Martifer Solar builds “grid parity” PV plant for IKEA in Italy

PV has a hard core band of detractors who trot out the line that this energy source will never be viable without subsidy.  Whilst this argument conveniently ignores the fact that the military and political capital required for the UK to protect hydrocarbons unfortunately sited in the Arabian Gulf,  it is also debunked by news from Italy where Ikea has just installed almost 700kWp on it’s new store in Pisa.

Italy shelved it’s subsidy (Feed-in-Tariff) for PV in the summer of 2013.  This is a commercial decision on the part of Ikea who have calculated that electricity generated from PV on it’s own roof will be cheaper than buying it from the grid.  Italy will get almost 8% of it’s total electricity from solar PV this year and it is expected that 1.5GW of solar capacity will be installed this year.  All without subsidy or incentives.  

http://www.solarserver.com/solar-magazine/solar-news/current/2014/kw19/martifer-solar-builds-grid-parity-pv-plant-for-ikea-in-italy.html