Poland: RES Auctions Timetable 2024

On 23 July 2024, the President of the Polish Energy Regulatory Office announced the timetable for the annual RES projects auctions in 2024.

In December this year, producers will be able to compete for support in the amount of approx. PLN 17 billion (c.EUR 3.7 billion), which can be allocated to approx. 44.6 TWh of electricity. Key auctions dedicated to onshore wind and solar projects will be held on 16 December (auctions for small installations) and 17 December (auctions for large installations). The recent years have shown however that despite significant funds available, there might be limited interest in participating. This sentiment may nevertheless change considering RES auction benefits are protected in the event of non-market based redispatching.

Auction announcement

The timetable was presented by the President of the Energy Regulatory Office ("ERO") following the arrangement with the Minister of Climate and Environment. All auctions are scheduled for December 2024. No later than 30 days before the date of a given auction, the President of ERO will publish individual formal announcements of each auction.

Auctions are organised in separate technology baskets and run separately for installations with capacity of up to 1 MW ("Small Installations") and capacity of more than 1 MW ("Large Installations"). All auctions are organized for new projects, i.e. those that will generate energy for the first time after the closing date of the auction session.

The budgets for auctions were set already in 2022. The auctions’ timetable with these budgets is presented below:

Cap prices

The cap prices (so-called “reference prices” i.e. the highest price that a given installation can offer in the auction) are determined by the regulation of the Minister of Climate and Environment adopted in November 2023. According to this regulation, producers may offer a price not higher than:

• 414 PLN per MWh for solar installations being Small Installations;
• 389 PLN per MWh for solar installations being Large Installations;
• 378 PLN per MWh for wind installations being Small Installations; and
• 324 PLN per MWh for wind installations being Large Installations.

These prices may be amended if the government decides to change the regulation (such change was made last year shortly before the auction began).

Auctions for solar and wind

Auctions for solar and wind projects are usually the most prominent. However, in both previous years there was not as much interest in the auctions as in the early days of the auction system.

The volume (in terms of MWh) announced for 2024 in solar/wind basket for Small Installations is the same as offered in 2022 and 2023. In 2022, only 14.16% of the available volume was allocated to the RES projects, while in 2023 it was only 10.98%. A similar situation occurs in the basket for Large Installations. The volume announced for 2024 (both in terms of MWh and PLN) is the same as the volume for 2023 (although much higher than in 2022). However, already in 2022, with a volume almost twice lower (11,250,000 MWh), only 56.89% of the available volume was allocated to the RES projects. In 2023, 21.89% of the available volume was allocated to the RES projects. The failure to allocate more volume to RES projects in these auctions arise simply from lack of producers willing to place their bids.

All the above suggests a decreasing interest in RES auctions experienced in recent years. Hence, it may turn out that this year’s bids placed in auctions will be lower than the available support. This does not necessarily mean that auctions’ results will be insignificant. In the auctions carried out last year, despite low interest, support was allocated to ca. 122,679 MW of Small Installations (all solar projects) and 495,578 MW of Large Installations (471,078 of solar projects and 24,5 MW of wind projects).

The interest in participating could be biased by another factor. Since 2023 RES projects have been affected by redispatching, limiting output of renewable assets especially on sunny weekend days with lower consumption (for more on this please refer to our May newsletter, here). However, when compensation is calculated auction benefits remain protected and their foregone value would count towards the compensation amount. A winning RES auction bid could therefore carry additional value to investors. The situation of each project needs to be assessed individually, we encourage you to reach out to our team to better understand the impact.