Solar PV Sector In Croatia Limited To Rooftop Systems
The solar PV sector in Croatia is comprised almost entirely of small-scale rooftop systems, owing to a lack of industry/investor interest in the development of larger solar projects (as opposed to wind energy projects), according to recent reports.
Based on the most recent figures released by the country’s energy market manager (HROTE), installed solar PV capacity there hit 30.3 MW at the end of October — with most of that figure being composed of rooftop projects in the range of 10–30 kW.
That number represents a big increase over earlier years — the country possessed only 89.72 kilowatts of solar PV capacity at the end of 2012 — but is still exponentially lower than the growth rate seen in the country’s wind energy sector. This disparity is largely down to differences in investment, development funds, and incentives.
Recent months have seen slightly larger rooftop solar projects enter development — these still aren’t utility-scale plants, though, being mostly in the 200 to 300 kW size range.
Croatia’s current solar energy goals entail that it will install at least 52 MW of solar PV capacity by the year 2020 — this is in contrast to the country’s goal of installing at least 1.2 GW (1,200 MW) of wind energy capacity by the same year. A significant difference in goals, and an especially interesting difference when you consider that the European country actually is quite well suited to solar energy exploitation.
Based on the policies of the government there, these trends seem unlikely to change, as the feed-in tariff there is unmistakably geared towards the development of household-scale systems, nothing larger.
Image Credit: Public Domain
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