Poland

The Polish government is supporting a hybrid renewable energy project based on a deep-borehole heat exchanger (DBHE) whose heat pumps are powered by photovoltaics. The heat generated by the facility will be used for district heating.

The trade body has highlighted a lack of explicit PV industry support in EU member states which already host domestic manufacturers, such as Germany, France, Austria, Belgium and Lithuania, and says the focus on green hydrogen could exacerbate the solar trade deficit with Asia.

In the first quarter of the year, more than 500 MW of solar was deployed in the eastern European country.

Buyer Equinor could be in for a pleasant surprise – its assessment Wento boasts a 1 GW solar project pipeline in the nation significantly under-reports the 1.6 GW claimed by private equity fund seller Enterprise Investors.

Rising volumes of photovoltaic project capacity are increasing the incidence of negative price periods for electricity–and changing the times of day when they occur.

That was just one of the revelations of the latest Dentons’ Guide to renewables investment in Europe, which also noted solar plants could be switched off in Slovakia, Ireland could go either way on clean power pricing, and Luxembourg is struggling with a surprising headache.

The Eastern European country is expected to add around 2 GW per year over the next five years, according to Polish research institute Instytut Energetyki Odnawialnej. By the end of 2025, its cumulative installed PV capacity should reach 14.93 GW.

Poland’s second-largest coal power producer, ZE PAK, will sell solar power to Polish telecommunication group Polsat. The $45.5 million project is being financed by a group of Polish banks.

The Polish grid operator connected 2.63 GW of PV capacity in 2020, while newly installed capacity surpassed 150 MW in January 2021.

The Amsterdam-based, Australia and central Europe-facing developer saw sales slump thanks to Covid-19 last year but has touted a growing operational project portfolio.