New Spanish PV Policy to Result in Compensation Cuts Up to 45%: SolarServer

The Spanish government has revealed its new PV policies of payment cut. These retroactive cuts will result in up to 45% in compensation for projects in all sizes, reported SolarServer.

According to the new policy, the larger a PV plant is, the larger cuts it will suffer. The proposal involves in a series of retroactive cuts of feed-in tariff levels and the reduction may be as high as 25% in overall revenues from PV productions, a.k.a. EU €550-600 million (approximately US $740-810 million), said SolarServer.

Due to this high compensation cuts, SolarServer predicts that more Spanish PV makers may go to bankrupt. Spanish PV trade groups and officials of the region of Murcia have filed lawsuits to stop the new policy to avoid more Spanish PV companies becoming bankrupt. According to the report, the new policy is allegedly based on a 7.5% rate of return for PV projects; however industry groups had previously stated that the mechanism for calculating this return was not clear. Last January, the Spanish government suspended its feed-in tariffs as one of the first acts of the ruling Popular Party.

The National Association of Photovoltaic Energy Producers (ANPIER) will call a general assemble on February 22^nd for its almost 5,000 members in Madrid to discuss the influence of the cut and the action they are going to take against the new policy. As SolarServer reports, ANPIER notes that the new policy will affect 55,000 Spanish families who invested in PV systems, and could force those who borrowed substantial sums to make this investment into bankruptcy, which will cause severe harm to the economy of the nation.