Italy Awards 1.5GW of Agrivoltaic Capacity in First-Ever Tender

Italy's energy agency, Gestore dei Servizi Energetici (GSE), has awarded 1.5GW of agrivoltaic (agriPV) capacity in the country’s first-ever tender for such projects. A total of 540 projects were selected out of 643 bids, with more than 1.7GW tendered in total.

The tender, funded by Italy's national recovery and resilience plan (PNRR), allocated €1.7 billion (US$1.78 billion) to support over 1GW of capacity. The awarded projects are expected to be operational by June 2026.

This comes more than six months after Italy imposed a ban on ground-mounted solar PV on agricultural land. The ban, which has been criticized by the national solar industry body Italia Solare for potentially costing Italy €60 billion in lost investments, did not affect the agriPV projects as they were funded through the PNRR.

Of the awarded projects, 270 were under 1MW (totaling 178MW) and priced at an average of €88.92/MWh, while larger projects (over 1MW) accounted for nearly 1.4GW at an average price of €79.86/MWh, with project sizes averaging 5MW.