Fairer containment, greater grid flexibility and better regulation were all on the industry’s wish list at Kongres PV. From cable pooling to direct lines, Poland has not been afraid to innovate in its approach to deploying renewable energy sources – but there is still plenty of room for improvement.
The main challenges facing Poland’s utility-scale solar sector were highlighted at the 2024 edition of Kongres PV on May 27 and 28.
Approximately 50 expert speakers from the solar industry, academia and government participated in nine panel sessions, sharing their views on issues such as increasing curtailment, grid flexibility, deregulation efforts and more.
In the first question of the opening session of the conference, Grzegorz Onichimowski, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Polskie Sieci Elektroenergetyczne SA (PSE), was asked: “Do you want to make cuts today?” It was an opener that set the tone for the event. The representative of the Polish Transmission System Operator (TSO) took the opportunity to address the broader issue of curtailment, recognizing that Poland’s electricity grid is underdeveloped and in need of better low-voltage infrastructure. “You can’t pour one liter of water into a half-liter container,” Onichimowski said. It was a metaphor that speakers referenced during the two-day event
Cutback challenges
Those present heard that Poland is on track to limit 1 TWh of electricity by 2024. Operators of large-scale plants will be allocated more than their fair share, it was argued, as residential solar installations are not subject to restrictions. Pawel Konieczny, head of regulation and development, vice president at R.Power Group, said that “there is no equal treatment regarding technologies” and even suggested that companies with multiple plants could be at greater risk of curtailment as this would mean that there would be fewer telephone calls for the electricity grid operator.
Magdalena Porzezynska, partner at Brysiewicz, Bokina i Wspólnicy, and assistant professor at the University of Warsaw, also questioned the legal robustness of Poland’s containment rules, describing a 2023 change to the rules for market and non-market redispatching as “doomed to fail. ” Porzezynska argued that the curtailment rules were governed by EU law and that the way they had been transposed into national law could lead to punitive measures from the European Commission. “We need to change the regulations or rewrite the law as quickly as possible,” she said.
Flexible approach
When budget cuts were discussed, flexibility was never far away. During a panel discussion on the role that PV and energy storage could play in developing a more flexible energy system, speakers shared their views on how the TSO and distribution system operators (DSOs) could facilitate renewables and battery energy storage by increasing grid balancing and supporting services offer. The new grid connection guidelines, due to be released in summer 2024, were highlighted as an important milestone moving forward, while panelists also called for the need to move away from Poland’s historically centralized approach to balancing the grid .
“Let’s move to the distribution level with flexibility, this is the core of the problem,” said Zdzislaw Muras, a legal expert at the Polish Energy Regulation Agency.
Creating more flexibility at the distribution network level was also called by Szymon Witoszek, vice president of the board of directors of the Polish Photovoltaics Association. Witoszek advocated the introduction of an aggregator that would give solar parks and other producers better access to flexibility markets.
Grid connections were also on the agenda, with DSOs coming under fire for what developers see as poor rejection feedback. Marta Glod, head of development at OX2 Poland, said that DSO responses to requests not only take much longer than the maximum timelines set out in the legislation – they also do not provide enough data when they do eventually appear.
“It’s a huge problem,” she said. “How can developers plan? Things are improving in some DSOs, but I wish we could still experience it [DSOs respond] ‘No, we don’t have that capacity, but if you add storage that would make things better’.”
Better regulation
One area where Poland has shown progress is in cable bundling, the practice where multiple electricity producers can share a grid connection. New rules came into force in October 2023, but here too the industry is concerned. Witoszek said pv magazine The TSO’s bureaucratic process is excessive and requires generators to provide data down to the level of the module models used on site. According to the vice-president of the Polish Photovoltaics Association, it is a process ripe for streamlining, and he argued that a lighter regulatory approach could unlock more potential for renewable energy.
There is also room for improving regulations on direct lines, says Karol Lasocki, head of sustainable energy at legal and business services provider DWF Poland. Direct lines allow generation facilities to be connected directly to customers, bypassing the electricity grid. Lasocki argued that the way direct line rules were introduced in Poland has imposed significant costs on investors in the form of distribution fees, capacity fees, permits and registration fees. “We need to reconsider how our legislation has been developed regarding the direct line,” he said, adding: “If someone chooses a direct line, a service that goes beyond the electricity system, they should not incur such significant costs .”
Mariusz Filipek, Plenipotentiary for Deregulation and Economic Dialogue at the Ministry of Development and Technology, said the government’s mission is to deregulate and simplify regulations. In April, the ministry published a draft law for a first package of deregulatory measures, but a second set is in the pipeline, according to Filipek. The government representative said he would like the second deregulation package to address energy clusters, a kind of energy community in the Polish market. National regulations for energy clusters were adopted in 2016, but have been criticized for their complexity. When important elements of an energy cluster are controlled by municipalities, public procurement legislation can be applied. It is a situation that Filipek believes must be corrected. “Public procurement law should not be applied to energy clusters,” he said.
According to event organizers, approximately 1,000 guests attended the 2024 edition of Kongres PV.
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