On March 31st, 2011, The Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade (MITyC) announced that it has approved 923 new solar photovoltaic (PV) plants for participation in the nation's feed-in tariff.

These 923 approvals are out of a total of 4,718 applications received in the first application round of 2011, and represent 116 MW of potential new generation.

"The high number of filings indicates that the tariff framework is very attractive to developers in the sector," declared the MITyC in a press statement.

Large rooftop plants represent majority of capacity

The projects approved include 460 rooftop PV plants 20 kW or smaller, 435 rooftop plants over 20 kW, and 28 ground-mounted plants. The capacities approved in this round for each category are 7.39 MW, 67.2 MW and 41.6 MW respectively.

Out of the 4,718 applications received, the MITyC states that 1,272 were rejected for incorrect or incomplete paperwork, 315 were canceled and 2,178 did not fall within the established quota. Applications are approved in a chronological order, with excess applications being transferred to the next round.

MITyC announces quotas for second 2011 application round

The MITyC also announced quotas for the second round of approvals, stating that it will accept applications for 7.16 MW of rooftop plants 20 kW or smaller, 67.8 MW of rooftop plants over 20 kW, and 40.4 MW of ground-mounted plants. The second application round will end on April 6th, 2011.

Feed-in tariff levels for this next round will be EUR 0.289/kWh (USD 0.411/kWh), EUR 0.204/kWh (USD 0.290/kWh) and EUR 0.135/kWh (USD 0.192/kWh) for 20 kW and under rooftop, over 20 kW rooftop and ground-mounted plants, respectively. The new rates represent reductions of 5%, 25% and 45%, respectively, from rates before 2010 feed-in tariff reductions.

MITyC approves 7,736 applications

The MITyC further notes that it has approved 7,736 applications for a total of 1.1 GW of new PV capacity since altering its approval process in September 2008 through RD 1578/2008. However, despite this high number of approvals, the impacts of policy changes brought the nation to only 69 MW of new PV installed in 2009.

2011-04-05| Courtesy: Spanish Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade | solarserver.com © Heindl Server GmbH

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