The Sun Investment Group (SIG), a European solar power developer, has secured a debt facility to support its development of 1.97GW of new solar capacity in Poland.
The portfolio consists largely of early-stage developments, with around 100MW of capacity at the ready-to-build stage, compared to 1.1GW of mid-stage developments and 750MW of early-stage projects.
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SIG currently has 35 PV projects in commercial operation in Poland, but the vast majority are of small scale, with the largest the 9.9MW Gardno project, one of six facilities with a capacity of greater than 1MW. The developer noted that its total development pipeline consists of 323 individual projects, with a capacity ranging from 1-120MW, and the latest funding could be used to help expand the scale of its projects.
The debt facility was entirely subscribed by an international debt fund, and SIG was aided by Deloitte Legal Poland and TAS Baltic as legal advisers, and German financial adviser Capcora, in completing the deal.
“We are pleased to have secured this debt facility with the assistance of Capcora. It will play a crucial role in advancing the realisation of our business plan in the coming years,” said says Deividas Varabauskas, SIG CEO. “[The] Polish market currently continues to be one of the most attractive arenas for investors and lenders in Europe, offering alternative funding solutions.”
There has been considerable investment in the renewable power space in recent months, with BNEF reporting, with Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) reporting that investors committed US$1.8 trillion to new renewable power projects in 2023. BNEF analyst Jenny Chase told PV Tech Premium earlier this year that the limiting factor for expanding solar deployment is often the quality of the projects themselves, with investors only keen to commit funds if “they’re good projects [and] the risk is worth the likely return.”
The Polish solar sector is growing at a considerable rate, with Polish research group the Institute for Renewable Energy (IEO) noting that Poland’s cumulative installed solar capacity reached 17GW at the end of 2023, close to double that of wind.
