The Ourika project was developed by WElink Group and has been fully operational since June. It was inaugurated in July, where it was hailed as Europe’s largest subsidy-free project.
Allianz has now entered into a 20 year fixed price power purchase agreement with Ourika to purchase the generated electricity. It should supply around 23,000 average households with electricity annually.
WElink and its partner China Triumph International Engineering Company (CTIEC) invested around €40 million in the 46 MW plant, which covers 100 hectares and comprises 142,000 PV panels.
“Whilst Ourika will always be the first subsidy-free solar project developed in the Iberian Peninsula, our focus now switches to our next project Solara4, the 221 MW project being developed in Alcoutim. We are targeting completion of this project in Q3 2019. Beyond this we are committed to achieving our 1GW target for development in Iberia by 2020,” said John Murphy, CEO at WElink Energy.
To date, the Portuguese Government has approved more than 750 MW of “unsubsidized” solar projects, with another 2.2 GW currently under review.
The first two deals were secured by local developer Hyperion, which in January signed a 10 year PPA for a 28.8 MW solar plant in Evora with local power distributor Axpo Iberia, a unit of Switzerland-based Axpo Group. The deal immediately attracted attention, and in mid-March, French financial group Natixis acquired the project via its unit, Natixis Global Asset Management.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.