The Greek Government is giving top priority to encouraging its population to embrace solar energy and the development minister Dimitris Sioufas recently announced that they are in the process of investing 192 million Euros into developing renewable energy.

Solar technology has been used in Greece for many years, mainly in the form of PV thermal tanks for residential hot water but as the Greek government fully intends to meet the EU targets for renewable energy they are encouraging the use of solar panels for all of a households electricity requirements.

The climate in Greece is perfect for solar energy and in effect means that the amount of time to recover the installation costs is relatively low. Parts of the country get an estimated 3000 hours of sunlight per year and many local authorities have been testing pilot programmes in order to test out the feasibility of solar power installations. All of these pilot projects have been extremely well received and this has paved the way for other local authorities to promote this form of renewable energy.

With regard to the feed-in tariff scheme in Greece, they have experienced many problems, mainly due to the administration and for a period of time in 2008/09 they had to stop all applications due to the massive backlog.

The initial scheme offered an attractive tariff and the Greek authorities vastly under estimated the popularity. The tariff payment ranges from 0.40 Euros to 0.50 Euros per kilowatt hour and this compares favourable with other parts of Europe where the average prices are around half of those.

There are installation grants and incentives available but is should be noted that because of the design of the average property in Greece, i.e. flat roofs,and the favourable climatic conditions, the installation costs are relatively low and it is estimated that for an average size dwelling the length of time that is required to recoup the investment is around 12 years.

The downside of the renewable energy market in Greece is the current economy, not just the world wide downturn but especially the economy of Greece which is in turmoil at the moment. This has obviously affected the countries solar market as many private household and businesses are unable to invest.

It is feared amongst the EU that Greece's problems may mean that they will be unable to meet their renewable energy targets and this could also mean that the rest of the EU may also be affected in the same way.