The Spanish Photovoltaic Union, an association that represents 85% of the national PV sector, has just presented its Balance 2018. According to the data registered by UNEF, last year 261.7 megawatts of new photovoltaic power was installed in Spain, which means an increase of 94% compared to the 135 megawatts installed in 2017 and almost 500% compared to the photovoltaic power (PV) installed in 2016 (55 megawatts). Self-consumption accounted for 90% of the total.
The reactivation of the national solar photovoltaic sector is vertiginous: 55 megawatts in 2016; 135 in 2017; and 261.7 in 2018. Of these -explain from UNEF-, 90% (235.7 megawatts) corresponds to energy self-consumption and 26 megawatts to solar photovoltaic plants on land (in the self-consumption segment, 25% of the total were facilities for agricultural use connected to the network). The Spanish Photovoltaic Union (UNEF) however clarifies:
“despite this growth, the number of newly installed power in Spain represents only 3% of the new power installed in Europe in 2018, estimated at 8,500 megawatts, with Germany and Low as the zones with greater development of new photovoltaic power “.
That is to say, that Spain still has a long way to go,
UNEF reviews the “main reasons for this growth”
The association cites the following: (1) the inertia of growth of the sector in view of its competitiveness, “given the reduction of production costs of 80% in the last 10 years”; (2) the capacity of self-consumption to influence the competitiveness of companies-energy savings and financial optimization of energy efficiency; (3) the impulse given to the sector by the approval of the European Directive on Renewable Energies, “which brings security and stability to the regulatory framework of self-consumption”; (4) the change of trend in renewable energy and support to the photovoltaic sector that has marked the official discourse of the new Executive and, above all, the repeal of the Sun tax, decreed by the Government of Pedro Sánchez last October, barely three months after he arrived in La Moncloa, derogation that has been an incentive for the market; and (5), finally, the support of the autonomous communities for renewable generation through subsidies for self-consumption, both industrial and residential.
Source: www.energias-renovables.com