The first panel of the Solarplaza Summit Hungary promised the audience a "backstage view" of how corporate buyers decide on power purchase agreements (PPAs). Moderator Ákos Pesti, a renewable energy and corporate PPA expert, brought together Krisztián Somosi from Linde, Tamás Szoták from Bosch, Sjaak Voogd from Prologis, and Katalin Szécsi from KPMG. Their answers showed a buyer side that has become far more demanding, and a Hungarian PPA market that is still small and short-term.
Key takeaways
- Corporate buyers now have in-house energy specialists and better data, which has put downward pressure on PPA prices.
- Base-load consumers see little risk in solar hours and want PPAs shaped closer to their own consumption, often with storage.
- Cost wins approval at management level, but risk management opens the discussion and sustainability can tip the decision.
- Hungarian PPAs typically run three to five years, far shorter than the 10 years common in Western Europe.
- Most panelists see a PPA first and foremost as a financial risk management tool.
Buyers got smarter
Somosi has sat on both sides of the table. Three or four years ago, he was selling PPAs in Hungary and Poland, and buyers simply compared base-load prices with the solar price. Solar pay-as-produced PPAs were discussed at around €80 to €90 in 2022 and 2023. "No one cared about cannibalization," he said. Now corporates hire energy managers who look at capture rates, and that puts downward pressure on prices. "You can ask Copilot and it will evaluate the PPA for you and it's not very far away from the reality," he added. His conclusion: it is much harder for sellers today and easier for buyers.
Szécsi saw the same shift from the advisory side. When KPMG's clients first met these contracts, they were shocked by the difference from their usual power procurement. Evaluating a PPA requires knowledge of taxation, accounting, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting, and that knowledge sat in different departments that suddenly had to work together.
Price opens the door, profile closes the deal
Asked what makes a PPA work, Somosi started with the obvious. "A very good price, I think is the easy answer." The real question for Linde, a base-load consumer, is where its risk lies. Looking at capture rates, high prices during solar hours are not a big risk. The night hours and the extremes are. That is why Somosi is no longer interested in a plain solar pay-as-produced profile. "We have to make it somehow closer to the base load profile," he said, which means adding battery storage.
He pointed to two tools that help. Top-bottom (TBX) products let a buyer pay a fixed price per MW over a year in exchange for the day's arbitrage spread. A pay-as-nominated structure, instead of pay-as-produced, limits balancing risk and the charges that come with it. He also expects batteries to push gas-fired plants out of balancing and midday arbitrage. Those plants will then need to earn their money on days without solar, such as a cold, rainy November day when base-load prices could reach something like €1,000 per MWh.
Szoták recognized the problem. Bosch's plants run around the clock for most of the year. "I still need to manufacture during the winter when there's less sun and still need to manufacture during the night," he said. On the seller side, Szécsi said solar projects without a battery have become unsellable, while a PPA on top of a hybrid project helps it secure financing.
Three arguments, one approval
For Szoták, a PPA has to pass several internal tests. At the end of the day, management approves based on savings. The discussion itself starts from risk management, and sustainability targets such as net zero can be a big driver on top. All three considerations "would have to come into sync" before an industrial consumer signs. Timing makes this harder: management plans budgets for this year and the next, while procurement teams think in five, 10, or, for a PPA, 20 years.
On-site or off-site
Voogd brought the view of a company that sits between real estate and energy. Prologis signed an 8 MW solar PPA with fast-charging company Fastned in Belgium last year. For Fastned, that covered only part of its needs, and it is looking to combine solar with wind and storage to cover negative hours.
With more than 6,000 buildings worldwide and a net zero goal for 2040, Prologis has large roofs but often small tenants. A roof of 20,000 to 40,000 square meters can host far more solar than a tenant using 300,000 kWh a year needs, and small systems are expensive. Combining on-site supply with off-site sales gives the scale for a better business case. Prologis invests on its own balance sheet and recovers the cost through rent, accepting the risk that a tenant leaves before the system's life ends.
The tenants themselves send mixed signals. "When you talk to the facility manager on site, he just wants to save money," Voogd said, while heads of sustainability talk about net zero. He also hears more and more customers say an off-site PPA does not count toward their ESG measurements and only on-site consumption behind the meter does.
Why Hungarian deals stay short
In Hungary, PPAs are typically three to five years, according to Szécsi, and only a limited number have been signed. Much of KPMG's work in these deals is modeling medium- and long-term electricity prices so buyers can judge what prices will look like three or five years out. "Companies are afraid of these contracts in Hungary nowadays," she said. Pesti confirmed this from his own experience originating PPAs in Hungary. The Western European standard of 10 years was rarely an option for Hungarian clients, who wanted three years, sometimes five or seven.
Somosi had practical advice on long-term price models. They are necessary, but no model can predict every geopolitical shock. Linde checks how far an advisor's past forecasts deviated from actual spot prices, applies that error as a buffer, and tries to negotiate the buffer into the PPA. Szécsi said KPMG also shows clients how its models fit the past.
Hedge, procurement, or sustainability?
Pesti closed with the question he had put to the audience at the start: is a PPA a sustainability instrument, a procurement instrument, or a financial risk management tool? For Somosi, it is a hedge. Linde has green goals, but greening a portfolio is not the expensive part. Voogd also called it a hedge, adding that in some countries Prologis already has that hedge through feed-in subsidies, and no one wants to sign a PPA below a guaranteed subsidy price. Szécsi said the reality today is financial risk management, but her personal wish is for PPAs to become a regular energy procurement instrument in the future.
Want the full picture of the day? Read our recap of the Solarplaza Summit Hungary 2026: Solarplaza Summit Hungary 2026: making the hybrid era pay
