Hekla Buys Budimex Solar Imbalance in Poland

• Hekla will balance 60 MWp of Budimex solar, taking forecasting risk, trading intraday and settling deviations—stabilizing revenues, tightening grid schedules, and building a smart route-to-market atop PPAs/CfDs.

Poland’s Hekla agreed to purchase balance energy from roughly 60 MWp of Budimex-owned solar farms, taking over forecasting and imbalance risk in short-term markets. Hekla will aggregate forecasts, execute intraday trades and settle deviations with the system operator, aiming to stabilize Budimex’s revenues while offering grid operators a single counterparty.

The structure, akin to a route-to-market layer atop PPAs or CfDs, relies on high-resolution metering, SCADA links and string-level monitoring to trim imbalance costs. Over time Hekla may pair PV with demand response or batteries. Fewer schedule misses aid grid stability as intraday price spreads widen, sharpening Budimex’s operational optimization.

How will Hekla’s route-to-market model stabilize Budimex PV revenues and grid operations?

• Shifts balancing responsibility to Hekla, converting volatile spot-plus-imbalance exposure into structured cashflows via portfolio trading, collars/swaps on forwards, and capture-price optimization, smoothing Budimex’s monthly revenue.
  
• Aggregates multiple PV sites to net out forecast errors and local weather divergences, cutting variance and imbalance costs compared with single-plant self-balancing.
  
• Uses probabilistic, high-frequency forecasting and continuous intraday rebalancing to keep schedules aligned with real output, reducing penalties and cashflow swings.
  
• Applies shape hedges and time-of-day strategies to mitigate solar cannibalization, with curtailment triggers at low/negative prices to protect revenues.
  
• Provides a single counterparty for grid settlement and dispatch instructions, lowering administrative friction and creating clearer accountability for deviations.
  
• Executes ramp-rate control and constraint-aware dispatch via SCADA, delivering smoother injections and fewer sudden ramps that strain grid frequency and congestion pockets.
  
• Reduces the need for balancing reserve activation by the system operator through tighter schedules and timely intraday corrections, supporting frequency stability.
  
• Enables fast response to TSO/DSO curtailment or redispatch orders, minimizing local overloads and voltage excursions; inverter controls offer reactive power and voltage support where contracted.
  
• Introduces transparent risk-sharing (e.g., imbalance cost caps/KPIs), aligning incentives for continuous forecast and trading improvements that stabilize earnings.
  
• Prepares for bundling with demand response or batteries to firm output, create shaped or quasi-baseload products, and arbitrage intraday spreads—further stabilizing both revenues and grid flows.
  
• Feeds performance data back into O&M, lifting availability and reducing forced outages that would otherwise destabilize schedules and cashflows.
• Optimizes monetization of certificates and contract structures (PPAs/CfDs) to avoid settlement mismatches, improving predictability of net revenue.