Italy installed around 115.3 MW of solar power in the first three months of 2020, according to provisional numbers released by the Italian renewable energy association, ANIE Rinnovabili, and data provided by grid operator Terna.
The performance is up slightly from 105 MW in the same period last year and 89 MW in the first quarter of 2018. February was the month with the highest growth this year, at 46.6 MW, followed by March and January with 35.8 MW and 33.0 MW, respectively.
According to the latest statistics, PV projects that do not exceed 1 MW in size represent almost all of the newly deployed capacity, at 96.7 MW. Solar parks over 1 MW only accounted for 18.6 MW of the total.
Residential PV systems up to 20 kW in size still account for the largest share, with around 52.2 MW of capacity. PV systems ranging from 20 kW to 100 kW account for 18.3 MW of the quarterly total. Meanwhile, installations of commercial and industrial PV systems ranging from 100 kW to 1 MW reached 26.3 MW in the first three months of the year.
The parts of the country with the highest development volumes are the Lombardy region, which brought 19.7 MW of new solar online, and the southern region of Sicily, with exactly the same volume. Northern areas, such as the Veneto and Emilia-Romagna regions, finished the quarter with 12.5 MW and 11.4 MW, respectively.
The provisional figures indicate that Italy exceeded 21 GW of solar capacity at the end of March. The nation’s National Integrated Plan for Climate and Energy aims for 50 GW of solar by 2030.
