Profitability of photovoltaics for companies

To use free energy, a properly selected photovoltaic installation must be installed on the roof or ground. Enterprises can use the generated energy in two ways. The first one is to use energy for your own needs. The second one is the sale of surpluses to the energy grid. Generally, companies use two options to save and earn at the same time.

The way a photovoltaic installation works is relatively logical and understandable. The cells that make up a photovoltaic panel are exposed to solar energy, producing direct current. To change the current from direct to alternating current (the same as from the public grid), you must use an inverter.

With the current continuous increase in energy prices, more and more people are considering using photovoltaics in their home or business. The topic of PV panels is trending due to ecology, which we pay more and more attention to, but it also allows us to reduce electricity bills.

There are three determinants that indicate that a photovoltaic installation is profitable, namely:

• energy prices are constantly rising
• prices of photovoltaic installations are decreasing
• the legal situation for companies installing installations is constantly improving.

There are a lot of extreme articles on the Internet regarding the profitability of photovoltaics, when reading all of them, you should pay attention to the dates of their publication because just a few years ago in Poland photovoltaics was something new and the prices were very high. Then we could actually discuss the profitability of a photovoltaic installation. At the moment, when the prices of components have dropped significantly and the energy from the network is still growing, it can be said with certainty that a properly selected installation is the most profitable.

A very advantageous solution, often chosen by entrepreneurs, to finance a photovoltaic installation is leasing. Leasing is a relatively cheap solution, its cost is only a few percent per year. It can be said that leasing practically pays for itself – the savings from self-generated energy can cover the leasing installment. The biggest advantage is that you do not have to use your own funds to purchase a photovoltaic installation, and leasing can be included in your business expenses. This leads to a reduction in income tax.

Financing a photovoltaic installation is possible mainly thanks to Regional Operational Programs. Each voivodeship separately introduces its own renewable energy program. It is also possible to take advantage of the Infrastructure and Environment Operational Program run by NOŚiGW. Co-financing for companies is becoming easier and easier to obtain every year. A few years ago it was a very big problem, but now more and more companies are deciding to use programs related to renewable energy sources.

As the WiseEuropa institute emphasizes, private electricity companies in Poland played a huge role as prosumers on the renewable energy market and built 81% of all renewable energy capacity in 2013-2019. Funds from Polish private enterprises and commercial banks have a huge share in the project of financing low-emission technology – this indicator is approximately 83% of the total capital allocated to renewable energy.

In turn, the Renewable Energy Institute assumes that small and medium-sized entrepreneurs in Poland will pay more and more for energy, so Pursuant to the amendment to the Act on Renewable Energy Sources of July 2019, the end user produces energy only from renewable sources for their own needs and up to 50 kW , will henceforth be called a prosumer. This is a very beneficial move for the Polish economy, because so far we have been paying much more for electricity than EU Member States, which has resulted in the lack of competitiveness of our industry in relation to other European countries. At this point, the opportunity to act as a business prosumer and reduce the costs of electricity production to a minimum is very significant.

The basic difference between a household and an entrepreneur is that a person running a business is the most effective as a prosumer. If we have a company where machines run all day long, 100% of this energy is used on an ongoing basis and we do not release any excess energy to the grid. You also need to consider the size of the installation, because up to 10 kW the energy return coefficient from the power plant is 80% and above 70%. We must carefully consider how much energy we will use for current consumption and how much we will put into the grid to ensure that in months when no energy from photovoltaic panels is produced at all or the yield is negligible, the overproduction will allow us to cover consumption in those months.

So far, the entrepreneur could only sell surplus energy and not necessarily at attractive prices, now, operating on a producer basis, he has a significant increase in the benefits of recovering his own profit from the Energy Plant, which is a huge advantage for him.