HiTechMedia built 369 solar panels on a chicken farm by a pond near Opatov, east Bohemia. The plant's output will be small, enough to power about 20 homes during the next year.

Solar energy in the Czech Republic is decades behind its European counterparts. Germany gets 768,000 kilowatts of power annually from solar power; Austria gets more than 16,000.

But solar energy got a push this year thanks to a renewable energy law that took effect Jan. 1 aimed at luring investors to the technology. The government now gives heavy subsidies to investors in renewable energy and promises to purchase power from those new sources.

The move came just in time. The country has a 2010 deadline from the European Union by which it has to receive at least 8 percent of its power from renewable sources.

Output from those sources had been falling up until this year.

Power giant ČEZ estimates that solar power output, for private use, fell 9 percent in 2005 from the previous year. Wind power production fell 4 percent.

"There wasn't an adequate legislative environment for investments into solar power in the past," says Vítězslav Jancík, a project manager from HiTechMedia, the company that built the Opatov plant.

Too much interest

Investors have clamored for the new state subsidies. The state has doled out more than 156 million Kč ($6.9 million) to more than 400 renewable energy projects.

Now the one thing that made solar energy viable — state subsidies — could be the very thing that cripples it because of the demand it's created.

"There is a tremendous amount of interest in this program," says Kateřina Koubová, Industry and Trade Ministry spokeswoman. "Just to support all the power supply projects submitted so far, we lack about 1 billion Kč."

The total investment costs of solar power runs nearly 135,000 Kč per kilowatt-hour, says Anna Veverková, chairwoman of the Czech Energy Regulation Office (ERÚ). That is significantly higher than, say, wind energy, which costs 38,500 Kč per kilowatt.

This means that as state funds run dry, solar power projects could be the first on the chopping block.

"Due to constantly decreasing sources of financing, only the less capital-intensive projects will be supported," says Pavel Kosek, a spokesman with the Environment Ministry State Fund, which funds these projects.

Solar power is also hampered by its cost to buyers.

The ERÚ more than doubled the price of solar energy this year to 13 Kč per kilowatt hour — almost six times as expensive as wind or hydroelectric power.

Kosek says projects like solar energy plants will soon have to go to the EU if they want to get any further subsidies.

Room to grow

Masaryk University has the biggest solar power plant in the country — a 20 million Kč project with an annual output of 40 megawatts, enough for 100 homes. The plant is not only for academic research; it also provides part of the university's power.

Vladislav Navrátil, a physics professor who helped initiate the project, says that the country could easily double its solar power output. But the technology faces opposition even from environmentalists who complain that solar panel production creates pollution.

The Veronika Institute, an organization of the Czech Union of Nature Protectors, took issue with the Masaryk University plant and solar power in general.

"We support renewable sources only if they are worth it," says Veronika Director Yvonna Gaillyová. "I have to say that we actually argue about [solar energy] and are against it."

Despite the lack of solar power plants in the country, the Czech Republic has become one of the biggest exporters of solar panels in Europe. Last October, Kyocera invested nearly 200 million Kč in a new solar panel factory in north Bohemia.

HiTechMedia — which turns its profit by providing consulting services to companies applying for state subsidies — plans to roll its profits into another two solar power plants that could be operational by the end of the year.

As for Masaryk University, it's holding off on its plans to expand solar output for now.

"The Environment Minister (Libor) Ambrozek was here and he promised us a lot," Navrátil says. "We wrote everything down and now we wait to see what happens."