Solar Cells Info

Entrepreneurs race to claim title of largest power plant
August 15, 2007
By Viktor Velek, Staff Writer
Source: Prague Post Online
http://www.praguepost.com/articles/2007/08/15/

Czechs, who for a long-time have been inert to the energy potential of the sun, are suddenly turning into solar energy enthusiasts. Although the country is covered by an oft-clouded sky that allows in relatively modest sunlight, more and more companies are seeking to harness the sun, leading to a boom of solar powe plant construction. Sun farms are mushrooming as the use of renewable energy sources has become a matter of state concern — and state funding. Companies have been leapfrogging one another in a race for what each invariably calls “the biggest Czech solar power plant.”

“Our solar power plant will be the country’s largest,” said Roman Skalický, strategy manager of Energy 21, a recent solar entrepreneur. The firm’s first plant is currently being built in Jaroslavice, south Moravia. With a capacity of 0.9 megawatts, it will produce 1,080 megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity a year after coming online this September, an amount sufficient to supply energy for some 300 households.

Skalický’s statement comes only a few weeks after HiTechSolar, another player on the country’s incipient market, announced completion of its own “largest solar power station in Central Europe,” located in east Moravia. And, several months ago, Korowatt, another new entrant, made the same boast about its plant.
Last year, the country as a whole generated only 540 MWh of solar energy. Korowatt’s solar plant, which began operating in January, is expected to outdo this total on its own, with 628 MWh expected this year. Even with these new plants, however, solar power will meet only a small fraction of the country’s energy demands, which totaled 57,664 gigawatt-hours in 2005. An estimated 4.2 percent of the country’s electricity came from renewable sources last year, almost entirely generated by hydroelectricity and biomass; solar power had a negligible share.

The main cause of this year’s solar rush is a 2005 renewable energy law that promises fixed prices for “green” energy producers, while obliging distributors to buy all renewable energy generated in the country. Green prices are higher than the market rate for “dirty energy” and are guaranteed for 15 years after a plant is launched. Although the law has been in effect for more than two years, its impact on the solar energy market has only now become visible, said Lubomír Bureš, the head of HiTechSolar.
“It took some time because investors were cautious,” he said. “Now they know it’s a safe venture.”

Partly sunny forecast
The race for the largest domestic solar farm won’t stop with the plant in Jaroslavice. By the end of 2007, Energy 21 plans to complete two other solar plants in south Moravia, both with higher output capacity than Jaroslavice.
“In 2008, we’ll invest about 3 billion Kč [$147 million] into renewable energy projects,” Skalický said. About a half or two-thirds of this investment will go into solar energy and the rest into biomass. HiTechSolar will do its best to keep up. According to Bureš, the company’s solar plant in Ostrožská Lhota, east Moravia, will more than double its output capacity to 1.5 MWh by next summer.

Incentives for green energy producers don’t stop at the state level. As the European Union has decided to generate 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, investment into the field has started to receive large-scale support.
Of the 26.7 billion euros ($37 billion/750 billion) budgeted for the Czech Republic from the EU’s structural funds for 2007–13, approximately 3 percent — some 22.5 billion Kč — will be directed toward renewable energy.
The battle for this EU money is going to be intense. For example, the country’s Eko-Energie program, one of several financial pools for renewable energy projects, has been overwhelmed with applications, 38 percent of which were reportedly targeted at constructing solar farms.
While Czech solar businesses welcome EU subsidies, the country’s own legislation — modeled after Germany — has provided enough incentive to develop the sector either way, companies say. “As long as the support prices are upheld, it’s a feasible business even without EU funding,” Bureš said.
Thanks to Germany’s robust incentives, the installed output of solar power plants there exceeded 1,500 MW back in 2005, making it the largest solar power generator not only in the EU but also worldwide. However, that total wattage is roughly equivalent to the power capacity of the Dukovany nuclear power plant only.
This limited production capacity is only one cloud in solar power’s future. Photovoltaic panels are expensive and their energy production varies throughout the day and year, said Jan Motlík, head of the Association for the Use of Renewable Energy Sources. However, he hopes that future technologies will make solar panels cheaper and more effective.
“It’s like with cell phones and computers,” he said.

Despite these drawbacks, solar entrepreneurs think they have a sunny future ahead. “This isn’t a fashion that will be gone in the next year or so,” Skalický said. “The rise of photovoltaic industry in the Czech Republic is a sustainable trend.”