GSE states the global installed power in Italy is close to 7 GW

The GSE published in its web site the incredible news. Is it possible?

Yes, 7 GW appears incredible, but might be realistic. Among the documents requested by the GSE to declare the completion of a plant there is the registration of the plant's data in the "Censimp" data-base managed by Terna. The overall data are not published but are known by GSE. They know the size of each of the 55.000 plants declared "completed" by Dec 31 2010.

And the gap between the installed capacity ant the capacity already registered by the GSE in the FIT program is huge.

As an example, our installing partner completed around 2,5 MW in 2010 (2 MW up from 2009), all of them are registered in the “Censimp” data-base, but less than a third are grid connected and even less are officially enlisted in the GSE public data-base (since Sep 2010 the GSE has no long the 60 days term to complete its approval procedure).

As of the installing capacity, 6 GW need around 12 to 15.000 men per month workforce, which is a fraction of the installing capacity involved during the '90s in the mobile phone infrastructure implementation (which involves similar skills and workforce), now almost totally converted in the PV business.

The only consideration spurring doubts on the 7 GW figure is how has all these modules have been delivered and installed while the industry - as well as and investors' reports - has never been estimating more than 2 GW.

Anyway, since at the GSE are not daydreamers and I tend to believe its figure will be proofed, the point is how these figures affect the political stance of the Government toward the renewables in general and the PV regulatory frame especially.

The Ministry of Agriculture is promoting a Law Decree design that put a limit at 1 MW for ground-based plants. It also requests the developer to have a right on a land 10 times greater than the actual size of the PV plant. Some Regions (Emilia-Romagna) have already issued a Regional Law with similar constraints. It all but stopped any development of ground based plants.

There is obviously a fierce opposition by the industry, but it is not clear yet when and how this Decree design will become a Law.

There is a mix of political tactics – ren. energy is somehow posing a threat to the Gov. nuclear program and gas lines expansion program + liquid gas docking platform highly ostracized by local authorities – disinformation boosted by Government-closed media, and actual speculation that is threatening the development of utility-scale ground-based PV plants.

Another point is the cap at 3 GW for the FIT program so called “Terzo Conto Energia” (Third FIT program) , which started its relevance on Jan 1 2011 and will have to admit all the power installed but not eligible for the 2010 program plus all the new 2011 installations – which, if nothing less that 2010, will arrive by end of 2011 very close to the cap. And then, what will we be doing in 2012 and on?

With 7 GW and possibly 10 GW by the end of 2011 there would be also concerns about the impact of non-programmable energy to the grid balance, especially in areas where the impact of utility-scale PV plants feed higher energy than the request of local consumer – which is typically the case of the isolated farmlands in Apulia, for instance.

What the industry is looking forward is a new FIT program by the end of 2011 that has to be both sustainable from the political point and consistent with a land planning of the areas suitable for utility scale projects.

Which is easier to say than to do under the current political scenario in Italy.