The Greek public administration does not have an official body that regularly publishes energy statistics for all technologies and supporting programmes. As a result, different agencies often publish reports covering different market segments, causing confusion about the country's installed capacity.

Such is the case with Dapeep, a Greek renewable energy operator. According to Dapeep, Greece installed 1.183 MW of new PV capacity in 2023, mainly in ground-mounted systems. However, its report does not include capacity installed through the Net Metering Program and the Energy Community Program.

The Greek Association of Photovoltaic Enterprises (Helapco) released an independent report in February claiming that Greece installed a total of 1,574.7 MW of new PV capacity in 2023.

In an interview with PV magazine this week, Helapco said it has updated its records to include 16 MW net metering PV systems installed at Athens International Airport last year. The 16 MW solar park is the largest self-use net metering PV project in the country.

Helapco told PV magazine that Greece added 1,591 MW of solar capacity last year, raising the country's installed PV capacity to 7,105 MW. This is the largest increase in installed PV capacity in Greece in one year. In 2022, the country's new installed PV capacity is 1.36 GW.

The new installed capacity includes systems supported by tariff subsidies through competitive bidding, small systems with feed-in tariff subsidies of less than 500 kW, net metering systems, energy community projects, and PV projects directly participating in the electricity market without subsidy support.

Helapco also told PV magazine that Greece has not yet installed any solar projects operating through commercial power purchase agreements (PPAs). According to the Dapeep report, 183.7 MW of PV capacity will be directly involved in the electricity market by the end of 2023. Helapco policy officer Stelios Psomas said this was not capacity operated through PPAs and claimed that Dapeep did not publish a detailed list of such projects.

Helapco noted the importance of the net metering market. According to its report, Greece added 257.1 MW of net metering systems last year, the largest peak in net metering system installations since the program was launched a decade ago. Most of the new systems are photovoltaic arrays of more than 1 MW. At the end of last year, Greece had a net metered PV capacity of 472.9 MW.

Psomas said the program faces the same problems as last year's new program. For example, project managers lack flexibility, resulting in many projects requiring resubmission of applications. Delays in subsidy payments have discouraged some consumers from adopting the program. However, various policy changes have addressed these issues, and half of the program's budget has been used.

"Experience shows that it takes one to two years for new schemes to find a rhythm," Psomas said, "We (Helapco) expect to install around 60 MW of new PV capacity in the coming months, equivalent to around 9,000 new solar systems."

A separate report by Athens-based policy group The Green Tank said energy communities had 14 MW of PV capacity at the end of 2023 and were operating through net metering. Based on The number of applications filed in 2023, the segment is expected to grow significantly in 2024, according to The Green Tank.

More than 1 GW of PV projects were also installed in energy communities outside the net metering program in December 2023, it said. Most of these are energy communities run by businesses. The government allows enterprises to build photovoltaic projects with a capacity of less than 1 MW under the premise of ensuring a stable feed-in tariff.

According to Helapco, solar projects in Greece met 18.4% of the country's electricity demand in 2023. Helapco claims this is the highest penetration of solar in a country's electricity mix in Europe to date.

The Greek transmission system operator also said that Greece's renewable energy system, which includes large hydropower plants, met 57 percent of the country's electricity demand last year, up from 50.12 percent the previous year.

Greece launched a 200 million euro ($215.3 million) subsidy program in March 2023 for small solar + energy storage systems in the residential and agricultural sectors, which added 1,795 such systems, or 11,89 MW(12,66 MWh) of installed capacity, Psomas said. Editor/Xu Shengpeng