By the end of the year, between 200 and 300 MW of new photovoltaic capacity will be connected to the grid, said Mihai Bălan, Executive Director of RPIA – Romanian Association of the Photovoltaic Industry at EnergynomicsTalks, in a dialogue about the potential of development of the production value chain in the photovoltaic sector in 2022 and in the years to come. “I am talking about big projects, utility-scale, and for next year the forecasts are even better”, Mihai Bălan added.
Demand is strong and growing in Romania, just as it is in Europe, he added, not just from large investors. A solar market is mature when the prosumer segment is very well developed, believes Mihai Bălan. “We are not there, but that only means that we have a lot of work to do and that there is a lot of room for growth” from the demand side, a demand for which there is not enough supply.
There is, therefore, a market for renewable capacity and clean energy production and use technologies. That is why we need to develop the value chain in Romania, because “it is time to capture domestically as much of the economic and social value that technology can bring to a country,” said Mihai Bălan.
This will be the central theme of the RESInvest 2022 conference, on May 17 and 18, in Bucharest, organized by RWEA and RPIA, together with Wind Europe and SolarPower Europe.
An analysis published by SolarPower Europe in 2021 – EU Market Outlook for Solar Power – shows that there are 49 companies in Europe that produce solar modules, 9 that produce inverters, only 4 that produce solar cells and 3 that produce silicon bars and disks. The report identified just one polysilicon company and no suppliers to the photovoltaic industry further east and further south from Hungary.
“We want to produce in Romania wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, inverters, electrolysers, batteries, heat pumps and all technologies related to clean energy and energy transition,” said Mihai Bălan. It is not just about the opportunity to cover the needs of the local market, but about an important potential in the whole European market. “Existing production capacities at European level will not meet the demand of the coming years, so Romania must be more ambitious and attract investors,” said the executive director of RPIA.