Austrian renewable energy company Enery is pushing ahead with major new solar investments in Slovakia. (source: Facebook - Enery)
Austrian renewable energy company Enery is pushing ahead with major new solar investments in Slovakia, even as changing conditions in the European energy market make large-scale solar projects increasingly difficult to profit from, according to a report by Slovak business daily Hospodárske noviny.
Slovakia’s largest power producer, Slovenské elektrárne, recently scrapped plans for major solar farms in Nováky and Vojany due to falling electricity prices — sometimes even turning negative during periods of oversupply. But Enery is taking a different path.
The Vienna-based company already owns three solar parks in Slovakia and now plans to build two new photovoltaic (PV) plants, near Rimavská Sobota and Tornaľa, both in the country’s underdeveloped south. Each plant will have a planned capacity of 48 megawatts — enough to power over 17,000 households — and will represent an investment of around €30 million.
The projects are currently undergoing environmental impact assessments by the Environment Ministry.
Austrian firm targets industrial clients
To reduce exposure to volatile electricity prices, Enery relies on Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) — long-term contracts to supply electricity at a fixed price. According to Ján Horváth, Enery’s country manager for Slovakia, the company currently provides 92 percent of the Šariš brewery’s electricity needs through such a contract.
One potential client for the new Rimavská Sobota plant is Winkelmann, a German manufacturer of heat pumps planning to open a facility in the local industrial zone. Any excess energy will be sold through virtual PPAs or fed into the national grid.
The scale of the projects is significant: the Rimavská Sobota plant will cover 92 hectares, while the Tornaľa site will use 29.5 hectares, both currently agricultural land. Enery says it plans to allow sheep grazing around the panels to help maintain the land sustainably.
Slovakia still relies heavily on nuclear power, which provides around 60 percent of its electricity. In contrast, solar accounts for just 2.4 percent.
Enery, which operates renewable assets across central and eastern Europe, says Slovakia’s slow permitting process remains a key obstacle. “In Estonia, it took just two years from idea to building permit for a wind farm,” Horváth noted, urging faster procedures to meet green energy targets.
