Hungary reached a cumulative installed PV capacity of more than 700 MW last year, according to provisional numbers given to pv magazine by Ádám Szolnoki, president of the Hungarian Photovoltaic Industry Association.

Szolnoki said 2018 was a record year for solar deployment in the country with 410 MW of new capacity. Of that, around 320 MW was represented by installations developed under the country’s FIT scheme (KÁT), with projects in the 50-500 kW range accounting for around 267 MW and larger systems making up the remainder.

A further 90 MW of new capacity, Szolnoki said, came in the form of installations not exceeding 50 kW in size under a net metering regime.

The association president said up to 90% of the 2 GW of projects approved under the FIT scheme, for which the application deadline was the end of 2016, had good prospects of coming online as last year construction deadlines were extended for a second time, to 2021.

Auction pending

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Szolnoki expects 400-600 MW of new PV will be deployed annually in Hungary between this year and next, most of it FIT projects.

He said the country’s first large-scale renewables auctions may be held in the second half of the year. The procurement exercises are part of Hungary’s Metár renewable energy program – which the EU approved in 2017.

The scheme was amended in May to close the FIT for PV projects ranging from 50 to 500 kW in size. As a result, project developers began converting projects from the KAT scheme to the new METAR-KAT regime, the PV association said at the time.

Hungary’s National Renewable Action Plan is aiming to meet 14.65% of the nation’s power demand from renewables by next year. The country still depends heavily on power imports for electricity. In 2014, just 35% of Hungary’s power demand was met by domestic generation.