Wind Energy

Framework for the development of solar power photovoltaic

In Greece, procedures for residential systems were simplified in summer 2010: a one-stop-shop has been set up reducing the procedure to a single step and systems in autonomous islands are now authorised. The procedure to install systems on historical buildings has also been simplified. In Slovenia, changes in September 2010 meant that PV systems of less than 1 MW no longer require a building permit, a major road block for the development of small to medium size systems.

However, in some cases such as in Spain or the Czech Republic, it has been acknowledged that procedures have become considerably more onerous, to the extent that it is now sometimes impossible to get a grid connection permit for projects, seriously hindering market development. In some cases, these barriers have been deliberately introduced recently by the national authorities in order to slow down or even stop PV development.

Today, the PV LEGAL consortium is publishing a new update of its resource database. The project provides a comprehensive overview of administrative barriers hampering the development of PV in Europe. It covers 12 countries, among these most of the main photovoltaic (PV) markets in Europe: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and the United Kingdom.

Care has been taken to ensure that the methodology used to analyse and assess the legal and administrative barriers reflects the reality in which market participants are operating: the database goes through the processes encountered to develop small scale residential systems, medium-rooftop commercial systems and large ground mounted systems (as applicable to each national market). The database contains a detailed description of the procedures, legal background and remedies, duration and cost of each step that needs to be taken to develop photovoltaic systems in each market segment in each market in the PV LEGAL project. Overall, the database is the most comprehensive collection of information of its kind publicly available today, making it an exceptional tool for:

Developers and installers, to find details of the steps required to install a PV system

National and European authorities and regulators

For each of the 12 markets covered by the project, detailed recommendations on how to improve the legal-administrative framework have been developed. If these recommendations were implemented, unnecessary bureaucracy could be removed, enabling reductions in the cost of national support schemes and facilitating quicker deployment of PV.

www.pvlegal.eu/