Are the Spanish PV Plants Installed under the RD661/2007 Still Profitable?

29th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition; 4038-4043
From 2004 to 2010, and supported by a becoming legislative framework, the photovoltaic industry in Spain reached an unprecedented success, placing the country as a worldwide reference in the technological development in this area, but the Spanish crisis and the electrical tariff deficit existing in the country, made the government to legislate by means of reducing the feed-in tariffs applied to these systems, even with retroactive effects. As a consequence of this restrictive legislation, with the last Royal Decree published in June 2014, the economic investment in PV has changed from an attractive initial profitable scenario to a limit situation in regards to the original finance of the installations. With the last governmental actions, it will not be possible to cover the loans at which the PV plants were financed under the framework of the Spanish RD 661/2007. The estimated profitability for those PV installations built under the aforementioned Royal Decree has changed from 10.14% (in 2007) to an imposed IRR of 7.48% and just a 5.4% for the forthcoming new ones. In this paper the variations of the forecasted profitability scenario made in 2007 for the current year (2014) are analyzed based on the data of a real PV system located in the South of Spain.