IN Brief:
- The European Investment Bank is providing a €100 million project finance loan to Dolmen Solar for four PV projects in Ireland totalling 395MWp.
- The wider investment package is valued at about €260 million and is tied to RESS-3 and RESS-4 support, with merchant exposure beyond that.
- The deal adds weight to Ireland’s utility-scale solar buildout at a point when long-term project finance remains critical to execution.
Power Capital Renewable Energy is moving ahead with a 395MWp Irish solar portfolio after Dolmen Solar secured a €100 million project finance loan from the European Investment Bank, supporting four utility-scale photovoltaic projects across the country.
The wider investment package is valued at roughly €260 million and covers four sites in Clare, Tipperary, Wicklow, and Wexford. Together, the projects are expected to strengthen renewable electricity output in Ireland while adding another sizeable tranche of solar capacity to a market that has historically leaned more heavily on wind.
For the EIB, the transaction sits inside a familiar policy frame: decarbonising electricity, reducing fossil-fuel reliance, and accelerating deployment under the REPowerEU agenda. For the projects themselves, the structure is equally important. Revenues are backed through Ireland’s Renewable Electricity Support Scheme, with the EIB stating that the portfolio is supported by RESS-3 and RESS-4 contracts for difference alongside a merchant tail.
That blend matters because it gives the projects a clearer financing base without removing exposure to the live power market over time. In a utility-scale solar market still balancing construction costs, grid constraints, and financing conditions, that kind of structure remains central to getting portfolios built rather than merely consented.
The scale is also notable. This is not a single plant financing but a multi-project programme, which points to a more mature stage of market development. Once portfolios start to attract long-term institutional lending on this basis, the conversation shifts from whether utility-scale solar is viable in principle to how quickly it can be delivered and integrated.
Power Capital describes itself as an independent Irish producer active across solar, battery storage, wind, and wider clean energy infrastructure. That broader portfolio is relevant here because Ireland’s renewable buildout is increasingly about how different technologies are assembled together across the power system rather than deployed in isolation.
The Dolmen financing will not resolve the wider questions around grid buildout, storage, or curtailment that come with deeper renewable penetration. It does, however, add a substantial and bankable solar package to Ireland’s near-term pipeline, and it shows that large-format project finance is still prepared to back utility-scale PV where policy support and execution pathways are in place.
