The wind on the Danube plain is being recalculated into Hungary's national energy account. Over the past decade, Hungary's wind power installed capacity has remained at a low level of around 330 megawatts, which is half a beat slower than many neighboring countries. Now the Minister of Economy and Energy, Istvan Kapitani, has sent a signal on social media: market enthusiasm has exceeded expectations, and the government has decided to increase the capacity of the new round of wind power projects that can be connected to the grid from the originally promised 700 megawatts to nearly 1000 megawatts for the EU.

Excessive overweight

This nearly 1000 megawatts is not a figure that emerged out of thin air. According to the original schedule, Hungary will open up 700 MW of new wind power grid connection quotas to the EU before August 31st, and the first batch of tenders will be launched simultaneously. However, in the early stage of market research, developers provided positive feedback, and potential sites still had surplus after environmental and defense standards review. The government took advantage of this and expanded the market. Kapitani explained that the increase is aimed at unleashing the potential of wind power, breaking through the bottleneck of grid connection, and enabling wind power to run more harmoniously with existing thermal power, nuclear power, and photovoltaic systems.

No subsidy bidding

There is a key shift in this round of expansion: the government will no longer provide direct subsidies to developers, and the winning bidder will receive grid access rights, while wind farm construction funds will be raised independently. This design is to avoid the speculative rush of installation that occurred during the early expansion of photovoltaics. In conjunction with this, the Energy and Public Utilities Regulatory Bureau will complete technical analysis before mid August, and the first batch of formal bidding rules will be publicly solicited for opinions afterwards; The regulatory framework will also include battery energy storage as appropriate, allowing wind power output and electricity consumption to complement each other during peak periods.

4000 megawatt blue chart

Nearly 1000 megawatts is just the starting point. Hungary has drawn a longer line for itself - by 2030, it will provide no less than 4000 megawatts of wind power grid connection opportunities, increasing the country's installed capacity from 330 megawatts to the range of 3000 to 4000 megawatts, an increase of more than ten times. Where the money comes from is also partially guaranteed: the European Union has allocated 1.5 billion euros for wind power and grid infrastructure, plus about 1 billion euros of project side investment in this round, grid upgrades and station construction can be pushed forward simultaneously. 17 counties with high wind energy density, including the Small Hungarian Plain in the northwest, are also relaxing the tower height to 199 meters, simplifying land substitution requirements, and relaxing site selection in legislative consultation.keywords:New energy information network

From 700 to nearly 1000, and then to 4000 megawatts by 2030, Hungary has moved wind power from marginal supplementation to the forefront of energy structure rebalancing. Once the grid connection capacity is implemented in batches, the windmills will not only generate electricity, but also account for the independent energy of Central and Eastern Europe.Editor/Yang Meiling