About 90,000 of the applications approved in Austria’s latest round of rebates came from homeowners, and about 30,000 include the installation of battery storage.
The Austrian energy agency OeMAG has accepted approximately 90,700 applications from home owners in this year’s first round of the rooftop electricity and storage discount system. This number also includes applications left over from the previous year, which have been resubmitted and are related to solar power systems of up to 20 kW.
In addition, the ministry approved another 9,300 applications related to solar power installations ranging from 20 kW to 1 MW. In addition, another 33,000 applications for the battery storage system were approved.
The budget for the first system is 323 million euros ($353.9 million). All in all, this year’s budget is 600 million euros.
“It’s really good news that so many people are taking part in this. More than 100,000 applications is an absolute record,” Energy Minister Leonore Gewessler said at a press conference on Thursday. “But it’s also a challenge. Now is the time to drive more development in a sensible way. Other countries have good experiences with removing value added tax. It should be discussed seriously, the minister continued.
Austria reached 4.2 GW of cumulative solar power capacity at the end of December. Last year it used about 1.4 GW of solar energy, most of which is thanks to the subsidy given by the rebate system.
