Italy Confirms New Fees For FiT & Net Metering Solar PV Installations
Italy is continuing in its chosen path of implementing increasingly heavy costs on the solar PV industry in the country, with the coming introduction of significant new fees for solar PV system owners.
While Italy certainly isn’t the only European country that’s been pursuing such legislative moves with the continuing economic problems facing the EU, the recent changes made by Italy are still certainly very much worth taking a note of.
Amongst these new fees being introduced by the Italian government are some that are intended to cover the costs resulting from the country’s Conto Energia feed-in tariff (FiT) scheme and net metering program — these fees are, of course, in addition to the much-debated retroactive cuts to FiT payments made to solar PV projects over 200 kW in size.
Taking these two together — both the retroactive cuts and the new fees — many in the industry in Italy are looking forward to plenty of difficulties in the years ahead.
The specifics of the new fees were recently outlined in Italy’s Gazzetta Ufficiale — an official “journal” of sorts in the country.
As per the rules of the new fee program, solar installations that are under 3 kW in size will be made exempt from any fees, but pretty much every other project out there is on the line for them.
Apparently, installations 3–6 kW in size will see the highest rates (€2.2/kW; ~$2.53/kW). With costs dropping steadily as projects increase in size — with that drop culminating in projects over 1 MW in size seeing fees of €1.2/kW (~$1.38/kW).
As far as the net metering program goes, solar installations 3–20 kW in size will pay an annual flat fee of €30; installations 20-500 kW will pay the annual fee as well, but will also be required to pay a surcharge of €1/kW.
Harsh isn’t really the word — but the future isn’t looking good there, so what word is the right one?
Image Credit: Screen Capture
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