Renewables developer and distributor BayWa r.e. will open new offices and a warehouse in Poland to improve its services for PV installers in the country.
The company said the facilities in Kraków, which are set to open in April 2021, herald in “a new era” for its PV distribution unit in Poland, enabling it to significantly reduce delivery times.
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It is expected the increased local presence enable Polish solar installers to benefit from being able to pay BayWa directly, without the need for currency exchanges that are currently required to import systems and products into the country.
“This all adds up to be excellent news for our customers – a faster, less complex service, provided ‘locally’, in their own currency,” said Lukasz Zaziabl, managing director of BayWa r.e. Solar Systems in Poland.
The new facilities will also host free theory and practical training sessions to help installers keep up to speed with the latest systems and increase their safety knowledge.
BayWa r.e. said Poland’s PV sector has benefitted from stable legislation, government support and an increasing focus on renewables in place of fossil fuel generation.
According to SolarPower Europe, Poland installed more than 2.2GW of solar capacity in 2020, more than double the amount from 2019. The trade body said this growth has been supported by the rise in self-consumption founded on a favourable policy of net-metering/feed-in framework for prosumers.
The country’s micro-generation sector is complemented by an annual renewables auction scheme – the last of which saw solar developers pick up 700MW of capacity – as well as a nascent power purchase agreement (PPA) segment.
BayWa r.e. recently secured a corporate PPA with construction company HiedelbergCement for a 65MWp PV plant in Poland that the developer claims is the country’s largest utility-scale solar farm and the first to be built without government subsidies.
Frank Jessel, BayWa r.e. global director of Solar Trade, said Poland is an “important market” for the company and has “huge potential” for solar energy, adding: “Supporting a country’s growing demand for solar energy is at the heart of what we do, and we are very pleased to contribute to the energy transition in Poland.”