Hopes of a major boost for the PV market in Austria were effectively dashed with the recent revisions to the Green Electricity Act, approved in May.

The national program is now targeting 10 % of electricity generation from ‘new renewables’ (i.e. excluding existing hydropower) by 2010. This is a substantial increase from the current 2 %, however the target is based on a portfolio of options which sees biomass as the predominant energy source, accounting for 60 % of the 17 million EUR per year assigned for preferential feed-in tariffs. Wind power is also earmarked for a substantial (30 %) slice of the funds. PV on the other hand, is lumped together in the ‘other sources’ category to battle for a share of the remaining 10 % of the budget. This allocation is intended to achieve ‘optimized use of available budgets’. For PV a tariff of 0,49 EUR/kWh has been proposed for systems under 20 kW and 0,42 EUR/kWh for systems larger than 20 kW. That is assuming that the provinces come to the party and contribute 50 % towards the proposed tariff. Austrian analysts anticipate that these restrictions are likely to limit the annual domestic PV market to approximately 6 MW for the foreseeable future.

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