With all the excitement surrounding the end of the year installation rush in Germany, I fear we are forgetting to look at other important solar markets and the policy changes that are looming ahead. For example in 2010 the situation is quite tricky in Italy. It’s also tricky to explain but I’m going to take a shot. The cap for the solar subsidies in Italy is 3 GW or 2016 whichever is sooner. In 2010 the FIT will be 2% less than the 2009 FIT. 2011 onwards we have no idea what the FIT will be. Also once a cumulative installed PV capacity reaches 1.2 GW, the FIT that exists at that point in time will be maintained for the next 14 months. Now it looks like Italy will hit that 1.2 GW mark by 1H10. But when that happens the tariff will not be constant for 14 months but will most likely be reviewed and readjusted to 20-30% lower than the current tariffs in 2011. So as a project developer, in order to ensure that you can avail the 2010 FIT you have to make sure your project is connected to the grid by Dec 2010. Now in Italy it takes about 3-6 months to connect to the grid. So projects will have to be completed by August 2010 to ensure grid connection by year end, which in turn means the last round of modules will be ordered in June of 2010 before. This is a very important risk associated with the Italian solar market that very few people are thinking about, in my humble opinion.

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