The Italian government has confirmed a raft of new charges for PV system owners.
The fees, published in Italy’s official journal, Gazzetta Ufficiale, are to cover costs incurred by energy agency, GSE, for the running of Italy’s Conto Energia feed-in tariff (FiT) scheme and net-metering programme.
Installations smaller than 3kW will be exempt from any charges, but projects larger than that under both programmes will now have to pay a charge.
Under Conto Energia, projects between 3 and 6kW will incur the largest cost, of €2.2/kW (US$2.59). Anything over 1MW will receive a charge of €1.2/kW.
For the net-metering scheme, installations of 3-20kW will pay a set annual fee of €30 and the same for 20-500kW, but with the addition of a €1 surcharge per kW.
The charges are in addition to controversial retroactive cuts to feed-in tariffs paid to solar projects over 200kW. These could see revenues from plants drop by 10% and have attracted threats of legal action by the industry.
