PV sector in the European Union countries – Clusters and efficiency
Abstract European Union (EU) due to several challenges that exist nowadays has changed its Energy Policy. In order to fulfill international commitments concerning greenhouse gas emission and to assure safety in supply and stable prices, EU has been a leader in renewable energy. In many EU countries solar energy is a possible and very viable option. Together with wind energy, photovoltaic energy is the new support core of a low carbon EU economy in what concerns electricity production. In this work clusters of countries were generated based on the energy produced by PV systems and the share of energy from PV systems in the total electricity produced by renewable sources. This work also analyzed the production of energy from the photovoltaic sector in EU and compared it with the existing potential for this type of energy. Roughly half of the EU countries are producing energy within the limits of what is expected, considering the irradiation on optimally inclined plane. However some of them could improve the ratio between energy production and installed power. Considering the leader countries in energy production from photovoltaic, Czech Republic and Spain are the countries that exceed what it is expected.