Leading supplier of wind power solutions Siemens Gamesa is carrying out nine new projects in Poland that will cover the electricity consumption of nearly 580,000 households.
Near the small town of Ujazd, in the west of Poland, the company will install its latest project by the end of 2021. A total of 15 wind turbines with a capacity of 30 megawatts (MW) will then feed around 89 million kilowatts per hour (kWh) of power per year into the power grid, in turn contributing to the growing share of renewable energy in the country.
“Around 70 per cent of electricity is currently generated from hard coal and lignite in Poland,” commented Marcas Breatnach, Head of Onshore Sales Eastern Europe at Siemens Gamesa. “Many power plants also need to be modernised. There is a need for action. The expansion of wind and solar power is therefore very important.”
Thanks to continuous innovations and constant cost reductions, renewable energies, which for a long time were considered too expensive, have captured the interest of domestic energy policy.
“Our projects from the first tendering round are now in the installation phase,” continued Mr Breatnach. “The share of wind in the electricity supply is starting to increase slowly now.”
Siemens Games pointed out that the current dynamics in the wind market threaten to be of limited duration. This is due to comparatively strict regulations regarding the distance between turbines and surrounding housing or protected areas, based on the total height of the turbine.
“If the restrictions on clearance requirements fall, we will be able to use modern and powerful wind turbines in the future,” explained Mr Breatnach. “Our latest turbine, the Siemens Gamesa 5.X, can generate twice or even three times electricity more than turbines being currently installed. In Poland, current projects have been planned with only 2 to 3 MW per turbine.”
Therefore, the potential for wind is still very broad. According to various estimates, the installed capacity of onshore wind could grow to 10 gigawatts (GW), in turn increasing the share of wind energy to 15 per cent of current electricity consumption.
In addition to electricity generation of from onshore wind, the expansion of offshore wind in the Baltic Sea is also being discussed in Poland. With an estimated capacity of up to 12 GW, offshore wind energy could be another important building block in the Polish energy turnaround towards lower CO2 emissions and more electricity from renewables.
