Growth in solar power installations in Italy may not be enough to plug a gap in global demand as Spain prepares to slash subsidies, say Italian industry experts. Solar power firms face a drastic slowdown in the Spanish market next year and some are pinning their hopes on Italy, but Italian officials and manufacturers are cautious over growth prospects. Gerardo Montanino, operations director at GSE, the Italian government department overseeing feed-in tariffs, said he expected modest growth. The GSE forecasts no more than 450 MW of solar power will be installed in Italy by the end of next year and Montanino told an energy conference in Valencia that a 1,200 MW cap on Italian subsidies would probably be reached in 2012. Italian manufacturers said they faced considerable red tape. Angelo Nogara, managing director of Solkraft Italia, said many Italian solar plants had to wait a year after being built to be connected to the grid. He also cited the case of a local authority asking for a study on the acoustic impact of a silent solar plant. "I hope we can have 1,000 MW, but I am not sure because of bureaucratic problems," said Nogara, who is also international affairs officer at Italian industry group Assosolare. Generous subsidies in Spain will expire this month after encouraging the installation of 1,000 megawatts in new solar plants this year. That has made Spain the world's biggest market after Germany, where the government expects 1,350 MW of new solar plants to go on line in 2008. Now the Spanish government wants no more than 300 MW of new plants to be eligible in 2009 for "feed-in" tariffs designed to make solar power competitive, and these will also be cut.