Poland’s solar PV market expanded by 637 MW in Q1 2025 to a cumulative of 21.9 GW, according to the latest statistics published by the Institute for Renewable Energy (IEO). The country ranked 6th among European Union (EU) nations in terms of cumulative installed capacity in 2024.
The Q1 additions this year slightly declined compared to the same time in 2024. This was a result of the share of PV systems under 50 kW capacity coming down from 64% at the end of 2024 to 60% by the end of Q1 2025. Similarly, the share of small installations ranging from 50 kW to 1 MW also dropped from 25.1% to 21.9%.
IEO, however, shows the growth of PV farms with more than 1 MW installed capacity as their share expanded from 11% to 20% over the same period.
Annual additions in 2024 totaled around 4.1 GW, but were lower than the record additions of 4.6 GW in 2023, claims IEO in its latest report titled Photovoltaic Market in Poland 2025. Last year’s PV additions included nearly 2.4 GW of large-scale solar PV farms connected to the grid, representing a 149% year-on-year (YoY) growth compared to the increase of 113% in 2023.
The association reflects on the growing and regular use of curtailment for the PV industry in Poland, whose scale and frequency now pose a real operational challenge. Its estimates suggest that from January 2025 to mid-June 2025, the country’s transmission system operator curtailed close to 600 GWh of solar energy generation. It was nearly 34% higher than the same period in 2024.
“The problem of so-called non-market redispatching of PV farms is compounded by the additional problem of low energy prices not only during curtailment periods but also in other periods, particularly before and after redispatching. PV profile prices on the energy market are falling not only relative to the average energy price (RDN index), but also relative to hourly and monthly wind energy prices (TGeWIATRm),” reads the report.
Owing to this, the pace of new development is slowing down, jeopardizing the country’s energy transition goals.
IEO also points to the decline in the rate of obtaining new permits for solar farms. In mid-April of this year, building permits were granted for large projects (> 1 MW) with a total capacity of 708 MW, and for small projects (> 1 MW) with a total capacity of 242 MW, according to the report writers.
“Mitigating the problems identified above requires new strategic actions and the development of innovative solutions, such as deferring energy use by storing it in short-term electricity and heat storage (daily and seasonal), and electrifying the economic sectors that can most benefit from solar generation, particularly heating and industry,” they recommend.
The complete report is available on IEO’s website for free download.
