To understand the role of wind energy in Hungary’s energy production, it is worth briefly reviewing the country’s energy mix – particularly the relationship between solar and wind energy.
Before renewable energy became widespread in Hungary, conventional power plants with an installed capacity of nearly 8,000 MW were available in the country: alongside the Paks Nuclear Power Plant, this was provided primarily by gas and lignite-fired baseload power plants, while hydropower provided by the small-scale power plants at Kisköre, Tiszalök and along the Rába played only a negligible role.
This situation has been transformed over the past decade and a half by the explosive growth in the installation of solar power plants, supported by government subsidies, favourable regulation, technological development, falling specific investment costs, high energy prices, increased industrial energy demand and sustainability efforts.
In the early 2010s, the capacity of completed solar power plants in Hungary was still minimal, amounting to barely a few megawatts, mainly in the form of smaller residential systems. The breakthrough came with the Mandatory Offtake Support system, known as the KÁT scheme, and later with tender-based support schemes, which facilitated the installation of larger, utility-scale solar power plants. As a result, installed solar power plant capacity increased spectacularly, exceeding 8,000 MW by 2025.
Part of this capacity is provided by residential household small-scale power plants, part by industrial power plants without grid feed-in that generate solely for their own use, while 3,700 MW consists of industrial solar power plants generating for the grid, the vast majority of which (2,800 MW) generate into the KÁT balancing group, which provides mandatory offtake at a fixed price.
The country’s largest solar power plants include the plants in Mezőcsát (250 MW), Lumen Park in Szolnok (138 MW) and Inárcs (132 MW). Market participants include multinational investors and domestic energy companies, as well as innovative renewable energy companies such as Green Energy Investhor.
At the same time, the rapid growth of solar energy production has also brought new system operation challenges. Electricity generation and consumption must be in balance at every moment – if this balance is disrupted, MAVIR must intervene. Due to fluctuations in generation depending on the time of day and the weather, overproduction occurs at times and shortages at others, leading to extreme movements in energy prices.
In light of the above, it is clear that weather-dependent solar power plants involve significant uncertainty regarding the system’s current and future generation. The weather, the number of hours of sunshine and the movement of clouds can indeed be statistically estimated and modelled, but this still does not solve the problem that solar power plants do not generate electricity after sunset or before sunrise.
Wind energy helps in restoring this balance. Wind turbines generate electricity even when the sun is not shining – typically at night, and during the winter and early spring months, when solar power plant generation is lower. Wind and solar power, therefore, naturally complement each other, balancing out fluctuations in weather-dependent generation.
Wind farms with an installed capacity of around 330 MW had already been established in Hungary previously; however, for regulatory reasons, no new wind turbines have been built in the country over the past 10-15 years. A turning point in this situation came with the agreement concluded in 2023 between the Hungarian Government and the European Commission on the disbursement of RFR funds, under which domestic wind power capacity must be increased to at least 1,000 MW by 2030. Following this decision, in December 2023 the government made changes to the regulatory environment for the installation of wind turbines, paving the way for investments such as Green Energy Investhor’s wind power development in Vadosfa.
