Romania's solar parks from orbit: the first wave, the quiet years and the second wave

#The first wave and the quiet years

The first-wave parks grew on green certificates, the support scheme launched in 2011 and closed to new plants at the end of 2016. Transelectrica, the transmission grid operator, counted 1,223 MW of photovoltaic capacity at the end of 2014, nearly nine tenths of what the whole first wave would be. Another 70.4 MW followed in 2015, 78.2 MW in 2016 and 3 MW in 2017, reaching 1,374 MW.

The satellite images show the same. The Global Renewables Watch inventory, made by Microsoft, The Nature Conservancy and Planet from PlanetScope images every three months, finds 341 parks and 3,003 hectares already on the ground by mid-2018. Another 14 parks, about 40 hectares, slip past it but appear on OpenStreetMap and overlap a second inventory from 2018, so they too belong to the first wave. The inventory's first date is really the date of its first image: all 12 of the largest parks it dates to the first half of 2018 already show on Sentinel-2 images from the summers of 2016 or 2017.

From summer 2018 to the end of 2021, the same inventory finds only 15 new parks, 67 hectares in all (leaving out those the 2018 inventory had already seen): about half the largest first-wave park (149 hectares, at Izvoarele in Giurgiu county).

#The second wave

From 2022 to mid-2024 the satellite inventory adds 44 parks and 588 hectares. Then it stops: its last image dates from the second quarter of 2024. What came next shows on OpenStreetMap, the open map of the world, where volunteers draw the outline of each park. On 6 November 2026 the map held 152 parks of at least one hectare that the 2024 inventory covers less than half of: about 1,960 new hectares of panels (2,199 hectares inside the fences).

Of these, 33 were inspected on Sentinel-2 images from summer 2023 and summer 2026: all 18 of the largest, 3 more large ones and 12 drawn at random. In summer 2023, 27 had no panels yet (on some, the site tracks were already visible) and 2 already had them; 3 cannot be read at 10 metres a pixel, and for one there is no cloud-free image from 2023. The open-map part of the second wave, then, is almost all from after summer 2023.

The largest solar park in the country by area now belongs to the second wave: Centrala Fotovoltaică Rătești (Rătești, Argeș: 155 ha, 155 MW stated), bigger than any first-wave park. Next come Parc fotovoltaic Iepurești (Iepurești, Giurgiu: 141 ha, 169 MW stated); Econergy Parau I (Părău, Brașov: 109 ha, 92 MW stated); a park with no name on OpenStreetMap (Călugăreni, Giurgiu: 104 ha).

A new hectare holds more megawatts. The first wave put 1,374 MW on about 3,043 hectares of panels, or 0.45 MW a hectare; the 25 old parks above 5 hectares whose capacity is given on OpenStreetMap have a similar median, 0.47 MW a hectare. The 17 new parks of the same kind have a median of 1.04 MW per hectare of panels, 2.2 times as much. That is why 2,548 new hectares hold more megawatts than the roughly 3,043 old ones.

Rooftop panels are not on this map: at the resolution of these images they cannot be seen. They too grew fast: ANRE, Romania's energy regulator, counted about 267,000 prosumers (households and firms that make their own power) with 3,128 MW installed in September 2025. The industry association RPIA put total solar at over 7 GW at the end of 2025, about 3.5 GW of it in parks. Transelectrica's presentation for 2025, which gives no exact date, lists 2,779 MW of solar power, 1,405 MW more than in 2017: again about as much as the whole first wave.

The largest parks of the second wave

#Where they appeared

Giurgiu, on the Danube south of Bucharest, has the most hectares in the country, 994, and has added more since 2018 than it had before (522 against 472). Prahova, second in the first wave, has barely grown (38 new hectares). Mureș in Transylvania, with 200 new hectares, has added more than twice what it had before 2018. The table has every county with ground-mounted parks (Vaslui has none in these sources); all figures are hectares of panels, so they add up.

Show every county

#What another satellite count found in 2018

A second inventory, published by Kruitwagen and colleagues in Nature (2021), describes the position at the end of 2018. It finds 398 parks in Romania, 2,365 hectares and 1,904 MW of capacity calculated from area, about 3,312 football pitches (one pitch = 0.714 ha). Its largest park reaches 100.2 calculated MW and its median park 2.6 MW.

The number of parks is close to Global Renewables Watch; the megawatts are not. Transelectrica counted 1,374 MW at the end of 2017, and in 2018 the satellites see only a few new hectares, so the 1,904 MW calculated from area sit about 39% above the official figure. That is why this page counts hectares from orbit and takes megawatts from the registers and industry estimates.

Of this inventory's detections, 354 have a solar feature on OpenStreetMap (a park or a row of panels) within 1.5 km. The other 44 were all inspected on Sentinel-2 images from summer 2019 and summer 2025: 17 are parks with panels, 4 are dark rectangles that could be panels or ponds, 14 are roofs or buildings, 3 fall on an irrigation canal, and 6 are too small for 10 metres a pixel. The certain misdetections, 17 of 398, add up to only 10.7 MW of 1,904.