Due to the impending retroactive changes to Italy’s feed-in tariff, the country’s markets will soon be swamped with cheap solar PV power plants up for sale, according to a noted firm.
Owing to the approaching retroactive changes — due to be enacted at the beginning of 2015 — many projects in the country are expected to crash, with banks presumably selling said projects off at “rock-bottom” prices in an already over-saturated marketplace, according to the head of German firm Solar8.
Said president, Andreas Hoynigg, stated, in an interview with PV-Tech: “There are already many, many plants on the market but the foreclosure sales, the big sell off, will start next year. Many of the owners can’t pay the interest of their financing anymore [due to policy changes] so the Italian banks are selling the plants but this takes time. They have to go to court and wait for a decision and the Italian courts move extremely slowly. So we believe the big sell off will start next year.”
The referenced changes to the FiT program will see the “guaranteed price” of €0.07/kWh removed and retroactive reductions in FiT payments enacted. As it stands currently, the market price for electricity in Italy is about €0.03/kWh.
Owners of solar projects in the country have been given the option of spreading their payments across 24 years rather than 20; an absolute cut of 7-9%, depending on plant size; or a complex new payment schedule with a 15% cut in payments in the near-term in exchange for a 15% increase in the long-term.
According to Hoynigg, given the fact that there are already few buyers in the market, prices are likely to fall through the floor once the changes are enacted.
“You can’t finance plants at the moment,” Hoynigg continued. “There are thousands for sale and no buyers, and secondly the Italian banks have no money. Traditionally there was an Australian firm and some Russian investors but now there are very few buyers left in the market. We’re in the situation now with our finances that we may – very carefully – consider buying again.”
Hard to make a prediction on the long-term health of the market there just yet. The decision to enact these changes seems like such an incredibly poor one on so many levels (as we’ve noted before) — but I would be hesitant to say that there is no future for solar energy in Italy. The takeaway, I’d say, is that any investor looking at investing in solar in Italy will be making what appears, as of right now, to be a real toss-up of a bet, in my eyes anyways.
Image Credit: Solar Italy via Wikimedia Commons
I don't like paywalls. You don't like paywalls. Who likes paywalls? Here at CleanTechnica, we implemented a limited paywall for a while, but it always felt wrong — and it was always tough to decide what we should put behind there. In theory, your most exclusive and best content goes behind a paywall. But then fewer people read it! We just don't like paywalls, and so we've decided to ditch ours. Unfortunately, the media business is still a tough, cut-throat business with tiny margins. It's a never-ending Olympic challenge to stay above water or even perhaps — gasp — grow. So ...
Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!
Have a tip for CleanTechnica, want to advertise, or want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
