SOLUTIONS
Italy's Great Solar Leap Forward
by Steve Leone
Surprise, surprise: the biggest lesson has less to do with technology, and more to do with attitude.
Rovigo: Italy's 70 MW PV plant is now the largest single site PV solar plant in Europe
Two years ago, solar was little more than a romantic notion in Italy
About 1 gigawatt (1GW=1000MW, the capacity of a small nuclear reactor) of solar capacity had been installed over the previous four years. Everyone loved the idea of solar, but it gained little traction compared to other parts of Europe. Then markets elsewhere slowed down and policies within Italy changed. Suddenly, Italy became the hottest solar market around—the country’s installed capacity shot up to 3.4 GW by the end of 2010, and to 9 GW by mid-2011. Italy, whose target had been 8 GW of solar by 2020, is now targetting 23 GW of solar by 2016.
This sudden rise to become the world’s second largest solar market has not come without headaches and lessons: it has many countries with big solar ambitions watching intently. But, ultimately, Italy has been a success story even though its growth has coincided with deep economic troubles that continue to grip the nation. A group of American utility executives visited Italy in Spring 2011 on a fact-finding mission, to look, listen learn and take home a clearer vision of how the U.S. could mirror some of the solar growth, while avoiding some of the pitfalls. The U.S. currently has just under 1 GW of utility-scale solar currently in operation.
How Italy Grew
Unlike the U.S., Italy has little in the way of fossil fuel resources and its residents have a different perspective on energy security. Italy relies heavily on imported natural gas, and the population has come out strongly against nuclear power.
Italy has for a while had a strong feed-in tariff program, but it didn’t really translate into a hot solar market until slowdowns began occurring in traditional strongholds like Germany and Spain, whereby PV panels originally directed to those markets instead found their way into Italy.
That shift coincided with changes happening at the local level that were implemented to free up bottlenecks in the permitting process. In the Puglia Region in the South, local authorities streamlined the planning process, by allowing developments smaller than 1 MW to move ahead without an explicit permit from the local authority. Soon, larger projects were being divided into installations just under 1 MW, which in turn lured new developers and inventory into the region.
How would Enel handle connection, quality and integration issues associated with intermittent sources? So far, the utility, which serves 85% of the country has kept up.
A Rapidly Emerging Industry
The Italian government realized it had an emerging industry on its hands, but it also knew it needed tighter controls to manage the growth. These concerns were addressed with the release of the fourth Conto Energia – a law that sets the country’s energy policy. The outcome was more generous in terms of development targets, as the country set out to hit 23 GW of installed capacity in just the next few years. On the other hand, it was a lot more stringent on policy and process.
Lessons for the Rest of Us
For American utility executives--“There was the recognition that they’re really not that much further ahead. They’re grappling with distribution and interconnection. They’re studying it. There are no real solid answers yet in how much circuit saturation is acceptable. How do we integrate the technology of PV, and particularly inverter technology, into either helping us or hurting us in running the systems, especially in times of system instability?”
Italy is dealing with a host of issues that it hopes to iron out over time, all while building up even more capacity. Permitting and connection have certainly defined how Italy got to where it is, but network strategy is likely to determine how far it can go, and at what price.
“The key challenge is to manage technologies that evolve very quickly.” said Agostini. “You can install a project in six months. But most networks need up to five years to reduce bottlenecks. We need to increase capacity of our transmission lines. There’s lots of power produced in the south and used up north. It’s important to have a systems approach that looks at how systems as a whole have to adapt. We need to focus on a smart grid. We need to align the development of renewables with the development of a system for distribution.”
For Bob Gibson, leading the American delegation, the primary lesson from Italy concerned attitude: “What we came away with was, ‘Wow, they have this massive growth – it has to be disruptive.’ Yet the attitude from Enel was that, “We’ll figure it out. We’ll deal with it.”
Steve Leone is Associate Editor of RenewableEnergyWorld.com