Spain’s Ministry for Industry has approved 923 new solar projects for Q1 2011, all of which will benefit from the current feed-in tariff (FiT) rates. The 116MW of new installations have been given the green light just in time to avoid the government’s subsidy reductions that come into play from Q2 onwards.
Spain has a 450MW annual cap, and consequently projects totalling 3GW, more than 80% of the 4,718 subsidy applications in the first three months of 2011, were turned down by the government. Of the successful bids, 74.6MW were for small (7.4MW) and large-scale (67.2MW) rooftop installations and 41.6MW were for ground-mounted systems.
Q2’s tariff reductions were ratified last November and will see reductions to €0.29 (an 8% drop) for rooftop installations under 20kW, €0.20 (27%) for larger rooftop systems and €0.13 (47%) for ground-mounted projects. The timeframe to apply for the new licenses ends on April 6.
Last week, Spain’s energy sector regulator, CNE, suspended FiT subsidies for 350 installations after it emerged they were providing fraudulent electricity production figures.