March 17 (SeeNews) - Moldova's total installed renewable energy capacity rose to 206.81 MW at the end of 2022 from 61.6 MW four years earlier, the country’s Energy Efficiency Agency (AEE) said on Friday.
Wind power accounted for 56% of the total generation capacity from renewable sources in Moldova at the end of last year, while photovoltaic (PV), hydro power and biogas cogeneration plants accounted for 29%, 8% and 7%, respectively, AEE said in a press release.
PV plants registered a significant jump over the review period, increasing to 60.13 MW in 2022, from only 4.02 MW in 2018. The figures also include net metering, which encompasses residential and commercial consumers who generate their own electricity and can deliver the energy surplus to the grid.
At the end of 2022, 1,886 consumers were beneficiaries of the net metering mechanism, with a total installed capacity of 33.47 MW, compared to 57 beneficiaries with an installed capacity of 542.3 kW at the end of 2018.
Wind power capacity rose from 35.6 MW in 2018 to 115.1 MW in 2022. The capacity of biogas-fuelled cogeneration plants followed closely with an increase from 5.7 MW to 15.3 MW in the period under review.
Moldova’s installed power capacity totalled 2,999 MW by November 2022, according to data from the country’s electricity transmission system operator Moldelectrica.
In 2021,the share of renewables in Moldova’s gross final energy consumption stood at 22.3%, just above the EU average of 21.8%, according to most recent Eurostat data available.