Challenges and prospects in the Polish PV market

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Mr. Jedrachowicz, JinkoSolar has been operating in the Polish solar energy market for several years. Do you think that this market has already reached full maturity?

Certainly, the photovoltaic market in Poland is changing in the right direction. Investors are more and more educated, and more and more attention is paid to the quality of selected components or the installation itself. More and more people are working in the industry and many of them have gained gigantic experience in the last few dynamic years. We have no doubt that there are still many years of stable development ahead of us and that photovoltaics has already become one of the sectors of the economy.

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How does the Polish solar energy market differ from other European markets? What are its special features?

The patterns in the Polish photovoltaic market are not that different from what we see in Western Europe. Certainly, we should pay attention to the growth rate, which in the last two years was comparable to that of the largest European PV markets. We also have the largest number of employees in this sector in the whole EU. From the module producer's point of view, unfortunately, this is also the market with the highest price pressure, but we see that this is also changing as the industry is maturing.

It is expected that the Polish market will move from a fully subsidized scenario to a situation where subsidies will be reduced. Do you expect this transition to take place without major problems?

In large-scale photovoltaics, this is happening before our eyes. Currently, there are less and less investors interested in the auction system due to significantly higher energy prices on the exchanges. With rapidly developing technology, investors are able to implement projects that provide a lower LCOE every year and effectively compete with conventional energy. The prosumer market is governed by completely different rules, but in the long run, in an environment of geopolitical risks and rising energy prices, everyone agrees that the demand for installations must continue despite the change from net metering to net billing.

What kind of challenges and opportunities might there be in the near and long term?

Of course, there is a lot of talk about challenges in connection with the expansion and stabilization of the network, and challenges are also posed to the government to make the legislation follow the demands of the market. On the module side, we have set ourselves the goal to provide solutions that will produce more electricity and increase the profitability of the installation, that's why we are moving very fast from modules based on PERC mono cells to n-type TOPCon solutions.

Does JinkoSolar see more opportunities for its own development in the Polish market in the coming years?

Maintaining our leading position in the world among manufacturers of photovoltaic modules, we observe what the market needs and we expand our offer. Soon we will see in Poland not only traditional Jinko modules but also specialized BIPV solutions and energy storage, inverters. At present the scale of installation of these solutions is small but they will gain in popularity.

What are the current price trends for modules and their components? Can you give a short-term price forecast?

The price of modules depends on many factors. It is mostly influenced by the price of polysilicon, from which wafers and then cells are produced. Currently, it is at its historically highest levels. Of course, high demand and recent problems with lockdown in China are also important. We expect prices to remain stable until the end of this year and it is hard to expect significant declines. In the long term, due to plans for significant silicon resources to come into the economy, we also do not expect further significant increases. Unfortunately, history has surprised us more than once in this forecast, so it is safer not to assume any drops, but to focus on project optimization so that the economic effect is acceptable even at higher prices.

Can you say something more about the share of the different module technologies in the Polish market?

The market is still dominated by standard PERC monocrystalline modules. Of course, we are slowly observing a shift towards n-type modules. While HJT modules remain a premium product, with significantly higher prices, TOPCon modules are entering the daily offer and increasing their share. We expect to deliver more than 200 MW of N-type TOPCon modules to Poland alone in 2022. As of next year, we are practically trying not to offer any other solutions anymore.

Learn more from Marcin Jedrachowicz, Eastern Europe sales manager at JinkoSolar, during the Polish-language webinar TOPCon N-type photovoltaic modules conquer the Polish photovoltaic market that will be moderated on June 7 by Piotr Pająk, editor at Gramwzielone.pl.

Other speakers include Marcin Ślęzak, chief commercial officer at Menlo Electric, and Kamil Sankowski, board member at Polenergia. Register for free here.

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