Poland

The Norwegian hydropower producer has tapped its extensive Polish power purchase agreement portfolio to offer a bankable supply agreement for one of the biggest power consumers in the country.

Some 15 countries are likely to be able to lay claim to the status of being members of solar’s “gigawatt club” in 2019, according to conservative projections from BloombergNEF. Nonetheless, PV suppliers, developers and service providers are always on the lookout for new pockets of growth. To kick off 2020, pv magazine’s global team of correspondents and editors have highlighted 10 “fast-growing” solar markets to evaluate where the opportunities, and potential risks, lie.

President Ursula von der Leyen has outlined plans to fund her Green Deal with a mix of EU, member state and private sector contributions. Now it is over to individual nations and the European Parliament.

With around 300 MW of newly installed capacity in the final quarter of 2019, Poland has maintained its promise to reach 1.3 GW of solar by the end of December. New PV additions reached more than 800 MW last year.

The fourth auction held for systems with a generation capacity no larger than 1 MW saw solar secure 750 MW of projects to leave wind developers in the cold. Innogy took its first steps into Polish PV with 42 projects across three provinces.

The first part of pv magazine’s review of 2019 considers Q1, when solar early adopter Italy offered an optimistic start to the year by fleshing out its plans for PV but uncertainty still clouded the world’s biggest solar market. The potential for household solar installations to rocket the world over – helped by ever cheaper panels – prompted strategic decisions in the inverter market and analyst expectations were confounded as the cobalt and lithium price plummeted, bringing the EV revolution a big step nearer.

Wind took the largest share of the awarded capacity, according to the preliminary results, but newly introduced limitations for such projects helped solar to take a significant portion of the allocated power for the first time in a Polish energy auction, with the highest bid coming in at $0.0608/kWh.

Trade body SolarPower Europe’s preliminary statistics suggest this could be the continent’s best year for PV since 2010, with capacity additions set to soar 104% year on year. Spain is leading the way with an expected 4.7 GW of new solar, followed by Germany, with 4 GW.

The European Commission has approved use of funds given by seven member states to back Europe-wide R&D projects across the lithium-ion battery value chain, with the aim of potentially unlocking an additional €5 billion in private sector investment.

The Shanghai-based project developer – which will soon relocate to the U.S. – says the profit margins are not high enough in those markets and has cancelled its project pipeline in the nations. The company has also changed its CEO after less than five months and is on a drive to reduce capital costs.