Belgium

Belgian heating specialist Wanit has developed a solar water heater that purportedly reduces the cost of domestic hot water by 85%. The PV water heater solution includes a main dual tank and a solar connector that links the tank with a rooftop PV system and residential battery.

Belgium’s latest renewables procurement exercise resulted in final prices for PV that ranged from €0.03 ($0.0316)/kWh to €0.06/kWh.

Belgium’s federal government has decided to reduce to 6% the VAT on PV systems and heat pumps deployed on buildings erected over the past ten years. This measure was previously applied only to projects developed on buildings that were more than ten years old.

Belgium deployed around 850 MW of new PV systems in 2021, which is 300 MW less than in 2020 but more than what the local industry had expected.

Fusion Fuel Green has developed a small PEM electrolyzer that will be used in a green hydrogen project in Iberia. Elsewhere, India’s Adani Group and Canada-based PEM fuel cell producer Ballard Power Systems have signed a memorandum of understanding to evaluate a joint investment in the commercialization of hydrogen fuel cells for mobility and industrial applications in India.

As part of the EU Horizon 2020 CIRCUSOL project, Belgian PV installer and investor Futech investigated the technical and economic feasibility of integrating a second-life battery storage system at an existing 2MW solar plant in Belgium. The system originates from the automotive industry and was successfully commissioned in August 2021.

Through this operation, the French investment firm wants to help Ikaros Solar further develop its 300MW solar project pipeline.

Figures released by Eurostat this week indicated the monumental task facing the renewables industry as Europe attempts to replace a power source which generated a quarter of the bloc’s electricity in 2020.

Electric transmission company Elia Group noted a bigger slice of the generation mix occupied by nuclear last year, just hours after a London-based consultant said the nation was on track to switch off its reactors before 2026.

In the Belgian macro-region of Flanders, residential PV system owners that decided to install smart meters and abandon net metering are currently seeing their injection tariffs being paid at €0.11, up from just €0.03 in January. This gain adds to the high value of the kilowatt-hours they self-consume and it is helping them halve the payback time of their installations.