New market! Ground-mounted PV projects in this country may see a big explosion

In 2009-2010, the Czech pavement PV installation grew rapidly, enhancing the capacity by almost 2GW in accordance with the current policy on feed-in tariffs. Even so, for some time now, the Czech Republic's solar PV capacity has been generated mainly from the rooftop sales market.

According to Jan Krčmář, head of the Czech Solar Energy Research Institute, "Feed-in tariffs are very profitable, and this attracts a large number of investors. Too much. Today, our country has to pay about £1 billion ($1 billion) or more per year."

The success of the program and the subsequent heavy cost to our country - are the main reasons why the Czech Republic is subject to neighborhood realism and negative views of both its thinkers and Chinese citizens on the road photovoltaic projects.

Krčmář shows that this feeling is also transferred to the agricultural sector, which does not want to cooperate with the use of land resources solar PV. "I am convinced that if the feed-in tariff had not been so high 12-13 years ago, then far fewer people would have built pavement solar in the Czech Republic next."

The elite Rezolv team has backgrounds in the fields of Finland, the Czech Republic, Croatia and Estonia. Pictured above is The Reta new project in the Czech Republic

At this stage, the Czech Republic has developed a law regulating the method of agricultural land, mainly including the concept of agricultural photovoltaic power generation, and it will be quickly submitted to the Chamber of Deputies. However, the current state of affairs still limits the allocation of solar PV agricultural land to plantations, vineyards and hop production.

Krčmář shows that the implementation of new solar projects on agricultural land can accelerate the development of ground-based solar projects in the Czech Republic. Only half of the total agricultural land would be enough to upgrade 10GW of solar PV. This is equivalent to the current stage without 5% of the new land for the production of bio-pellets fuel.

If the development of a legal framework for agro-pastoral PV is conducive to the rapid development of solar PV in the Czech Republic, especially in the market for on-road projects, then the Czech Republic will need to continue to work on one of the key tests that is likely to hinder this progress, namely the power grid. "The project investments made do not allow us to adequately prepare for booming or comparable growth with neighboring countries."

Krčmář filled in to show that some new projects for household roofs need to wait almost nine months before they can be connected to the grid because DSO (Supply and Distribution System Network Operator) does not have certain human resources at this stage to connect all the capacity waiting to be allocated to the grid.

More seriously, because of the lack of clarity in the whole process of grid allocation, it is basically impossible for real estate developers to know whether there is available indoor space, and medium and large power plants cannot be connected to the relatively low reserved capacity, or even to integrate different types of renewable energy sources (e.g. biogas and solar PV). For example, if you want to combine a 1MW methane plant with 1MW solar PV production and generation, then you need to apply again for 2MW of grid-connected capacity, and the DSO is not even ready to allow such changes, thus the saved capacity is limited.

"Our own grid capacity is pre-built and allocated, and there is not a transparent color procedure process to decide if there is available capacity in some parts. Sometimes, just to ensure that some capacity is available in one place, investors are forced to submit several grid connection applications to different addresses for processing. This naturally clogs up the system software, and since there are more applications for processing in the system than needed, the reserved capacity is all more than necessary."

Last year's Easter event, because the temperature of solar photovoltaic production of electricity beneficial, low demand for electricity, the grid in the solar power engineering capacity excess capacity, the Czech TSO (Czech power transmission system software) forced more than a hundred MW of solar photovoltaic production of electricity from the grid end disconnected. If the TSO does not improve the grid to allow additional renewable energy capacity, then this situation is more likely to arise in the near future.

"Thus, we have come across this strange situation where the agricultural PV has its own problems, and the grid connection problems are in turn attributed to solar energy."

The Czech Republic's relatively highly industrialized production economy still relies on fossil energy for development. The Czech Republic has been forced to embrace solar photovoltaics and other renewable sources sooner rather than later, driving rapid carbon seepage from vehicles, chemical plants and steel companies.

Krčmář states, "At this stage, the industry is not easy and we are just getting started. Investors have undoubtedly paid attention to the industry. Our own solar market is large and improving fast, and investors should try to build alliances with the local area."

The Czech Republic is one of ten member states of the EU's National Smart Equity Fund, a program dedicated to helping make energy supply smart and improve the efficiency of energy use. The Czech Republic is well positioned to seep faster and shift its power engineering capacity from fossil energy to renewables.

The Czech Republic saw the first development of solar photovoltaics more than a decade ago and is now waiting for the second development in the near future. The Czech Republic has the advantage of having experienced companies that already know the market well and are expected to sign power purchase agreements with areas that are highly dependent on electricity supply.