Swiss renewable energy investment group GoldenPeaks Capital and German commercial bank Nord/LB have closed €109 million in financing to support two solar PV project portfolios in Poland.
The portfolios comprise over 100 small-scale solar PV projects, with a combined capacity of 177MW. Positioning itself as an independent power producer (IPP), GoldenPeaks Capital will oversee the development and construction as well as the ownership of the projects once they reach operations, which is expected in Q4 2024.
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The portfolios are contracted under a ten-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with tech and data giant Google.
Nord/LB financed the two portfolios – known as KAMI 2 and KAMI 3 – in two separate transactions of €66 million and €43 million respectively.
Heiko Ludwig, global head of structured finance at NORD/LB, said this deal was “Of great importance to NORD/LB. This deal is our biggest in Poland to date and marks the start of an exciting partnership with GoldenPeaks Capital, a company at the forefront of the renewable energy transition in Europe.”
GoldenPeaks Capital has already been active in the Polish PV market, and claims to be “one of the largest” solar asset owners in the country. In February 2023 it completed construction on two solar PV projects with a combined capacity of 176MW, alongside closing multiple virtual PPAs (VPPAs) for the sites with Polish businesses.
The investment firm specialises in clean energy financing – particularly in central and eastern Europe – alongside energy trading from its activities as a solar IPP.
Polish solar market activity
For the last one to two years, Poland has been something of a rising force in Europe’s solar market landscape.
In April, the Institute for Renewable Energy (IEO), a Polish research group, published data showing that the country had reached 17GW of total deployed solar capacity.
In the last two months alone, a number of sizeable transactions have taken place across the sector. In May, French renewables firm GreenYellow – which specialises in distributed and rooftop solar deployments – bought Grow Energy Management (GEM) and its Polish rooftop PV portfolio.
June saw the Sun Investment Group (SIG), a European solar power developer, secure a debt facility to support its planned 1.97GW Polish solar project pipeline. The company said that the funding would help it increase the scale of its projects. And earlier this month Polish IPP R.Power secured a US$58.5 million loan agreement with the Polish Development Bank to develop a 72MWp portfolio.
In March, the national transmission system operator announced a US$16 billion investment plan for Poland’s grid system which could potentially support 45GW of PV capacity additions by 2034.
