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WARSAW — Poland’s subsidy program has led to a boom in small-scale photovoltaic projects — which is turning into a problem.
The program has been so successful — the country generates 5.4 gigawatts of power from solar, above its minimum 5 GW target for 2025 — that now the government is planning to revamp its subsidy scheme.
Poland already has 700,000 domestic solar installations, and Deputy Climate and Environment Minister Ireneusz Zyska expects that to rise to 1 million by the end of the year.
“This all creates risks, especially for the grid,” Zyska said at a regional economic conference last month.
That’s why the government is working on legislation that changes the rules for small-scale prosumers — people who both generate and use power.
Currently, the successful “My Electricity” program subsidizes small individual PV installations ranging from 2 kilowatts to 10 kW in capacity, with a subsidy of up to 3,000 złoty (€660). Users also get to take back 80 percent of the power they put into the grid for their own use at no charge — essentially treating the national network as a personal battery.
The legislation would scrap that, forcing prosumers to sell any excess power to the grid at market prices, and to buy back any needed electricity — usually at times when their panels aren’t working — also at market rates.
“We have been forced to move away from subsidies … but we’re working to ensure that the new solutions will still be attractive for current and future prosumers,” Zyska said.
The government plans to bring in the new system as soon as January, with no transition phase, Zyska told the Dziennik Gazeta Prawna newspaper this week. He said that the current system “is the most favorable to prosumers in the whole EU, if not the world.”
The booming PV industry says that the plans, especially without a transition phase, are “concerning.”
“[We have to] publicize this issue and fight for the subsidy system to remain,” PV Poland, a lobby group, said Monday.
From coal to sun
It’s a novel problem for Poland, which still generates about 70 percent from its electricity from coal. When the current Law and Justice party government took power in 2015, it largely throttled the onshore power industry with tougher restrictions, instead promoting less controversial offshore projects. Because of that, Poland looked certain to miss its 2020 EU-mandated target of 15 percent of its final energy consumption coming from renewables.
But thanks to the boom in solar, as well as the pandemic-induced economic slowdown, Poland looks to have almost hit that goal, reaching 14.9 percent; …….
Source: https://www.politico.eu/article/poland-solar-power-subsidy-program/