• Italy has the world largest share (8%) of electricity energy production from photovoltaic.
  • Since 2012, in Italy the wind and photovoltaic plants connected to the grid each year have experienced a rapid decrease down to around 700 MW in 2015.
  • These and other key findings come to light during the presentation of a WEC - CESI report during a special session of the 24th Power-Gen Europe in Milan.

Milan, June 22 2016 - Italy has the world largest share (8%) of electricity energy production from photovoltaic, in a period of decreasing electricity consumption and overcapacity of power plants. The reason of this success is mainly due to the support of generous incentives that now have been reduced. In fact, since 2012 in Italy the wind and photovoltaic plants connected to the grid each year have experienced a rapid decrease down to around 700 MW in 2015, after having seen in the last 10 years a boom from around 500 MW in 2006 up to 11,000 in 2011.

These findings come to light today during the presentation of a comprehensive document on the effects of wind and photovoltaic plants development. The presentation has been held by Alessandro Clerici, CESI Senior Corporate Advisor, during a special session of the 24th Power-Gen Europe and co-located Renewable Energy World Europe, organized by PennWell in Milan.

The same study has confirmed that the development of photovoltaic and wind plants is a concrete pathway for climate change mitigation. In addition, the investments on renewables have reduced dependence on imported fuel, promoted economic development, and created jobs and capabilities for export opportunities and the development of market volumes, causing also a subsequent sharp decrease in their costs.

Renewables have contributed to the reduction of the Italian pool price even if for some categories of clients this has not been reflected in their bills. In fact, their development is causing for several years a burden of around 13 billion € per year on final electricity bills to clients.

On top of that, the study confirmed that the increase of variable renewables and their priority of dispatching has created a series of both technical, economical and market challenges with strong impacts on the conventional generation fleet; in fact, the efficient combined cycle power plants implemented just before the boom of renewables are now operated at 1/3 of their initially planned hours of utilization per year.

Notwithstanding the above challenges, the operators in the Generation, Transmission and Distribution sectors have been able to operate the system in a very reliable way without impacts on quality of supply for end clients.

Besides the Italian case, in the same session of Power-Gen Europe, Clerici has highlighted some of the key findings of the World Energy Council (WEC) Report: “Variable Renewables Integration In Electricity Systems – How To Get It Right” that is going to be launched in the next weeks. The 32 countries case study provides a snapshot of the experiences and different approaches locally implemented. These countries represent around the 90% of the total world generation from wind and photovoltaic plants.

The WEC – CESI report identifies critical success factors for an effective integration of variable renewable energy sources into the electrical power systems. It details the worldwide great development of renewables in the last 10 years, at the average annual growth of 23% for wind and 51% for photovoltaic. In some of the analyzed countries, such as Germany, Denmark, Spain, Portugal and Italy, wind and photovoltaic are beyond the 40% of the peak load (see the table below). In 2015 renewables confirmed to be a business of $286 billion with 154 GW of new capacity (of which 76% in wind and photovoltaic) overtaking investments and capacity of conventional generation (97GW).

In this scenario is very important to mention the shift from the developed markets (historically Europe leadership) to the emerging ones. Lastly, a detailed survey on very recent CAPEX and Operations & Maintenance costs is reported, including the world record results of auctions: 28$/MWh in Morocco for a wind plant and 30$/MWh for a photovoltaic plant in the Emirates. These exceptionally low values cannot generally be projected to other countries with different wind and sun load factors and higher local costs.

The report has been realized in collaboration with the WEC Global Partner and Project Supporter CESI S.p.A., with additional contributions from the 48 members of the Knowledge Network. Its unabridged version will be launched and presented by the WEC in the next weeks in some specific sessions during the upcoming WEC events.