Czech Solar Developers Accused

The Czech Republic has witnessed the biggest solar boom in the world relative to its economy. The country saw a huge increase in solar installations in 2010 and 2011 as the government gave a generous electricity feed in tariff for solar power generation. This led to almost 2-3 GW of solar installations being installed in a very short period of time as investors rushed to make windfall IRRs from this scheme. In one year, the strain on the electricity consumers in the country became unbearable as the costs of the green energy were passed on the rate payers.

The government and parliament then tried to mitigate the situation by passing a retroactive tax on solar installations and clamping down on new solar panel installations. The solar developers could not do much other than make a lot of noise. The unsustainable FITs had to be reduced in some manner to bring some kind of equilibrium. Other European countries like Spain and Romania too have brought in measures to delay payments of subsidies as these countries come under huge fiscal strain.

Now the Czech solar developers have been rocked by allegations of improperly reporting the amount of electricity generation. Note Italy is notorious for such frauds and even the infamous Sicilian Mafia has a number of solar farms in the country. These farms were registered for higher FITs despite being built later. These frauds are ultimately being paid by the poor consumers. I don’t know whether these allegations are right or wrong but the blame should go to authorities for devising a hare brained scheme and then not correcting it on time when the solar boom was on.