Italy: Combination of wind and PV?

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Published on​ 5th December 2024​

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Adding PV to an existing wind farm as a second independent system

 
There is also enormous potential for Italy, considering that Italy ranks fifth in Europe in terms of wind power utilisation. According to the data presented by the industry association ANEV in 2023, wind farms are mainly located in the southern regions of the country (91%), which are also interesting for PV due to their irradiation values; Puglia is the region with the most wind turbines (1,726), followed by Sicily (1,660), Campania (1,184) and Sardinia (732).

Energy policy developments also speak in favour of shared use, especially when you consider that the areas suitable for PV are currently being determined nationwide, which will lead to a shortage of land, as certain areas, which tend to be arable land, will no longer be suitable for PV in the future. How far this shortage will go remains to be seen, there are various regions that are critical of PV, for example Sardinia recently issued a moratorium on the construction of PV until the suitable areas have been determined, in the Veneto region there are efforts to de facto ban even agrophotovoltaics and the current regional legislation only authorises advanced agrophotovoltaics with a capacity of over 1 MW, but it is foreseeable that there will be a shortage.

The existing rights relating to the land also generally allow the same plot of land to be used jointly, as the leasehold for the wind turbine is usually only granted for the exact area of the foundations and the rest of the plot can therefore be subject to further rights in rem.

The potential is also largely unutilised to date, PV is not systematically added to an existing wind farm in a targeted manner. This may be due to the fact that there are no advantages in obtaining authorisations that would lead to a significant simplification of the approval process, but this is likely to change in the future for the reasons mentioned above. It would then be sufficient to amend the existing simplification rules for the rewamping and repowering of existing installations and for the addition of installations in such a way that the planned coexistence of PV and wind is included and leads to a simplification of the authorisation procedure.

Adding PV to an existing wind farm while sharing the grid connection

Another possibility would be for the wind farm and PV system to share the grid connection, which is also an interesting option in view of the sometimes very long grid connection procedures for large systems.

This configuration is not yet feasible in Italy as the framework legislation does not provide for it, but the authority responsible for regulating the electricity market, ARERA, has been working on the corresponding regulations since 2023 and has already carried out a public consultation process. In addition to the generally necessary adjustments to the electricity grid due to the sharp increase in grid connection requests (Terna has received a number of requests corresponding to 250GW for 2022 alone), especially for small systems for self-consumption, for very large offshore CHP systems, the use of storage systems and charging infrastructure for e-mobility, the planned adjustments also concern the connection procedure via the so-called Modello Unico for new systems to a grid connection point to which other systems are already connected.

In contrast to adding the PV system to the CHP system, where the new system must be approved in its entirety, i.e. both the PV system and the grid connection systems, this would simplify and shorten the approval times, as at least the grid connection systems would already be approved and even exist.

New construction of hybrid wind and PV systems​

For the sake of completeness, it should be mentioned that the above-mentioned changes planned by Arera will also make it possible to connect several systems to the grid via a common connection point.