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January 17, 2022

A rapid development

Ostrolenka-Projekt © SUNfarming

The Polish market and its challenges

Worldwide, massive investments are being made in renewable energies. But what does the development look like on a small scale and in concrete terms in the individual countries? As a globally active company, meteocontrol is happy to accompany long-standing partners such as SUNfarming into new markets in order to optimally "export" solutions that have been established over the years and adapted to their needs to new countries. What challenges and topics will determine the future on the Polish market, for example?

Most countries have power control requirements nowadays. Checking and evaluating these requirements and implementing a solution based on them is often not easy. Continuous changes on the part of the legislator as well as in the implementation of network operators lead to uncertainty. Which power control solution is needed? Which interfaces and protocols are required? Which certificates are necessary? meteocontrol supports partners such as SUNfarming already in the planning stage and advises and designs country-specific and legally compliant control solutions.

For many years, meteocontrol solutions have been in use on SUNfarming facilities in Poland

Anna Pilarczyk-Naprawski, Managing Director Poland of SUNfarming describes how meteocontrol accompanied the company's market entry in Poland and gives an insight into the Polish market, its development, the current situation and future prospects. 

In 2016, licences were awarded in the Polish market via auctions, through which operators are guaranteed a feed-in tariff valid for 15 years. SUNfarming closely followed the licensing requirements and promptly entered the market and has been active on site ever since. Primarily, 1 MW plants are planned in the market, for which an auction price is guaranteed by the state for 15 years. The difference between the proceeds on the exchange and the guaranteed feed-in tariff is thus compensated. The guaranteed price was attractive and the prices for the auctions were high.

Initially, SUNfarming realised 11 plants in 2018 and 2019. Since then, it has continuously been going well. As there was already very good experience with meteocontrol's products in the cooperation on the German market, all projects in Poland were also equipped with customised hardware from meteocontrol. In addition, the monitoring and technical management of the portfolio is realised via the VCOM Cloud.

"The consistent support offers a significant simplification in the handling of the plants,"

 

emphasises Pilarczyk-Naprawski, who has been driving project development in Poland since 2018.

Anna Pilarczyk-Naprawski © SUNfarming

Around 50 plants in Poland with a total output of around 48.5 MW

 SUNfarming has been able to gather positive experience in Germany for many years with the meteocontrol solution tailored to them. Therefore, the PV projects in Poland were also equipped with the same solutions and sensors.

Many PV projects in Poland are designed and realised as smaller plants due to the specifications. These are mostly planned on subordinate land, whose land class has been classified as low by the legislator. The first PV projects were often realised by SUNFarming in a way that several 1 MW plants were implemented next to each other and on one "area". This was legally permissible and increased the efficiency of the implementation. Pilarczyk-Naprawski describes the Ostrolenka project, built on ash hills, as a special installation in relation to the subsoil on the outskirts of the city, directly adjacent to an old power plant, which makes the contrast between renewable energy and old "dirty" electricity particularly visible.

For the manager, the cooperation with meteocontrol also offers great simplification in the area of service. Having all data completely standardised in one system across all countries is a great advantage. SUNfarming has been very satisfied with meteocontrol's service for many years. "Who knows," Pilarczyk-Naprawski reflects, "maybe there will be a branch office of meteocontrol in Poland one day, in order to be even closer on site and to actively participate in the market? We would be very pleased of course, even though the support in Augsburg works smoothly."

In her opinion, storage solutions are also a hot topic with our neighbour in the east, but SUNfarming is not currently working with them on the ground-mounted systems in the Polish market. "It still depends on Polish legislation how this will develop and in what way we will align our projects with it."

Hybrid solutions with hydrogen and storage are already being considered, but the focus for SUNfarming is currently still on the proven 1MW plants.

Probably in 2-3 years, larger plants will be promoted and tendered on a PPA basis or further as a mixture of PPA and auction, the manager for the Polish market suspects.

"We would also like to push this planning further with meteocontrol." She sees a focus for future development in further optimising the automation of maintenance operations via an integrated ticket system in order to profit from the possibilities in monitoring for the entire plant portfolio.

The growth market in Poland offers an excellent basis for the cooperation between SUNfarming and meteocontrol

The Polish market remains strong, project prices have recently increased significantly and Pilarczyk-Naprawski sees good opportunities for growth. Even though she points out that there are some challenges in the current development. For example, landowners, often farmers, have realised how market conditions are developing and land prices have risen accordingly. Another problem in Poland is the spare capacity for feeding electricity into the grid. But with regard to the long-standing, proven cooperation with meteocontrol, she emphasises:

"We are very satisfied, you know that. It is an excellent cooperation!"

 

In this sense, meteocontrol is looking forward to being able to accompany SUNfarming's future projects in all areas with optimised solutions. New projects will be realised both via FIT (Feed In Tariff) models or PPAs. In order to be able to support the partners in Poland in the best possible way, meteocontrol also has a contact in the sales department, Benjamin Rosinski, who speaks Polish as a native speaker.

For further planning in new markets and countries, meteocontrol has all the components available so that business partners can open up new markets with the fewest hurdles possible. Tobias Knoblauch, Head of Sales Europe from meteocontrol, affirms that "we are ready and looking forward to many more joint projects."

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