The Budapest-headquartered renewables developer Solar Markt Group has started commercial operations at the Hódmezővásárhely facility, which the company describes as the largest hybrid power plant in Hungary.
The Hódmezővásárhely project combines 70MW of solar PV capacity and a 40MW/80MWh battery energy storage system (BESS), and marks the company’s second operational solar PV asset.
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The project was delivered in collaboration with a number of international partners, including Chinese firms Risen Energy and Sungrow, which supplied solar panels and storage capacity, respectively; US companies Nextpower and Stem Inc, which provided mounting structures and energy management software, respectively; and Hungarian company MaxiContech, which completed construction work.
The Solar Markt Group also noted that the Hungarian subsidiary of energy major E.ON would handle commercial optimisation of the electricity generated and that Hungarian trading company Green Cloud Platform would handle the sale of electricity generated at the project “to large enterprises”.
The group also noted that the project was financed on a purely “market basis” and that it would not rely on state support. This differs from previous investments into the Hungarian solar sector, which have relied on some form of state or EU-level support; in April, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) committed funds to Renalfa IPP’s 450MW solar-plus-storage project in the country.
Hungary has ambitious targets for its renewable energy sector in general, and its solar industry in particular. The government’s National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) aims to expand renewable energy generation from 18% of the country’s electricity generation in 2024 to at least 30% by the end of the decade, with operational solar capacity set to almost double from 7GW to 12GW over this period. Hungary has already seen strong growth in solar deployments, with operational ground-mount solar PV capacity more than doubling between 2020 and 2023.
