DIF Capital Partners has signed a power purchase agreement with Axpo Polska for six wind farms in Poland, 172 MW in total. The farms range from 4 MW to 70 MW and sit in three different provinces. The contract does not read like a classic fixed-price deal. It bundles spot market settlement, guarantees of origin and balancing services, and it names no price and no term.
Key takeaways
- DIF Capital Partners signed a power purchase agreement with Axpo Polska, announced on 12 March 2024, covering six onshore wind farms in Poland with a total installed capacity of 172 MW and expected output of about 500 GWh a year.
- The DIF Capital Partners and Axpo Polska agreement includes spot market settlements, the purchase of guarantees of origin and the provision of balancing services; the tariff and duration were not disclosed.
- Enerdatics understands the six DIF wind farms in the Axpo Polska contract are Pruszcz (70 MW), Grajewo (41 MW), Markowice (26 MW), Sulmierzyce (23 MW), Piaski (8 MW) and Wyszki (4 MW), across the Kujawsko-Pomorskie, Podlaskie and Wielkopolskie provinces.
- Greenberg Traurig advised Axpo Polska on the negotiation and signing of the DIF Capital Partners wind power purchase agreement.
- Of 16 wind power purchase agreements Enerdatics records in Poland across 2023 and 2024, the 172 MW DIF and Axpo contract is the largest onshore deal by capacity, and only one of the 16 carries a disclosed tariff.
What is Axpo buying from DIF?
Axpo is buying more than electricity. A guarantee of origin is a certificate proving that one megawatt hour came from a renewable source, and it is what lets an end customer claim green power. Balancing is the service of matching a wind farm's actual output to what was scheduled, and paying for or absorbing the difference when the wind does not cooperate. Spot market settlement means the power is valued against short-term market prices rather than a single fixed number for years.
Put together, those terms describe a route to market. DIF owns the turbines. Axpo takes the output, handles the trading and the imbalance risk, and collects the certificates it can sell on to its own customers. The record does not say whether any part of the price is fixed, so the split of price risk between the two is not visible.
The output figure gives a sense of scale. About 500 GWh a year from 172 MW implies the six farms run at roughly a third of their rated capacity across a year.
Why would a fund sign one contract for six farms of very different sizes?
Because small farms are expensive to sell on their own. The 4 MW Wyszki farm and the 8 MW Piaski farm would struggle to attract a dedicated buyer, and each would carry its own balancing cost. Grouped with the 70 MW Pruszcz farm and the rest, they become part of a 172 MW block spread across three provinces. Wind does not blow the same way everywhere at once, so a geographically spread portfolio tends to produce a smoother combined output, which is cheaper to balance.
For DIF, an infrastructure investor, one counterparty and one set of terms is also simpler to manage than six. For Axpo, the deal adds volume. Axpo has been operating in Poland for over 20 years, and the contract strengthens its position as one of the largest independent offtakers of green energy in the country.
That model of buying output from farms the trader does not own is familiar from Axpo's other deals. It sells Swedish and Belgian wind power to Borealis from farms Axpo does not own, and it had contracted two Lithuanian wind farms that later signed with Centrica.
How does the deal compare with other Polish wind contracts?
It is large and, like nearly all of them, unpriced. Enerdatics' data shows 16 wind power purchase agreements in Poland across 2023 and 2024. Only one carries a disclosed tariff: a two-year contract between Sunflower Renewable Investments and ORBOT ENERGA for a 50 MW portfolio at $101 per MWh, signed in December 2024. Seven of the 16 disclose a duration, ranging from one year to 15.
By capacity, the DIF and Axpo deal is the largest onshore contract of the 16. Only the Baltyk 2 and 3 offshore agreement between Polenergia, Equinor and Danske Commodities, at 1,440 MW, is bigger. The next onshore contract is Ignitis Group's 137 MW agreement with Umicore from October 2023.
The buyers split into two groups. Six of the 16 contracts went to utilities and traders, including Axpo twice and Respect Energy twice. Axpo signed a second Polish wind contract in September 2024, with Akuo for a 66 MW farm. The rest went to corporate and industrial buyers such as Amazon, Google, Umicore, Lafarge and Air Liquide, whose virtual contract with Statkraft for Polish wind was announced a month before the DIF deal. Traders are taking a larger share of the volume than their count suggests. Among onshore contracts with a disclosed capacity, the five signed by utilities and traders add up to 364.6 MW, more than the 291 MW across the seven corporate and industrial ones.
What does the deal signal for Polish onshore wind?
It signals that traders are an increasingly natural buyer for portfolios of small and mid-sized farms. A corporate buyer usually wants a specific volume at a known price for a long period. A trader can take varied output from several farms, sell it on in different shapes, and keep the balancing risk on its own book. For owners of older or smaller Polish wind farms, that may be the more practical exit for their power.
It also explains why prices stay hidden. When a contract settles at spot and is paid through a mix of power, certificates and services, there may be no single headline price to disclose. That may be one reason Polish wind power contracts remain almost entirely opaque.
What remains unknown is how long DIF has committed its output for, and how much of the price risk stays with DIF. Those two terms decide whether this is a long-term hedge or a flexible marketing arrangement, and the record does not settle either.
Frequently asked questions
Which wind farms are in the DIF and Axpo Polska PPA? Enerdatics understands the contract covers six onshore wind farms: Pruszcz (70 MW), Grajewo (41 MW), Markowice (26 MW), Sulmierzyce (23 MW), Piaski (8 MW) and Wyszki (4 MW), for 172 MW in total.
How much electricity will the DIF wind farms supply to Axpo? The six farms are expected to produce about 500 GWh of renewable electricity a year, all covered by the agreement with Axpo Polska.
What price did Axpo agree to pay DIF? The price and the contract length were not disclosed. The agreement includes spot market settlements, guarantees of origin and balancing services.
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