Page 14 - bne_newspaper_November_02_2018

Central Europe
November 2, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 14
The €25mn cost was financed by project financing from banks, without state support. MET plans to build several solar parks with a combined capacity of up to 100MW in Hungary.
Hungary's solar energy market has seen a sharp upturn. The largest coal-fuelled power plant Matrai Eromu, broke ground on the two solar parks with a 20MW capacity each this year, the largest ones in Hungary.
To finance the construction it sold a 16MW solar park to state-owned MVM Hungarowind, which has announced a massive wave of constructions, some 110 PV plants with a total capacity of 104.2MW.
This will make the subsidiary of the state-owned electricity company MWM the largest operator of solar parks in Hungary.
Other companies are also jumping on the bandwagon. MOL is in the midst of constructing three PV plants with a combined capacity of 18.3MW on unused areas at three of its main industrial sites in Hungary.
At the same time, household solar power plants are taking hold at a rapid pace. The number of Hungarian homes powered by their own solar panels rose by a whopping 45% y/y to 29,600 last year, data released by the energy regulator MEKH. The capacity of most household power plants is below 5MW. Energy generated by them reached 241MW, a 46% annual increase.
Market experts forecast that energy production from solar power plants in Hungary could reach 1,000MW by the end of 2019. This would be higher than the output from Matrai Eromu.