Italy Photovoltaic Capacity up 50 Percent in 2006

The installed capacity of photovoltaic systems that turn sunlight into power will rise 50 percent to some 60 megawatts in Italy in 2006 and will grow fast due to new incentives, an energy analyst said on Thursday.

“This year the new capacity will be 20 MW. It’s a four-fold increase from last year’s (new capacity of) 5 MW,” Gianni Silvestrini, energy adviser to Italy’s Economic Development Minister Pierluigi Bersani, told a photovoltaic conference.

“There is room for four or five-fold increases in the next few years,” Silvestrini said.
Silvestrini said the new measures to boost the photovoltaic sector would eventually trim its high costs and make it competitive in peak hours with traditional sources — whose costs were set to rise driven by high fossil fuel prices — in 2010-2015.

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