According to the Polish Energy Regulatory Office (URE), Poland awarded 1.6GW of solar PV projects in this year's renewable energy tender.
A total of 129 projects larger than 1 MW were awarded, of which 126 were solar PV projects and the remaining 3 were wind power projects.
In this tender, although nearly 8.9 billion Polish zlotys (about 2.44 billion US dollars) were allocated to purchase 32.25TWh of electricity, the final transaction amount was less than half of the total amount (only 15.8TWh, less than half of 32.25TWh), and the total transaction amount was 4.8 billion Polish zlotys.
The reference price for solar PV projects was set at 389 zlotys/MWh (about 106.9 US dollars/MWh), the lowest winning price was 216.9 zlotys/MWh, and the highest winning price was 329.68 zlotys/MWh.
The solar companies that won the tender included ib vogt, PAD RES and OX2, which recently started operating a 100MW solar PV plant in southern Poland. The project was part of the previous tender awarded in 2022 and is OX2's first operational project as an independent power producer.
The second tender for projects up to 1MW saw 33 winning bids, awarding a total of 47.7MW of solar PV capacity. Overall, the total energy awarded in this second tender was less than 5% of the total energy allocated in the tender, just over 0.48TWh of the total 11.25TWh. The reference price for this tender was slightly higher than the other one, at PLN 414/MWh, with the lowest bid of PLN 314.77/MWh and the highest bid of PLN 374.77/MWh.
Poland has organized seven tenders covering a variety of technologies, but only two of them (both for solar PV) have resulted in the award of installed capacity. This is the second year that there have been insufficient bids for hydropower plants, agricultural biogas plants, and projects using biomass and non-agricultural biogas.
Together with the awarded solar PV and wind capacity, this year's tender totals 1.75GW. This is slightly higher than last year's tender, when 1.6GW was awarded, but still less than half of the 3.85GW awarded in 2021.
According to the Polish Renewable Energy Institute, this year's tender will help the country accelerate its solar PV installations, with the overall PV installed capacity approaching 22GW by the end of the first quarter of 2025. In the first quarter of 2025, solar PV installed capacity was 637MW, slightly lower than the same period in 2024.
In addition, the country's power curtailment problem continues to intensify, with 600GWh of solar PV power generation curtailed in the first half of this year. This is nearly 34% higher than the same period last year, highlighting the importance of securing capacity through tenders.
