SOFIA (Bulgaria), April 9 (SeeNews) – Czech-based company SolarSystems plans to invest up to 14.8 mln euro ($19.68 million) in a solar park in Bulgaria this year, attracted by the Balkan country's investor-friendly legislation and underdeveloped 'green energy' market, the company’s project manager Jiri Lexa said.
The solar park will have an initial design capacity of up to 2.0 MW, which would be doubled later in the year, Jiri Lexa told SeeNews in an interview on the sidelines of the 5th International Congress and Exhibition on Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Sources for Southeast Europe held in Sofia.
“Maybe one or two megawatts, we want to start with this and we suppose that may be this year we will be able to install here about three or four megawatts,” Lexa said. The investment will be worth 3.7 euro per watt, he added.
“Now we start discussions with some developers. To this moment we have obtained four or five offers. They have land, they have all permissions, they have connection to the grid. […] I am sure that maybe in a month we will have that project,” Lexa said.
According to Lexa, the reasons why SolarSystems aims to enter the Bulgarian market are the support granted to the renewable energy sector by the state, the very good prices producers receive for energy generated from renewable sources, and the guarantee that these incentives will be in force for 25 years.
The development of alternative energy resources in Bulgaria has gained momentum since the country closed down a second pair of 440-MW Soviet-made reactors at its sole Kozloduy nuclear power plant on December 31, 2006 to address nuclear safety concerns of the European Union, which it joined the following day. The closure left the EU newcomer with two more modern reactors of 1,000 MW each operating in Kozloduy. The country now seeks to regain its role of key exporter in the region by building a new 2,000 MW nuclear power plant and increasing the share of renewables in its electricity output.
Bulgaria has to cover 11% of its gross energy consumption from renewable energy sources by 2010, compared to about one percent in 2005, in order to comply with EU directives. To support renewable energy producers, the country’s power grid operator NEK is bound by law to buy their electricity at preferential prices for a period of 12 years.
“In the Czech Republic every piece of land where you can build your solar system is owned by someone. [...] It is a very hard situation there, so we want to go to other states, where the situation is better and we think that in Bulgaria you are one year behind us in this,” Lexa said.
Despite the rising popularity of sun-generated electricity only a handful of small solar parks have been built so far in Bulgaria. The first solar park with capacity of more than one megawatt, located in Paunovo, near the capital Sofia was opened in November. Bulgarian construction company SunService told SeeNews it plans to increase its capacity to 3.0 MW by the summer of 2010.
“By 2008 in the Czech Republic 55 MW were installed and we have 8 MW. In 2009 we will have 14 MW. We think that the situation in Bulgaria is similar. We want to start very early because we want to be successful on the market here,” Lexa said.
“We are now at the beginning, we are investing in this idea and I suppose we should be successful,” he added.
($=0.752 euro)
Choose your newsletter by Renewables Now. Join for free!
