However, the support scheme that drove such investments was amended on July 1.
“There are hardly any greenfield investors left,” says Robert Cruceru, executive director of the Romanian Photovoltaic Industry Association (RPIA), an organization whose members include Energias de Portugal and Tinmar Ind, some of the biggest investors in this field.
The latest data published by national grid company Transelectrica show 378.5 MW of solar park projects were beneficiaries of the support scheme put in place by the Romanian government, compared with 49 MW at the end of last year.
Since one megawatt of installed capacity requires investments of EUR1.3 million to EUR1.8 million, more than EUR500 million were invested in photovoltaic parks in the first half.
The growth pace will not remain the same in the second half. Some investors were caught by the legislation change with their projects under the development for which reason they rushed to make them operational. Judging from the data the association has, there will not be any more than 100 MW of new projects inaugurated by the end of the year, Cruceru said.
Solar PV parks were rewarded with EUR30 million worth of green certificates for the electricity supplied to the country’s energy system, according to Transelectrica data and taking into account the average certificate price on the OPCOM power exchange. Solar farms got six certificates per megawatt delivered to the grid until the end of June. As of July, they will be getting only four, with the rest delayed until 2017.
Therefore power producers could collect by EUR10 million less in the second half if the price per certificate and capacity remain the same as in the first half.
Growth of the wind power sector, which witnessed a significant jump from merely 14 MW installed in 2009 to 1,822 MW at the end of last year, has slowed down this year. A total of 314 MW were added in the first half, which required more than EUR500 million investments, if taking into account an average cost of EUR1.5 million per megawatt installed.
More than 71% of the total green power subsidies, or EUR206 million went to wind farm owners in the first half, but the second half amount might be EUR100 million lower. The decline is because wind power gets one certificate per megawatt generated as of July 1, instead of the previous two.
The entire renewable energy production got 6.1 million green certificates worth EUR288 million, which means more certificates issued in the first half of 2013 than in the entire last year (5.5 million). Certificate price, however, went down from EUR56 in January to EUR39.2 in June. The average price in 2012 was EUR56.4, according to OPCOM.
The amount of electricity generated by wind farms, solar parks, small hydropower plants and biomass plants stood at 3.2 TWh, covering 12% of the country’s power consumption. The clean energy quota used by Romania should be 14% this year, according to the legislation in force.
Last year’s clean energy production was 3.4 TWh and accounted for 6.5% of consumption.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)