Eastern Europe

Bosnian utility EBiH plans to deploy solar plants across its coal waste sites. The first two projects will be built on a coal dump in the municipality of Gračanica.

The plan envisages opening the Slovenian energy market to large-scale solar plants and is intended to reduce the country’s dependence on fossil fuels.

Scientists in Poland have developed a compressed air energy storage technology using a thermal energy storage (TES) system built into a disused mine shaft. The system works without external heat sources, and utilizes an air compressor, a compressed air reservoir with a built-in thermal energy storage system, and an air expander.

The Germany-based heating specialist wants to invest more than €200 million (US$200.5 million) in the new heat pump facility.

Developers are making hay as far as PPA prices are concerned thanks to eye-watering wholesale electricity prices which mean they can just sell their solar and wind power on the open market.

The average global price of solar kilowatt-hours fell 13% on 2020’s prices, as around two-thirds of the renewables capacity installed last year was cheaper than the lowest-cost fossil fuel alternative.

Uzbekistan launched its latest procurement exercise in September 2021. The country aims to build three solar parks in the Namangan, Bukhara and Khorezm regions.

REC Solar has announced plans for a PV module gigafactory in France, along with 17 other clean tech projects that will share €1.8 billion ($1.8 billion) of grants from the European Union’s Innovation Fund.

Poland’s micro-installation market is rapidly consolidating as it shifts from net metering to net billing.

Croatia’s latest procurement exercise was significantly undersubscribed, with only 150 MW of submitted projects. The selected installations will be awarded 12-year feed-in premium contracts, but they will have to start delivering electricity by 2024.