Eastern Europe

The ceiling price for solar and wind power has been set at €84.98/MWh. It is expected around 30 MW of generation capacity will be allocated and solar projects ranging in size from 100 kW to 2 MW will be entitled to participate.

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.

In this year’s tender, which is open to PV and wind projects with a generation capacity of more than 1 MW, solar may have better prospects after securing only 1 MW in last year’s exercise. The Energy Regulatory Office also announced the auction for sub-1 MW projects will be held on December 10.

The energy regulator has proposed a 15-year payment of $0.10/kWh for PV projects with a generation capacity of 10 kW-1 MW. The first auctions for large renewables projects are planned for early next year and will grant a fixed rate rather than a variable premium.

The nation had a record year for solar energy development. Most of last year’s new additions – 320 MW – came through a FIT scheme but a further 90 MW was represented by net metered installations. Hungary’s cumulative installed PV capacity reached around 700 MW in 2018.

In 2018, newly deployed PV capacity in the eastern European country totaled 645 MW. Demand is mainly driven by large-scale projects under the FIT scheme, but residential solar under net metering is also providing a significant contribution.

The eastern European nation is being assisted by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development with the creation of tender documentation for renewable energy auctions.

With Republika Srpska, one of the two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, announcing a tender to build a 65 MW solar PV plant; Croatia planning a 6.5 MW solar PV installation, to be built on the Island of Cres; and Macedonia welcoming its first solar panel manufacturing plant, capable of producing 20 MW annually – it has been a busy period for the small solar markets in the Balkans.

According to new provisional numbers released by the Ukrainian government, around 100 MW of new solar PV power stations were connected to the country’s grid in the first quarter of 2018.

The international organization, which aims to extend the good practices of the EU’s internal energy market to southeastern Europe and the Black Sea region, has released new guidelines for the grid integration of distributed generation power generators.