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Austria Photovoltaic technology status and prospects Hubert Fechner and Roland Bruendlinger, Arsenal Research |
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The public support schemes in Austria for the new renewable electricity sources
from PV, wind and bioenergy and are mainly characterized by discontinuity. After
several years where the support for PV was governed by local and regional schemes
of the federal states the commencement of the National Green Electricity Act (GEA)
on 1.1.2003, provided a fundamental change. From this date, the legislative authority
changed from the provincial to the federal level and thus, most of the regional
incentives by the federal states were disbanded. The GEA governs not only the
support for green electricity but also for electricity from combined heat and
power generation. The GEA supplements the Austrian Electricity Law (ELWOG, 2000)
which defines the basic framework for the liberalised electricity market.
The overall aim of the GEA is to increase the share of electricity from Renewables to more than 78 % in 2010, based on the obligations of the Renewable Electricity directive of the EU. For this purpose the GEA sets a target to meet 4 % (about 2,3 TWh/a) as well as 9 % (about 5,2 TWh/a) of the public national electricity demand with electricity generated from “new” renewable energy sources (RES) and small hydropower by 2008, respectively. Those “new” RES are suported mainly via long-term guaranteed feed-in tariffs as well as additional investment subsidies to achieve the above mentioned political target quotas. The feed-in tariffs are stated by the Federal Ministry of Economics and financed by a supplementary charge on the net price and a fixed price purchase obligation for electricity dealers.
During the first 2 year period of the law which ended in December 2004, it has been above all wind installations which benefited from this law leading to more than 800 MW approved capacity (more than 600 MW already installed) by the end of 2004. However, the role of PV in this law was limited from the very beginning. Although the feed-in tariff stated in the GEA has been supportive for PV with 0,6 EUR per kWh for installations up to 20 kW and 0,47 EUR per kWh for larger systems the framework has a crucial drawback: a 15 MW cap. With the limited availability of the support in mind, a run for permissions for the 8 MW of remaining PV-capacity took place in the first weeks of 2003. Already in mid January the limit was reached and until the end of 2003 the granted capacity was installed. Since then the PV market in Austria has been stagnating and only a few regional authorities have again reintroduced a PV support to overcome the lack of federal incentives.
Since a revision of the GEA has been foreseen for early 2005, the
negotiations have started already at the beginning of last year and several drafts have been produced. The current draft for the revised GEA for the first time defines a specific share for each energy source with about 70 % of the support dedicated to biomass. The remaining 30 % are reserved for other sources, support for wind is planned to be phased out during the coming years. Although PV still plays a minor role in the revised draft, small support will probably lead to 3-4 MW of new installations per year. However, this draft of the law revision finally received no consensus in parliament, which leads to a further prolongation of the unfavourable situation with no federal PV support. New negotiations are expected to take place in early spring 2005.
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The national programme “Energysystems of Tomorrow,” successfully initiated by the Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology is a quite broad research programme on energy technologies. Although research is not directly related to PV, distributed generation with many aspects relevant for PV is of high priority within this programme.
On a European level, the ongoing initiatives to increase the coherence of European PV RTD programming (PV-ERA-NET) are actively supported by the Austrian ministry of transport, innovation and technology.
Some principal descriptions of these projects highlight the general RTD trend of photovoltaics in Austria:
Due to the ceasing of the PV support with the 15 MW cap reached in 2003, a serious
decline in newly installed capacity to a level of 3-5 MW is expected; less than
50 % of the capacity installed during 2003.
Only in few regions, local incentives have alleviated the unfavourable situation and provide limited support in form of investment subsidies or grants.
The main applications for PV in Austria are grid-connected distributed systems, representing more than 90 % of the total capacity. Grid-connected centralized systems in form of PV-Power plants play a minor role with about 1,2 MW installed. Building integration is an important issue and several remarkable installations were realized.
Besides on-grid applications, off-grid systems are widely used to provide electricity to technical systems or for domestic use in Alpine households or mountain huts lying far away from the grid. But not exclusively in remote areas, also on urban sites PV is an increasing option to supply infrastructure systems. PV is also becoming more and more visible on Austrian highways supplying the increasing numbers of screens which are informing the drivers with actual information about the traffic situation.
Some provincial governments have built PV-demonstration plants
on municipal buildings in order to create public awareness for PV.
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Besides PV-Module production, various other companies are manufacturing components for modules and BOS-components like batteries, inverters, or mounting systems.
A new Quality Label for PV installers was meanwhile issued by the
Austrian Photovoltaic Association. Certified planners and installers are obliged to use products and components certified to the relevant standards as well as to have a quality assurance system.
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About 30 companies involved in the PV business are currently members of the Association. Besides political lobbying, the association has recently issued the “Austrian PV Roadmap,” a PV marketing Concept for Austria and also awards the biannual “Youth Solar Award.”
A national PV-network “PVPS.NET” was created, funded by the Ministry of Transport Innovation and Technology, aiming at supporting the implementation of PV in the building sector. The PV installers and module producers together with architects are preparing tools for the architects and the building industry to integrate PV more and more, as part of buildings. It has been recognized that it is not only the costs, but often very practical reasons, which prevent architects from integrating PV into their building concepts, or the lack of arguments to convince the building owner to implement PV. Addressing these topics, various tools for argumentation and education in PV building integration were developed, which are available at the web site of the
Austrian PV Association (http://www.bv-pv.at). National PV conferences
are taking place on a regular basis focussing on national developments and international aspects of the national PVPS participation.
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PV research and development will be more and more concentrated on international projects and networks, following the dynamic knowhow and learning process of the world-wide PV development progress.
The level of the public know-how concerning the potential and
perspectives of PV is still insignificant but continuously growing. Several renewable energy education courses are already implemented and some new courses are currently under development. All of
them include PV as an essential part of the future energy strategy. The importance of proper education for installers and planners of
PV systems will increase, depending on the market situation.
However, the National PV Association is just about to initiate a
national “Certified PV Training” for installers and planners in order to keep the quality of the installed systems at a high level. It can be expected that the recently empowered National PV Association will significantly promote the topic in Austria. The small PV industry, currently taking advantage of the strong German market is very much interested in creating a home market for PV, and furthermore, is waiting for an improvement in the economic frame conditions.
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