A double-header of Poland grid-scale BESS news, with GoldenPeaks Capital entering the market with a two-project acquisition, and R.Power securing a hybrid optimisation deal for a solar-and-storage project.
The news comes as our publisher Solar Media prepares to host the third Energy Storage Summit Central and Eastern Europe in Warsaw, Poland, on 23-24 September.
Goldpeaks buys 54MW/216MWh of Poland BESS
Renewables investor and IPP GoldenPeaks Capital has acquired two battery energy storage system (BESS) projects in Poland from an unnamed seller.
The two projects have been bought under a preliminary share purchase agreement concluded on 6 June, and total 54MW of power and 216MWh of capacity.
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They both won contracts in the 2024 Capacity Market (CM) auction, which provides 17 years of guaranteed revenues in return for availability, starting in 2029.
The first project, Baczyna, totals 46MW/184MWh and will connect via to a 110kV high voltage network, while the second, Jelenia Góra, totals 8MW/32MWh and will connect to a 20kV medium voltage network.
Poland is investing big in grid-scale energy storage, with a Jakub Jaworowski, minister of state assets, calling the technology a “guarantee of Poland’s energy security” in March. The CM alone has contracted around 4.4GW of BESS capacity to come online from 2027-2029, mostly with 4-hour durations, and other schemes will also support deployments in the coming years.
R.Power and Photon Energy agree hybrid optimisation deal
In concurrent news, developer and IPP R.Power has partnered with EPC, trading and renewables solutions firm Photon Energy to optimise a hybrid solar and storage project in Poland.
The project in Nehrybka, in the Podkarpackie region, is one of the first hybrid assets in Poland that combines a PV installation with energy storage, R.Power said. It comes two months after it announced construction on a 254MWh project in Romania.
Under the agreement, Photon Energy will be responsible for optimising energy flows within the installation and between the installation and the grid. Photon will act as the balancing responsible party and a provider of balancing services, enabling the project to participate in both the wholesale energy market and also provide balancing services to the grid.
“R.Power is one of the first companies in Poland actively responding to the phenomenon of negative energy prices during periods of overproduction in the power system,” said Georg Hotar, CEO of Photon Energy Group.
“We believe our optimisation services benefit not only asset owners but also the entire energy system. During peak production periods, energy can be stored and then fed back into the grid when production declines. Since these systems charge from renewable sources, they genuinely support the acceleration of the low-emission energy transition.”
Power purchase agreements (PPAs), offtake and optimisation deals covering both the solar and storage portion of hybrid projects are still relatively rare in Europe, but are expected to become increasingly common. Last month saw IPP Zelestra and Portuguese utility EDP sign what they claimed the first solar-plus-storage PPA in Spain.
This article’s headline has been amended from its original form to reflect that the R.Power optimisation agreement is not a PPA, as was initially suggested.
