However, in some cases such as in Spain or the Czech Republic, it has been acknowledged that procedures have become considerably more onerous, to the extent that it is now sometimes impossible to get a grid connection permit for projects, seriously hindering market development. In some cases, these barriers have been deliberately introduced recently by the national authorities in order to slow down or even stop PV development.
Today, the PV LEGAL consortium is publishing a new update of its resource database. The project provides a comprehensive overview of administrative barriers hampering the development of PV in Europe. It covers 12 countries, among these most of the main photovoltaic (PV) markets in Europe: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and the United Kingdom.
Care has been taken to ensure that the methodology used to analyse and assess the legal and administrative barriers reflects the reality in which market participants are operating: the database goes through the processes encountered to develop small scale residential systems, medium-rooftop commercial systems and large ground mounted systems (as applicable to each national market). The database contains a detailed description of the procedures, legal background and remedies, duration and cost of each step that needs to be taken to develop photovoltaic systems in each market segment in each market in the PV LEGAL project. Overall, the database is the most comprehensive collection of information of its kind publicly available today, making it an exceptional tool for:
Developers and installers, to find details of the steps required to install a PV system
National and European authorities and regulators
For each of the 12 markets covered by the project, detailed recommendations on how to improve the legal-administrative framework have been developed. If these recommendations were implemented, unnecessary bureaucracy could be removed, enabling reductions in the cost of national support schemes and facilitating quicker deployment of PV.