According to Hellenic Transmission System Operator SA (HTSO), Greece has installed an additional 75MW of PV in July which brings its total amount of installed PV capacity in the first six months of the year to 319MW. This was a slight drop compared to last month, when statistics showed that the country installed a total of 97MW in PV capacity.
As at the end of July, mainland Greece has a total of 801MW of installed PV capacity, generating a total output of 117,201MWh.
This boom comes despite the country’s flagging economy. It has been partly fueled by the country’s FiT scheme which enables permitted projects to receive incentives. The launch of the FiT scheme is in line with the Greek government’s target of generating 2,200MWp of solar power by 2020.
However, the Greek Association of Photovoltaic Energy Producers (SPEF) expects Greek authorities to stop issuing building permits for PV power plants. So far, the authorities have issued almost 2 GW of new PV projects but the scheme only has 350 MW of capacity remaining before it reaches its cap of 1.5 GW by 2014. This, in turn, means that many permitted projects will not be eligible to receive incentives under the current FiT scheme.
The Hellenic Association of Photovoltaic Companies adds that the surge in interest to invest in PV in Greece “has led to a grid bottleneck as it is practically impossible to facilitate the connection of all these systems at once. It will therefore take some time before many of these projects can take off”.
The Hellenic Association of Photovoltaic Companies also predicts that newly installed PV capacity in Greece will reach in the range of 600MW-700MW for the whole of 2012.