Italy is on track for its best year for solar PV deployments in a decade as installations surge in the first half of 2022, according to the latest figures from industry association Italia Solare. From January to June 2022, the country added 1,012MW of newly installed photovoltaic capacity, an increase of 149% over the 406MW in the same period last year.

While Italy is still a long way from 2011, when a record 9,461 MW was deployed, the trend is improving compared to last year, ItaliaSolare said. In fact, figures from the association show that the country has not deployed more than 1GW of solar in a year since 2013.

According to a 2021 report by trade association SolarPower Europe, Italian solar has repeatedly failed technology-neutral tenders in the country, while licensing has also prevented parts of power purchase agreements from taking off.

A total of 23,577 MW of solar PV is currently deployed in Italy, including 12,921 MW of commercial and industrial systems, 5,486 MW of residential installations and 5,170 MW of utility-scale plants, according to Italia Solare. Keywords: engineering news, overseas news

The Italian government has launched a 1.5 billion euro program aimed at incentivizing the installation of agricultural photovoltaics. Earlier in 2022, Italia Solare called on Italy to speed up the approval of new solar projects to reduce the country's reliance on Russian gas.Editor/XingWentao