A number of individuals brought to my attention a publication that has been widely and uncritically shared by various people and personalities. The author of this publication cites parts of an article summarizing a meeting of members and experts from the Polish Photovoltaic Association, organized around the release of a report titled “Non-Market Redispatching of Photovoltaics in Poland.”

The cited post employs a moderately humorous form of disinformation using popular manipulation techniques. The author presents a straw man argument that can be summarized as follows:

• Solar energy producers are thieves forcing unwanted electricity onto consumers.
• Solar energy destabilizes the power grid because its generation is not stable.
• Taxpayers are forced to subsidize profit-driven producers, who are essentially parasites.

I will address this straw man argument with a more detailed and technical explanation of the electricity market and the distinction between its financial and technical aspects.

Nobody Wants to Buy Solar Energy, So It Needs to Be Limited?

First, it is crucial to understand the nature of transactions in the electricity market, which are voluntary agreements between producers and consumers. Non-market limitations, as the name suggests, involve the Transmission System Operator’s (TSO) intervention in the market, restricting the freedom of such transactions. This occurs because the TSO cannot procure balancing energy through the market to maintain operational balance within specific areas of the power grid. Consequently, a consumer who wants to buy energy from a particular producer under specific terms cannot do so. It’s important to note that an increase in energy supply in the wholesale market, which lowers prices, is not synonymous with imbalance. Producers have factored in the statistical risk of oversupply into their economic models for years.

Non-market interventions, however, generate different actual costs for each producer as a result of unexecuted transactions. In summary, energy producers are not thieves but entrepreneurs who accept market risks and cannot force anyone to buy anything (unlike the state). None of them would be able to finance their investments without presenting well-justified financial flows.

Does Solar Energy Destabilize the Power Grid?

This question is as valid as asking whether an increase in the number of cars causes traffic jams. Yes, it does—should we then restrict the freedom to buy and use cars? Or should we instead expand certain roads, provide parking spaces, and encourage drivers to use roads at different times (through traffic information and parking costs)? The role of an energy producer is not to stabilize the system, just as the role of a driver is not to eliminate traffic jams.

Managing the power grid is the responsibility of the TSO, and the Balancing Market mechanism is their tool for purchasing balancing energy and capacity to “relieve traffic jams.” They do this to avoid intervening in wholesale market transactions. Non-market limitations on solar energy indicate that the operator could not procure the necessary balancing energy through the market. The question is why. The answer lies in the delayed liberalization of access to the Balancing Market for new participants, which only happened on June 14, 2024. As a result, national balancing capabilities are still based on centrally managed, inflexible conventional generation units with limited capacity to quickly shape the supply curve of electricity.

The increase in renewable energy capacity beyond peak demand will regularly create demand for balancing energy in terms of consumption (generation reduction/increased consumption). Unfortunately, the TSO’s balancing resources are currently inadequate at both national and local levels, leading to market intervention and regulated access to the system. However, the demand profile for electricity is not solely composed of “Sunday afternoons,” and peak renewable generation is neither frequent nor unpredictable. It appears that the hope lies with enterprising investors willing to take risks to provide energy and capacity (including solar) in the newly regulated Balancing Market.

Are Taxpayers Paying for Expensive Renewable Energy?

This misconception is easily debunked. The Renewable Energy Fee, which funds support for renewable energy, was ZERO in 2023 and 2024. The cost of producing energy in solar installations is lower than in thermal power plants. Most commercial solar power plants only partially rely on support systems and primarily operate on market principles. The argument that “energy security” comes at a cost is known, and we do pay: capacity market, forced generation, state aid for power plants, state aid for the coal mining sector, subsidies for coal exports, compensation for price freezes, and the removal of the exchange obligation—all to conceal the actual cost of maintaining moderately available thermal power, which, like it or not, funds the development of energy in lower-emission countries through the ETS.

Solar energy has its drawbacks—it depends on weather conditions, requires increased seasonal reserves, careful grid modernization, and the implementation of distributed generation management mechanisms (aggregation) and market integration for balancing. These also incur costs, but it’s crucial to compare these costs with the benefits of deregulating the energy sector, resulting in its decentralization and privatization. Reversing this process in the name of energy security won’t gain approval in highly populated areas. We no longer function under a centrally planned energy mix, and spontaneous activities by citizens (prosumers) challenge projections of national energy development.

Equating coal energy with energy security shows a lack of understanding that balancing energy and capacity will be affordable only if purchased in short periods from numerous competing suppliers, including renewables. The Balancing Market comprises 35,040 settlement periods annually, for around 10,000 of which solar energy can determine its available capacity and compete with coal, nuclear, or gas. That concludes the topic of alleged subsidies for unreliable and uncontrollable solar energy.

Conclusion

Non-market limitations are an imperfect and temporary mechanism for addressing short-term imbalances in the power grid. The appropriate mechanism is the market-based Balancing Market, which needs new technical resources to meet changing system requirements. Industrial solar power is poised to meet these challenges and can perform tasks previously reserved for specific Balancing Market participants. This could have been possible years ago if there had been interest earlier.