Less speculation, more genuine investment — new grid connection rules

The amendment to the Energy Law Act of 10 April 1997, enacted on 13 March 2026 (Journal of Laws 2026, item 516), enters into force on 30 April 2026. Its primary, although not sole, objective is to facilitate the connection of new facilities to the electricity grid. The de facto inability to connect renewable energy generation installations to the grid is one of the main obstacles to Poland’s energy transition.

The amendment is intended to make it more difficult to block connection capacity through speculative projects with little prospect of implementation. Several mechanisms are designed to serve this purpose.

• • First, the amendment reduces the validity period of grid connection conditions issued by energy undertakings from 24 to 12 months (except for railway projects and offshore wind farms – Article 7(8i) of the Energy Law).
• • Second, the advance payment to be made by an entity applying for connection to the electricity grid is increased from PLN 30 to PLN 60 per kilowatt of capacity, and the upper cap on that advance payment is raised from PLN 3 million to PLN 6 million (Article 7(8a)–(8b) of the Energy Law). It will also be necessary to pay a fee for filing an application for the determination of connection conditions in the amount of PLN 1 per kilowatt of capacity, up to a maximum of PLN 100,000 (Article 7(8b1)–(8b2) of the Energy Law).
• • Third, the entity applying for grid connection will be required to provide security for the performance of the grid connection agreement in the amount of PLN 30 per kilowatt of connection capacity not exceeding 100 MW and PLN 60 per kilowatt above that threshold, up to a maximum of PLN 12 million. Such security may be provided in the form of a cash deposit, an insurance guarantee, a bank guarantee, or a guarantee from the parent company, provided that it has an appropriate credit rating (Article 7(8c1)–(8c12) of the Energy Law).
• • Fourth, the investor will be required to obtain a final building permit for the installation within 24 months from the conclusion of the grid connection agreement, subject to different solutions for certain types of installations (for example, in the case of wind turbines – 36 months). Failure to comply with this obligation will result in the expiry of the agreement, unless this occurs for reasons beyond the investor’s control as specified in the Act (Article 7(2a)–(2b) of the Energy Law).

The amendment is intended to ensure that grid connection conditions are issued and grid connection agreements are concluded only for installations that are genuinely ready for implementation and have secured adequate financing.

The new regulations favour prepared and viable projects at the expense of purely speculative undertakings. For investors, it becomes crucial to secure financing at an earlier stage and to manage the administrative process with precision. In practice, an advantage will be gained by those investors who treat the law as an element of business strategy rather than merely a formal requirement.