Croatia connected 218 MW of new solar in six months and still imported a third of its June power
OIEH figures via PV Europe: 218 MW of new solar connected in the first half of 2026. Solar fed 221 GWh into the grid in June, about 13% of consumption. Imports covered 32.7% of June demand as summer hydro fell away.
In June, a Croatian factory running chillers and air conditioning was drawing from a grid where the sun did more work than ever. Imports did even more.
PV Europe reported on 10 July 2026, citing the Croatian renewable energy association OIEH, that 218 MW of new solar was connected in the first six months of 2026. Solar fed 221 GWh into the grid in June, about 13% of total consumption of 1,608 GWh.
The same figures show the gap. Croatia imported 526 GWh in June, mainly from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Hungary. That is 32.7% of the month's consumption, the largest single source. Hydropower falls in spring and summer just as demand rises. OIEH warns that solar is growing, but not yet fast enough to fill that hole.
Domestic renewables met 44.2% of June consumption in OIEH's breakdown: hydro 16.4%, solar 13.7%, wind 9.4% and bioenergy 4.7%. OIEH says an earlier good run of domestic supply came from unusually wet conditions and will not last without new renewables, storage and flexibility.
Analogy: a summer kitchen with a new gas ring is still borrowing the neighbour's oven at dinner time. The new ring helps at lunch. Dinner is the problem.
Good: dated monthly numbers for capacity, energy, share and imports from the national renewables association. A buyer can use them to explain why the midday grid is getting greener and the evening grid is not.
Bad: these are system numbers, not a site tariff. Nothing here says what a business pays at noon or at 8 p.m. The split between business rooftops and big ground plants inside the 218 MW is not in the piece.
Ugly: a third of June power came from abroad. Panels on a roof help the hours the sun is up. Without storage, they leave the evening import hours where they were.
Source: PV Europe, 10 Jul 2026 - why Croatia's solar rollout needs to triple its pace by 2029 (OIEH data). The 13% and 13.7% solar shares are both as published.