Poland has cut coal’s share of power generation from 95% to roughly 55% in a decade, with renewables generating over 30% of the country’s power last year. That mismatch is already producing negative prices and turning battery storage into one of the country’s biggest investment opportunities.
Ed is joined by Tomasz Sęk, Founder and COO of R.Power Renewables, which holds a 1.7GW / 6.3GWh capacity-market-secured storage portfolio, one of the largest in Poland, to unpack how the country’s power market is transforming.
They cover:
– Why coal’s inflexibility, not its shrinking market share, is now Poland’s biggest driver of negative prices and battery arbitrage.
– How Poland’s capacity market is evolving as de-rating factors and CapEx fall together, and what that means for the next wave of battery investment.
– Why R.Power blends floor-plus-profit-share deals, including its new Axpo agreement – with full-toll contracts to balance risk and upside.
– How solar PPAs are evolving into Hybrid PPAs, as corporates like Amazon and Cisco look for more flexible, peak-shifted power.
– How R.Power plans to bring its 1.7GW / 6.3GWh capacity-market-secured portfolio online within 18–24 months, and what’s setting the pace.
Want to go deeper on the Polish power market? Ask Ko, Modo Energy’s AI analyst, for the latest on Polish battery revenues, capacity market results, and grid dynamics:
Transcript available here:
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:08 Poland’s Coal-to-Renewables Shift
1:57 Perception vs Reality of Poland’s Energy Mix
4:52 Negative Prices and Coal’s Inflexibility
5:58 Gas Peakers vs Battery Storage
7:45 Poland’s Vertically Integrated Power Market
8:46 Day-Ahead vs Intraday Trading in Poland
9:54 Choosing a Route-to-Market Partner
12:06 Capacity Market Explained
13:21 R.Power’s 1.7GW / 6.3GWh Portfolio
13:57 De-Rating Factors and Falling CapEx
17:00 Dunkelflaute and the Case for Gas
17:21 The Axpo Deal: Floor Plus Profit Share
19:51 Solar PPAs and the Rise of Hybrid PPAs
20:26 Multi-Technology PPAs and Peak Shifting
22:00 What’s Slowing Poland’s BESS Rollout
23:46 Poland’s Grid Queue vs Texas and China
24:51 One Regulatory Fix: Faster Auctions
26:50 Poland’s Cost Advantage
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Hey, let's call wind and solar NATURAL ENERGY sources (or single conversion sources of energy) as there's nothing to renew!
It seems fast but we lost many years because of mining lobbying. We could have atomic energy long time ago. But good things are improving.
Oil/coal industry is heavily subsidised by governments, once that is removed renewable are much cheaper.
It started after we removed pro russian government from power. In 2015 first thing they did they killed wind farms,right wing goal was and is getting us dependent on russian energy sources.
Very interesting, as this is a country with relatively cheap electricity and a more localised, but linked, grid system.
They appear to have a much better, planned, considered and modelled transition than the mess that has been created in the UK, where we were in a better position than Poland 30 years ago and appear to have made some disastrous decisions for reliable electricity supply, stable electricity supply, reduced risk and an economically viable plan that maintains a limit on the cost of energy and maintains industry, and economic activity and the resultant tax revenues.
My energy consumption, month over month, is stable and doesn't increase. Yes, I am one of those people who live in the dark. Yet, my monthly power bills have been increasing over the years. Where are these negative prices passed on to the consumer? The poor and middle class in this country, like elsewhere in the world, are being squeezed harder and harder to benefit the wealthy and those who own assets and equities. We are living in the New World Order, in which wealth is being concentrated into the hands of the few.
The energy transition will make Poland’s debt to breach 100% of GDP by 2032-33.Poland is on course for a dramatic debt surge. Only domestic coal as primary source of energy could reverse the process. Polish government bonds as well as other indicators tell the story of insolvent country.
Huh? Laaarge Israeli funds recently entered the Polish green energy market. Astrologers predict that the amount of hurray-optimistic material on YouTube will suddenly increase.
Interesting that Axpo is doing big business in Poland in that field while this market basically doesn't exist in Switzerland because we have not many batteries deployed by now. But guess with 6.5 GW/h we have a good storage system already. But with more and more solar, I hope we will catch up with batteries too. But Switzerland is often behind the curve in such things.
Funny how the more "free" energy we have, the higher our energy bills get.
Main reason is why it moves so fast: government has changed from the conservative one to liberal. We would have been still stuck with transition everyone does individually on small scale (which is still impressive, considering how renewables were treated). New government lifted the breaks.
Indonesia's agricultural products include rice, corn, cocoa, coffee, cloves, nutmeg, coconuts, and tropical fruits, while its natural resources comprise copper, nickel, gold, rare earth elements, bauxite, coal, oil, and gas, among many others; Indonesia's wealth is so abundant that it is poised to become a global economic hub in the future.
Poland’s gas and electricity prices are roughly in the middle of the EU range. But one of the highest on purchasing prices parity. This is manly due to the costs of coal production in Poland (deep mining). …and Poland was forced to import coal mainly from Russia to feed the coal fired generators.
Batteries will keep coal afloat.
And why is energy in Poland more and more expensive? 😉
Mostly propaganda. Omitting the price of the energy since all of this started. Poland has currently the most expensive energy in Europe and the world
Poland has a large share in PV 27 GW and unfortunatly much less in land wind 11 GW and practically no biogas (0,3 GW) while Germany over 10 GW. Therefore the power system during autumn and winter is not sufficiently supported by renewables.
What about pumped storage water power plant. Those could replace expensive batteries and gas plants in sunny months
Pure propaganda. Or Si-Fi/Fantasy, not good thou 😁😁😁
Finally, price is still important. The price of coal-fired electricity is artificially inflated by the EU. Nowadays, technologies exist that can filter pollutants from coal.The world still uses coal because it is cheap
Ale smętne pierdoły. panowie nie ogarniacie rzeczywistości. to było dobre 10, no może 5 lat temu. teraz to anachronizm.
The first polish off-shore wind project Baltic Power is being energized right now and it's a big one! Set to produce 2.5% of polish demand. Second one is even bigger and is already under construction.
Here in Australia we have a subsidising scheme for home batteries . It is very popular. Maybe Poland should try it too and capture all that wasted energy.
PVs became very popular in Poland in recent years, and with PVs usually come batteries. Due to recent heatwaves AC is also gaining on popularity. It's not uncommon, while travelling through the countryside, to see 1970s blocky house with PVs on the roof and AC unit on the side.
The governor of Texas is pushing back on battery energy facilities.
As batteries are added to support renewables, and you need flexible gas to cover Dunkelflaute and long winter months, does it make sense to use combined cycle rather than open cycle peakers, and let the batteries provide the flexibility? The same batteries provide flexibility for both the renewables when they run and the gas when it is needed.
Be careful with battery energy storage systems made with lithium- they explode – always. The Los Angeles firefighter union sent a cease and desist from siting BESS near populated areas.
Congratulations on the wind and solar power generation. Search MOSS Landing for an example of the problems with lithium batteries. In WA state the cities are putting in moratoriums to stop building BESS, people are slowly becoming aware of the significant hazards that the lithium battery are, the largest recycler for lithium in the US recently blew up and will no longer recycle lithium. Lithium is dangerous to transport, don't build a BESS site in an area susceptible to earthquakes. There's also the lawsuit against Tesla for remotely turning off power walls in Australia because the power walls were "bricked", stopped working- without warning or compensation. Don't purchase anything made by Tesla, Starlink or associated with Elon Musk!
The on-screen explanations for acronyms and jargon are great – much better than interrupting the interview for things that lots of people already know.
Thanks for a really interesting interview. I had no idea that Poland was making such a rapid change.