Baarsma does not think the coming national elections in March are a risk for solar. “It is rather unlikely that the solar policy will change at the short term. Just before Christmas the parliament voted for a proposal to maintain the 'salderingsregeling' up to 2023. There was a broad spectrum of policital parties in favour of this proposal, directed on the investment in PV by households. The SDE+ for 2017 is already announced and it is very likely this instrument will function up to 2023 as well“, Baarsma told pv Europe.
Stronger growth of the commercial market
“Last year the market was around 500-550 MW and was dominantly driven by the residential market due to the very interesting ‘salderingsregeling’ (net metering). However the business market is also growing and my expectation is that this market will grow faster in 2017. The budget of the SDE+ will be 12 billion euro next year. As you most probably know this is a tendering system not only for solar-PV, but also for onshore wind and biomass. PV becomes more and more competitive and biomass used in power plants will not take next year a significant part of the budget”, he said.
More solar parks
“The expectations in the Solar Trendreport 2017 are a build-up of 650-700 MW new PV installations for 2017, but my personal expectation are 950-1000 MW”, Baarsma underlines.”Last year the first solar park larger 10 MW in the Netherland was realized, the Sunport Delfzijl 30.8 MW, a project of Wirsol. Next year there will be more solarparks and this will be a new extra market in the our country. I am quite sure the Netherlands will be more and more interesting for international market players the next years. There is an awareness of the inhibition for large projects due to legal procedure, but as you maybe know there was a very successfull approach in the tender for offshore wind in which in concerted action of all authorities a very fast and efficient route has been organized”, Baarsma told pv Europe.
Cumulative PV capacity of 2.6 GW
According to the data of market researcher Peter Segaar, over 2GW of solar PV capacity had been installed in the Netherlands by the end of 2016. This amounts to a 35 percent growth in capacity compared to 2015, when the cumulative capacity hit 1.5GW. Small private consumers, like households, medium & small businesses and schools account for half of this figure. Segaar estimates that by now between 400.000 and 450.000 households have solar systems installed on their roofs. By the end of 2017 cumulative capacity should end up around 2.6 GW he says.
SMA also expects continued PV growth in Benelux of around 700 MW in 2017. “PV applications in the residential sector are especially attractive in the Netherlands due to high electricity rates”, company speaker Susanne Henkel told pv Europe.
A good opportunity to get insights especially about the large-scale PV market and new business models in the Netherlands offers the platform event “The Solar Future NL”. It takes place on 18 May 2017 and is organized by Solar Plaza. (HCN)
Stay informed, get our weekly newsletter. Register here: http://www.pveurope.eu/Newsletter
