity reached 22.56GW at the end of December.

The planned storage capacity will come from 20 projects selected by Italian grid operator Terna through the latest capacity market auction. Half of them will be located on the island of Sardinia.

A 300m long PV system with a capacity of 71.5 kW has been deployed along a bridge crossing the Pò river in San Mauro Torinese, in northern Italy. The project was tendered by the municipality in June.

The retirement of coal baseload capacity, some regulatory adjustments and high energy prices volatility could bode well for the deployment of batteries in Italy, and especially in Sicily. Problems, mostly related to the timing and the structure of the auction, remain, however. We spoke about it with Michele Scolaro, Aurora Energy Research Associate.

The Italian inverter maker claims to have been impacted by the post-pandemic supply constraints. The proceedings are being managed in full business continuity without any interruption of operational activity, said the legal firm hired by Fimer to implement a debt restructuring process.

In the procurement exercise, the Italian authorities selected 49 solar projects with a capacity of less than 10 MW and 11 solar parks ranging in size from 13.2 MW to 92.4 MW. The lowest bid came in at €0.06263/kWh and was offered for a 5.9 MW solar project located in the province of Perugia, in the Italian central region of Umbria.

The incentive cut will apply only for the period from February 1, 2022, to December 31, 2022, and will reduce the tariffs paid by the GSE to PV system operators under the Conto Energia regime, depending on the zonal energy price, with the incentive reduction being proportional to the increase in energy prices.

In the next ten years, according to Milanese consultant REF-E’s simulations, storage in Italy will mostly be driven by opportunities in the ancillary services market. After 2030, when renewables will provide most electricity, REF-E believes the price spread between different hours of the day should be high enough to cover the cost-per-cycle of energy-intensive storage. Energy expert Virginia Canazza discussed the topic with pv magazine.

In a recent media brief, new Enel Green Power CEO Salvatore Bernabei said the company’s heterojunction solar module factory in southern Italy will be scaled up from 200MW to 3GW by mid-2024. He also revealed that another factory may be built abroad, with the United States being a possible location.

Danish developer European Energy sold the 103MW facility located in Troia, southern Italy, to Italian holding Iren Spa. The solar park is currently selling power to the spot market.