PV park permitting: expert support and submission documents
PV park permitting: we guide agri-PV and ground-mounted projects through the procedure and prepare the submission documents.
Obtaining a permit for a PV park is a complex process with many legal and technical requirements. We guide you competently and reliably through all phases of the procedure. We document all the requirements under the relevant sectoral laws in a structured way and coordinate them in advance. In this way, agri-PV and ground-mounted projects are developed to be permittable. This creates investment security and gets the project built.
In Austria, several areas of law interlock for ground-mounted PV: spatial planning and zoning, electricity law, nature conservation, building law and, depending on the site, road, forestry and water law. Because provincial law is regulated separately in each federal province, thresholds, responsibilities and procedures differ considerably. This also applies to the electricity-law permit, which starts at very different capacity limits depending on the federal province. Without suitable zoning, a permit is regularly refused, and there is no legal entitlement to a particular zoning. In Lower Austria, the grassland-photovoltaic zoning is followed, depending on size, by a nature conservation procedure, a notification procedure under building regulations or a permit under the Electricity Act (Elektrizitätswesengesetz); in addition, zoning types, area limits and the requirements of the sectoral spatial planning programme must be examined in each individual case. In Upper Austria, free-standing plants of more than 500 m² of collector area need a nature conservation permit from the district administrative authority. Protected areas such as nature reserves or national parks are generally excluded as sites, and a minimum distance to forest must be observed.
Under electricity law, the review generally covers electrical engineering and energy economics, building and fire protection, noise protection and glare. In Upper Austria, the submission documents include, among other things, a technical description, overview and site plans showing distances to traffic areas and neighbouring properties, an extract from the zoning plan with confirmation from the municipality, a presentation of the expected immissions and environmental effects, and a statement from the grid operator. Plants that need no permit must also meet minimum requirements, and above a certain capacity a plant manager must be appointed. In Upper Austria, the host municipality conducts the zoning procedure and the province approves it as the supervisory authority; whether free-standing plants in an acceleration area are zoning-neutral depends on the applicable requirements under provincial law. Neighbours, the host municipality and the environmental ombudsman have rights in the procedure, and objections often concern glare and noise. The decision can be appealed to the Regional Administrative Court, and construction may only begin once it is final. Because several expert reports interlock, assumptions on module layout, equipment locations and access roads must be consistent across all documents, otherwise queries arise. The more complete the documents are at the outset, the fewer requests for additional information to expect. Our knowledge of the authorities and of the requirements of technical experts helps to clarify queries early.
Depending on the site, further documents are needed: the nature conservation report, the glare assessment, the electrical engineering design with grid application, the description of the plant equipment and, where required, support for the rezoning procedure. Our highlight among turnkey plants is the EWS Sonnenfeld®.
