Construction begins on 64 MW unsubsidized Polish solar plant

German renewables company BayWa re has begun constructing a 64.4 MW solar plant in Witnica, a town in western Poland near the German border.

The project, set to be completed this year, will not benefit from Poland’s renewables incentives policy and will instead sell power to an unspecified industrial client under a yet-to-be-finalized power purchase agreement (PPA), BayWa re said.

“Following our successful completion, in recent years, of projects in Spain and Germany – which were realized without subsidies – we have now reached the point where photovoltaic energy is marketable in Poland, too,” said Benedikt Ortmann, global director of solar projects at BayWa re.

Few solar PPAs have been negotiated in Poland to date, with the first announced in June last year by the PGE Energia Odnawialna renewables business of state-owned utility Polska Grupa Energetyczna (PGE). The power company said at the time, a 5 MW, 10ha solar plant would be built outside the national renewables auction scheme on land owned by chemicals company Grupa Azoty Siarkopol in Świętokrzyskie Osiek, a town in the Staszów county of Świętokrzyskie province, in southern-central Poland. PGE in September signed a letter of intent with silver and copper miner KGHM Polska Miedź SA for 500 MW of solar generation capacity on the latter’s sites.

Further unsubsidized projects have been announced by coal companies including Poland’s fourth largest energy business, Enea, which will build a 30 MW solar plant for the Bogdanka coal mine it holds a majority stake in. In July last year, energy company Tauron Polska Energia SA said it would install ground-mounted PV at its disused sites. Electric utility Zespół Elektrowni Pątnów-Adamów-Konin SA said in November, it would deploy a large scale PV plant at a depleted area of the extensive Adamów brown coal mine in Turek county.

Poland could reach its target of 7.8 GW of solar capacity by 2030 – as outlined in the National Plan for Energy and Climate – as early as the middle of the decade, according to a recent report by the Instytut Energetyki Odnawialnej.