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Italy Photovoltaic technology status and prospects S. Castello, ENEA S. Guastella, CESI |
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In Italy, a very high public demand for PV installations was registered during
the year 2005, as a result of public financial support for these plants. In spite
of this enthusiasm, the bureaucratic issues related to the incentive mechanism
(based on a contribution on the installed plant cost) still resulted in frustrating
these expectations and limiting the increase in the annual installed capacity,
even if an adequate budget was available for dissemination programmes implementation.
In this framework, the cumulative installed PV power increased similarly to the previously year (about 5 MWp) reaching a total of about 36 MW. Most of this capacity has been due to the expansion of the small grid-connected market, which now amounts to 17 MW, accounting for 47 % of photovoltaic power installed in Italy, with respect to 40 % at the end of 2004. However, even in this situation of constrained national installations, the production of photovoltaic modules has recorded an increase in 2004; essentially due to the request from the German market.
The budget for market stimulation, funded by both the Ministry of Environment and Land Protection (MATT) and the Italian Regions in the framework of the Regional Roof-Top Programmes, utilized during this year amounts to about 25 MEUR. Meanwhile, in the field of research and demonstration, the expenditure has been about 5 MEUR, remaining essentially flat with respect to the previous years, and was mainly supported by ENEA (the Italian Agency for New Technology, Energy and Environment) and CESI (the Institute for Research and Certification of electric components and system).
This stagnating situation seems to have been overcome with the decree of the Ministry for Productive Activities (MAP), issued on August 2005, which defines the criteria for the promotion of photovoltaics through a feed-in tariff that provide a fair remuneration of the investment and operating costs. In fact, in less than one month, nearly 3 600 applications have been submitted to GRTN (Gestore del Sistema Elettrico), a company (owned by the Ministry of Economy and Finance) which plays a key role in the scheme of promoting electricity generation from renewable and assimilated sources and in managing the market system based on green certificates.
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The Regional Roof-Top Programmes, completely managed by the 19 Italian Regions and the 2 Autonomous Provinces, constitute the follow-up of a National Programme (concluded in the year 2003 with the installation of about 1,8 MW) and are mainly aimed at enforcing the diffusion of PV technology among the Italian citizens.
A contribution percentage, ranging from 50 % to 70 % of the investment cost, has been requested by the applicant and constitutes the main parameter for financing grants. On the whole, from 2003 to 2005 public contributions amounted to approximately 105 MEUR, thus allowing, a total capacity of 21 MW. Nevertheless, in this framework, the regional Programmes are experiencing rather slow growth principally due to bureaucratic delays in the application and permitting procedures. As a consequence, at the end of 2005, only over 14 MW out of the anticipated 21 MW had been installed.
As far as the Feed-in Programme, the development of a decree by Ministry for Productive Activities, which defines the criteria for promoting the production of electricity from photovoltaics, has provided a strong expectation in the Italian PV market. The support scheme foreseen by the decree is composed of a feed-in tariff for the whole electric energy produced by the PV plant and by the value of the electricity, which can be partially or totally sold to the local electric utility. These incentives are addressed to individuals, registered companies, condominia and public bodies. PV plants are eligible for the incentive scheme if:
The tariff of produced electric energy varies with the nominal power of the plant and ranges from 0,445 EUR/kWh to 0,490 EUR/kWh. The duration of the support is 20 years and the tariffs are updated on a yearly basis, taking into account the official inflation rate. A tariff reduction of 2 %/year is applied to PV plants for which the support request is delivered after 2006. Moreover, the electricity produced by the PV plant can be used for its own consumption or sold to the local utility and this benefit is maintained also after 20 years. For plants larger than 50 kW, the tariff is subject to a tender mechanism, which favours the tariff with a lower value. For these plants, a bank guarantee of 1 500 EUR/kWp is requested as a penalty, in the case the PV plant is not installed within the deadline fixed by the decree.
Finally, the decree states that promotion tariffs:
The overall power, which is expected to be supported by this decree, is 100 MWp, of which 60 MWp assigned to plants up to 50 kWp and 40 MWp for the larger ones. A final target of 300 MW is expected by 2015.
Nevertheless, within 11 days from the launch of the initiative (September 19th) more than 3 600 applications have been submitted and 78 % of them, corresponding to 2 872 projects, have been admitted to the feed-in tariffs: 47 projects concern plants over 50 kW (corresponding to about 28 MW) and 2 825 are referred to plants up to 50 kW (resultant in approximately 59 MW). As a consequence, the residual power still available at the end of September 2005 was 12 MW for plants over 50 kW and 1 MW for plants up to 50 kW. In this phase, the most involved Regions were Apulia, Sicily and Campania, where the solar radiation availability is higher with respect to other Italian Regions.
More amazing has been the subsidies demand in the period October –December 2005; with about 7 500 applications submitted, corresponding to a total power of about 190 MW, well beyond the
limit of the decree.
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As far as ENEA activities, the most significant ones concern the technical and economical assessment on concentrators' technologies (PhoCUS Project), the optimisation of high efficiency crystalline silicon cells (EU Project) and the development of thin film cells for BIPV as well as Cu2O solar cells research.
In the field of photovoltaics, CESI is carrying out activities in the development and industrial manufacturing of high efficiency solar cells for space and terrestrial applications, based on III-V compounds.
Besides, triple junction solar cells (InGaP/InGaAs/Ge) are under development and qualification. They will be commercially available from next year. GaAs single junction and multi-junction concentrator solar cells are also manufactured for terrestrial application.
Furthermore, both ENEA and CESI are involved in components' characterization and performance evaluation of PV systems.
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The cumulative installed power in Italy is at present about 36 MWp; 5 MWp was
installed during the last year. This capacity begins to be dominated by on-grid
distributed PV systems that amounting to over 17 MW, accounting for 47 % of PV
installed power.
The other primary applications for photovoltaic power systems concern:
A major PV module manufacturer is Enitecnologie. Its manufacturing facilities have a production capability of about 10 MWp/year. Both single-crystal and multi-crystalline silicon cells are currently produced from wafers bought on the international market. Another important Italian module manufacturer is Helios Technology: its manufacturing facilities have an overall production capability of 8 MWp/year. The Helios Technology module manufacturing process includes the fabrication of cells and modules from mono-crystalline silicon wafers.
Further companies can be found in Italy: they are assembling and encapsulating standard and/or especially designed modules (such as windows integrated cells, tiles or using coloured cells). The total production capacity of such companies amounts to about 10 MW. Typical module prices range from 3 to 3,6 EUR/W, depending on order size.
Altogether, an estimation of the number of companies, that install PV systems in Italy, reaches 100 units. These are specialist PV companies offering consultancy, installation services and component delivery, which include ENEL (the biggest Italian electricity utility) Group, CESI and some electric municipalities. The most important operators in this field are associated in the Italian PV firms Group (GIFI).
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Moreover, this decree should foresee an annual limit of 85 MW to applications admitted to receive feed-in tariff: 60 MWp for installations up to 50kWp and 25 MWp for installations over 50 kWp. Thin-films, excluded from the previous decree, are now allowed in the new draft decree, but exclusively for building integrated systems, submitted by juridical persons.
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