Solar power in Italy

During the 2000s, however, Italy was the third country after Germany and Spain to experience an unprecedented boom in solar installations after actively promoting the energy source through government incentives.

Solar capacity growth slowed in the 2010s, due to cessation of governmental subsidy programmes,[5] but installations have picked up in the 2020s.

This huge and rapid rise in installations was mostly due to the very generous "Conto Energia" support schemes operating during these years.

Growth after 2011 slowed as the schemes were revised at sporadic intervals rather than timely interventions based on cost and deployment.

In 2012 Italy added an estimated 3.4 GW of new capacity, a figure much reduced on 2011 but still a large rise in the context of solar development by that year.

Much of this growth has been driven by residential Solar PV, subject to tax allowances, representing 40–50 per cent of new capacity in the years 2017–2018 alone.

It is interesting to note that whilst large power plants receive a lot of attention in solar power articles, installations under 0.5 MW in size actually represent nearly 80% of the installed capacity in Italy in 2017.Nearly all Solar PV in Italy is grid connected with just 14 MW being off-grid as of 2017.

[34] Some of the advantages of small scale residential Solar include eliminating the need for extra land, keeping cost saving advantages in local communities and empowering households to become prosumers of renewable electricity and thus raising awareness of wasteful consumption habits and environmental issues through direct experience.

Italy's 2010 National Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP) identifies sectoral targets and how to achieve them.

[40] In 2005 the Italian government introduced the first feed in tariffs (FIT) specifically for photovoltaics connected to the grid, the Conto Energia schemes.

The payments for the schemes were designed to be made over a 20-year period and to incentivise both smaller and larger producers to invest in the installation of photovoltaic plants and systems.

Conto Energia 3 ran briefly, resulting in 1,567 MW of installed power at an annual cost of €0.65 billion.

This was succeeded by Conto Energia 4 which resulted in the largest increase in solar capacity so far at 7,600 MW of installed power at the annual cost of €2.47 billion.

It was announced that the feed in tariff would end once the total annual costs of the cumulative Conto Energia scheme reached €6.7 billion.

Under the Conto Energia incentive scheme, a total of 18,217 MW of installed solar PV power was added at annual cost of €6.7 billion.

Additional factors like greenhouse gases impact of different bioenergy technologies, also influence the support granted.

[15] It is the first concentrated solar power plant to use molten salt for heat transfer and storage which is integrated with a combined-cycle gas facility.

[51] The two other CSP systems are the ASE demo plant,[52] which uses parabolic trough technology to focus solar energy, and the Rende-CSP plant, which uses Linear Fresnel reflector technology to focus solar energy to one point of fluidised storage consisting of oil.

This technology uses off-grid applications to produce 24-hour industrial scale power for mining sites and remote communities in Italy, other parts of Europe, Australia, Asia, North Africa and Latin America.

STEM uses fluidised silica sand as a thermal storage and heat transfer medium for CSP systems.

The use of silica sand also lowers the cost of the CSP, and the facility aims to minimise pollution released during the production and operation of the system while producing 50–100 MWe with a storage capacity of 5–6 hours.

Such technology is especially effective in remote areas and can be easily coupled with fossil fuel plants to increase reliability of electricity supply.

In Italy, due to a lack of coal, renewable hydro energy from the Alps made industrialisation possible at the end of the 19th century.

[64][65] During World War I, Italy was not able to prevent an energy crisis revealing the dependence on imported fuels, mainly coal.

With the oil shock in 1973, it was not any longer just pioneers, like Giorgio Nebbia and Giovanni Francia, showing interest in solar energy.

Furthermore, some promising developments and Congresses in solar energy took place, but with falling oil prices in the 1980s these programs were soon forgotten.