Lessons from Europe: current appetite for solar is being driven by corporate interests

L-R: Sonia Dunlop, Oliver Marqurodt, and Mariya Merdzhanova at Solar Finance and Investment Europe 2025. Image: Solar Media.

The success of 500MW solar parks in Europe could provide significant lessons for the UK, a panel of experts has said.

On the first day of Solar Media’s Solar Finance and Investment Europe conference in London, a panel chaired by Sonia Dunlop, head of the Global Solar Council, discussed the case of the 500MW Witnitz Energy solar PV power plant in Germany and how it demonstrates the investment case for developments of this scale.

The Witznitz Energy project, located just south of Leipzig, Germany, is claimed to be the largest solar project in Europe, “although we don’t expect it to be for long”, Sonia noted. The scale of the project was unprecedented – Oliver Marqurodt, senior manager of Hansa Real Estate Investments, which financially supported the development, said the firm’s response to the initial 650MW proposal was “be serious”.

Dunlop noted that the project is a “great example” of a smaller developer – MOVEON Energy – delivering a project on a massive scale. The ion of the site partially aided in the success of the process – with a 380KV grid connection nearby, connection issues were minimal, and the location of the site on a former coal mine and next to a former coal-fired power plant is “symbolic” to the transition away from fossil fuels, Dunlop added. It could be argued that with the UK’s final coal-fired power plant shutting down in the autumn of 2024, former coal sites could be a useful and untapped source of land for large-scale solar developments.

The question of financing these large-scale projects is one that is particularly prescient to the UK at this time, noted Mariya Merdzhanova, head of sales for Eastern and Northern Europe at JinkoSolar EU, who supplied the 1.1 million solar modules for the site. With the UK government recently approving development consent orders (DCOs) for around 1GW of solar across two developments, the 480MW Heckington Fen Solar and 500MW West Burton Solar solar PV power plants, Merdzhanova said the question of finance is next, adding: “I think this is the key for the UK at the moment”.

The answer could lie in power purchase agreements (PPAs), if UK developers want to take a clue from the Witznitz Energy project. The panellists noted that while the process of negotiating a PPA for Witznitz began relatively late in the process and took around a year and a half to negotiate, the final successful deal with Microsoft is a key example of how much of the current appetite for solar is being driven by corporate interests and their desire to decarbonise.

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