The article analyzes and evaluates the development of renewable energy from the standpoint of state regulation and incentives. It is noted that the global production of renewable electricity has increased by 15% over the last year. The periods of introduction of the "green tariff" as an economic stimulus for the development of solar energy, which became the starting point for the development of alternative generation in different countries, are analyzed. The role of institutional factors in the development of renewable energy, such as the free issuance of licenses for electricity generation, stimulating the creation of specialized research areas, technology development and production of relevant equipment, was observed. The necessity of taking into account the regional peculiarity in the state stimulation of the development of renewable energy is proved. The economic efficiency of the state regulation of alternative energy in time measurement per conditional unit of alternative renewable energy stations was calculated, taking the coefficient of proportionality into account. Therefore, the calculation indicates the high effectiveness of government policy in regulating energy in terms of only short-term lag (α = 1.3) and the number of stations 80 percent of full saturation relative to the basic needs of energy consumption. A separate further stage in the development of renewable energy without the introduction and expansion of the "green tariff" has been identified. This approach was introduced in Poland, which ensured the country not only the inflow of foreign investment, but also the formation of free competition among investors.

Poland is the leader in hard coal mining in the European Union and in generation of electricity on this basis, it is related also to low generation of energy from renewable energy sources, in particular photovoltaic installations. The paper analyses the potential of PV installations application for the needs of a selected hard coal mine from the Upper Silesian Coal Basin. Using the hourly data on its electricity consumption in 2018 various sizes of PV installations were selected, a simple payback period was calculated as well as the percentage of energy from the installation use for the current mine operations. It has been shown that in the case of a mine, having available 20 MW of ordered power and average consumption of approx. 14 MW, an installation of 20 MWp rating covers approx. 15% of the electricity demand per year, while for 1 o’clock p.m., i.e. the hour at which most frequently the peak consumption occurred, the share in electricity demand coverage by the PV installation of this power on average amounts to approx. 50% per year.

Previous analyses of the PV market (and the impact of the pandemic on it) have focused on the market as a whole. The literature does not contain analyses of selected services sectors (e.g., catering, hotel services) in terms of the use of photovoltaics. There are no studies that would show in which segments the demand profile for electricity most closely matches the production from photovoltaic installations (not to mention the impact of the pandemic). The authors analyzed selected service sectors (catering and hotel) in terms of the use of photovoltaics before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper proposes a comparative methodology for the use of photovoltaics for self-consumption, including statistical analyses and calculations of the self-consumption index for representatives of various selected services sectors. The highest value of the self-consumption ratio at the level of 52% was shown for cafes and restaurants (during the pandemic). Surprisingly, in the pandemic, the self-consumption rate increased for restaurants and cafes for the same size of installations (compared to pre-pandemic times).

In Poland, a dynamic increase in the share of renewable energy sources in the national energy mix has been observed in recent years. Until now, these were mainly installations used for the needs of single-family houses and large-scale installations used on the RES auction market. However, due to the fact that the carbon footprint of the offered products is taken into account, this aspect is becoming more and more important. The carbon footprint can be offset by, among others, by covering the energy needs of the industrial plant by its own renewable energy sources. The article analyzes four sample electricity demand profiles of production plants operating in the mining industry, mainly located in Upper Silesia. Using statistical methods, the fitting of potential photovoltaic sources production profiles to the electricity consumption profiles in the analyzed case studies was checked. The analysis was carried out for each hour of the day and for the profiles weighted by the electricity price from the Polish Power Exchange on the Day-Ahead Market, because matching profiles at different hours has a different monetary value and, as a result, a different impact on operation costs. The highest correlation coefficient between electricity consumption and insolation on an annual basis was −0.29 in the Spearman rho-statistic for the case of M1 enterprise. On the other hand, the highest value at the level of 0.48 was achieved by the Pearson r-correlation coefficient determined on a monthly basis between the monetary value of electricity consumed and insolation in June for the M2 enterprise.

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