The Portuguese Ministry of the Environment, in cooperation with the grid operator, approved a series of new photovoltaic projects to be connected to the grid.
The developers were granted grid connection permits by committing to bear the costs of strengthening the electricity infrastructure and avoiding additional regulatory costs to the national electricity system.
This is the first time since June 2019 that the Portuguese government has ensured that new PV capacity is connected to the grid.
In total, the ministry has granted grid connection licences for a total of 5GW of upcoming projects for connection to the high-voltage grid, and 1GW for connection to the grid operating at lower voltage levels.
These projects are mainly centralised power plant PV systems and partly include energy storage systems, with a maximum project capacity of 480MW.
Portugal, like the rest of Europe, is committed to accelerating the renewable energy transition, having adopted a National Energy and Climate Plan PNEC 2030 in 2020 and revising its Energy Strategic Plan again in July this year, with the aim of achieving the target of 80 per cent of the electricity used in the country from renewable sources by 2026 and 85 per cent by 2030, four years ahead of schedule.
The revised plan sets a cumulative total of 20.4GW of installed photovoltaic (PV) capacity in 2030, of which 14.9GW will come from utility-scale PV systems and 5.5GW from distributed PV systems.
The new plan also includes an improved authorisation process, designated area planning, a regulatory framework for distributed PV systems and energy communities, and new fiscal incentives.
According to the author, Portugal's new installed capacity of PV in 2022 will be about 890MW, and the cumulative installed capacity of PV by the end of 2022 will be about 2.59GW, outpacing the growth rate of other renewable energy sources in the country.
Although PV in Portugal's renewable energy in the development of faster, but due to the Portuguese Environment Agency on the PV project's long environmental impact assessment process slightly affected its project installation to promote the speed.
In the first half of 2022, 546MW of installed capacity was added, while only 344MW was added in the second half of the year.
In January-April 2023, only 118MW of new PV capacity was installed in Portugal.
The problems faced by PV projects in Portugal are not only the EIA permits, but also the shortage of installation labour and the possible future lack of grid capacity, which may affect the filing of new PV projects in the future and the installation of PV projects that have been approved in the past, and make PV project developers worry about the potential of PV development in Portugal.
Nonetheless, Portugal has also demonstrated its determination to increase its efforts to develop the PV market in order to promote the clean energy transition market, and is actively seeking to expand cooperation between renewable energy countries, with imports of photovoltaic modules from China accounting for about 85 per cent of Portugal's share.
2022 was a breakthrough year for Portugal in terms of PV capacity additions, and although the opening year of 2023 did not see a high level of new installations, driven by its renewable energy targets and new permits issued, I expect that Portugal's new PV capacity additions in 2023 could be double that of 2022, or even nearly 2GW of new capacity.