Konavle's first solar power plant sees the light of day

Viva Ltd., the water-bottling business located in proximity to Cavtat (Gruda, Konavle), has just opened the first small solar power plant (30 kW) in Konavle.

The Konavle municipality has for some time now been taking a serious look into the ways of encouraging the development of the clean and renewable energy sources, and did so with great success: within the past two years it subsidized 45% of the cost of the solar-panel installations for the the 75 qualified households.

In light of such programs, perhaps it's not to much of a stretch to surmise that it won't be too long before another, bigger solar-power plant sees the light of day (of course the pun was intended), plans for which were recently publicly announced.

With the current population trends there is no doubt that we'll end up in the neighborhood of 10 billion souls by 2050. Naturally, this notion brings forth many energy concerns (@ BBC) to which, from its small corner of the world, Konavle answered with dedication to the program which will enable 50% of its usable energy to be produced from clean and reneable sources by 2020. The 260MM € worth wind-turbine project in Konavle hills is already underway.

Be that as it may, by way of conclusion, a word of caution to the wise: the legislation needs to remain vigilant so as to sustain the kind of thought it carried insofar, lest the municipality suffers the unfavorable turn-of-tide currently taking place in Lithuania (@ Lithuania Tribune).

(...) it might be concluded that the too favourable regulation on incentives to small solar plants was radically changed from the one incentivizing development to a one that is essentially more restrictive.

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• Renewable Energy World
• UN Development Programme (Croatia)
• Solar Energy in the EU
• Renewable Energy in Croatia, by Yann Delomez (PDF)