In Italy in the first nine months of 2011 almost 117.000 photovoltaic plants were activated for a connected power of over 7 GW, i.e. more than double the figure for the whole of 2010. This is what emerges from a report by the Research area of Monte dei Paschi di Siena .
The Gestore dei Servizi Energetici (GSE) expects that, by the end of 2011, the photovoltaic power will reach 12GW and the number of plants will reach 350.000 units. With these figures, Italy would take first place in the world ranking which calculates the power that entered service in 2011, even three times more than Germany, which is the world leader in the sector.
Research by Monte dei Paschi shows that investments in the photovoltaic sector guarantee a return of 5% in real terms. The economic performance depends very much on the position of the plant since, due to the different solar radiation in Italy, with the same technical characteristics, photovoltaics produce a higher yield in the South. In any case, the number of panels remains higher in the North: at the end of 2010, 58% of the installations were located in the North and 25% in the South.
