Norway's Scatec brings its largest solar farm in Ukraine to free market

MOSCOW. Dec 12 (Interfax) - Norwegian solar power producer Scatec, which has 336 MW of solar generation in Ukraine, has temporarily put the largest of its solar farms into operation on the free market, Scatec Country Manager Alina Sviderskaya said.

"We did that at the beginning of summer, when regulatory authorities could suspend the feed-in tariff, and we already have quite a positive result, especially amid Guaranteed Buyer's large debts to the renewable energy generation sector," Sviderskaya told Ukrainian journalists in Kiev.

The decision to suspend the feed-in tariff and to temporarily withdraw from the Guaranteed Buyer balancing group currently applies to one solar farm, which is not burdened with loans and has the lowest feed-in tariff, she said.

The situation with regard to other solar farms is somewhat more difficult, because they have loans envisaging a higher feed-in tariff tied to the euro, and lenders remain cautious about the prospect of stopping to use the state-guaranteed buyback of green electricity.

As reported, Norway's Scatec has five solar farms in Ukraine's Nikolayev, Kiev and Cherkassy regions.

The level of settlements between Guaranteed Buyer and renewable energy generation facilities for 2022 and 2023 remains at just over 50%.

Green energy producers have started to move to other balancing groups, the largest of which have so far been formed by D. Trading and the Energy Company of Ukraine national energy trader, which has been joined by Elementum Energy, the biggest foreign investor in Ukraine's renewable energy generation, among others.

Thus, companies stop using the feed-in tariff, at least for the time being, and start selling electricity at market prices, which may be slightly lower than the set tariff but allow them to receive "real" money on time.